Review: Lucian Divine by Renee Carlino
5:50 PM
Lucian Divine
By Renee Carlino
Release Date: January 9, 2017
“My guardian angel is a drunk.”
Evelyn Casey's life is at a standstill. She's in her mid-twenties, struggling with the dating scene in San Francisco. Nothing seems to be working out, and she’s starting to think that she’ll live out her days in her crummy apartment with her overbearing roommate, Brooklyn. It's absurd, but sometimes Evey longs for a guardian angel to show up and save the day.
And then he does. Seriously. His name is Lucian and he's a guardian angel, been on the job for two thousand years. His sudden presence in her life is both good—he's brilliant, witty, and warm—and bad—he's brilliant, witty, warm, and hot as ----. But as perfect as Lucian seems, he’s got problems of his own. He’s taken up drinking and he’s brazenly inserted himself into Evey’s life, going against the greatest cosmic law ever created.
For Evey, the rules are simple: You are not allowed to hook up with your guardian angel. But sometimes fulfilling your destiny requires a leap of faith, a confrontation with God.
Yes, God as in God
I want to start out by saying that I've never been disappointed by any of Renee Carlino's books. I've read Before We Were Strangers, Sweet Thing, and Swear on This Life. A lot of the time her writing is beautiful and poetic, because of that, I've saved several quotes from her books to my Goodreads profile. I knew when I started this blog that Lucian Divine was the first book I wanted to review which makes this tough because I didn't like it. In fact, the majority of the time I was cringing. I knew that to give it a fair review I needed to read the entire book but I really just wanted to throw it in the DNF pile and never look back. After reading the summary I wasn't sure if I was even interested in reading it since it's about a guardian angel. I was concerned that the writing would come across preachy with a lot of religious references that I honestly wouldn't understand or relate to. I wasn't worried about that after reading the preface where Renee states,
"This book is not about God and angels. This book is about faith, love, and the unknown, and not taking ourselves so damn seriously all the time."
GREAT! It's going to be funny as hell! At times it was, I will admit that I did laugh out loud at some parts. Unfortunately, it didn't make up for the writing. The whole story felt choppy and rushed. We didn't even get know the characters much less connect to them.
Evey is a 24-year-old fashion designer living in San Francisco, CA with her bitchy best friend, Brooklyn. She is an average young woman that hangs out with her friends, goes on dates, and is trying to jumpstart her career in fashion design. Other than that we know nothing about her, there isn't really anything all that special or even likable about her.
Lucian is her two-thousand-year-old "alcoholic" guardian angel that has been looking after Evey since she was a baby. He is described as tall, extremely handsome with dark hair and blue eyes and he has been in love with Evey her entire adult life. Guardian angels are not allowed to show themselves to their souls, which means that Lucian is pining for someone that doesn't know he exists. For that reason, he has taken to drinking. I feel like Lucian's "alcoholism" was glorified a bit and was something that he was able to overcome pretty easily. It felt like it was thrown in the book just to give him an edge but wasn't explored as much as it should have been.
Lucian decides that he no longer cares about the consequences and reveals himself to Evey. She handles the news pretty well and falls for him instantly. Even though the age gap is insanely large, that isn't what creeps me out about Lucian. It's the fact that he has known Evey since she was born. How could he possibly have romantic feelings for someone that he's been an invisible parent-like figure to? Also there is insta-love but there's an explanation for it which seems like a convenient excuse for a short, rushed story.
Lucian has been around for several centuries and, as he stated, has looked after many beautiful women. Why Evey? What about her makes him want to risk his wings or his "life" just to be with her? We don't know because we don't know Evey. We are thrown into the story and expected to roll with whatever the author says without any explanation.
In closing, this story had no backbone or character development. There were several plot holes, and I didn't feel a connection to the characters. What was the point? I will continue to read Renee Carlino's books, maybe this one was just a dud, but I cannot recommend Lucian Divine.
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