Review: Lucian Divine by Renee Carlino

Lucian Divine
by Renee Carlino
Publisher: Self-published
Publication Date: Jan. 9, 2017
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Rating:

“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.

My thoughts…

Lucian Divine is a story about a guardian angel and his charge falling in love. However, Lucian isn’t your typical “holier than thou” angel. He swears, he drinks, and he breaks the rules. He’s not supposed to interfere in his charges life unless their soul or body is in danger. However throughout the course of her life, Lucian has always popped in and used other people’s bodies as a way to keep an eye on her and ensure her happiness. He’s always kept his true identity a secret from her… until now.

I’m not usually one to read angel stories but something about an alcoholic angel peaked my interest. I was a little worried that the story would take a very religious turn, it is a book about angels after all, but thankfully that didn’t happen. In fact, Lucian seems to not think very highly about the big man upstairs. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he’s been stuck watching the woman he’s grown to love try to find her own love over and over again throughout the years. He kind of feels like a tortured soul by the time we get to meet him.

I really enjoyed the beginnings of their story and was interested to see how it would all pan out. Especially when Lucian started to notice a change in himself. However, I had a hard time with the pacing. For the first quarter of the book we were following at a normal progression. However, once things kick off with the two of them, the story started to skip ahead a lot. I was always left wondering how much time actually past. Are we talking days, weeks, months? Not to mention the whiplash emotions flying around the place. One minute everyone’s fine and then the next they’re stomping around like angry dragons. This happened on more than one occasion and there wasn’t really any lead-up or explanation for it. Which, left me feeling left out and disconnected to not only the situation but the characters themselves.

While I did have problems with the pacing of the storyline and the characters reactions/emotions that fluctuated all over the place, I did like the author’s creativity to a story that’s been done a bunch of times before. I mean, we’ve all read a guardian angel story. However, I enjoyed the author’s approach to it. We not only have their love story, but we also meet other characters who have their own side things going on. We also are introduced to the fact that guardian angels use Tinder to hook up on their off-hours. Which I thought was amusing. Apparently angels are big into Tinder because they have a small window every night to hook up and the app helps them do so. Which I know what you’re thinking, they’re angels, how can they use this dating app without showing the world that their angels.  Apparently, humans can’t see their wings in their profile photo but other angels can see their wing. So, basically they know when to swipe in the “yes” direction when they spot a fellow angel. I just thought this was one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard of in an angel story.

Lucian Divine was an enjoyable quick read. I read it within a handful of hours. I think it has a lot of potential and could be really great but it definitely needs to be hashed out a bit more. There was just too many time jumps, too many random emotions, and some things weren’t really explained. However, I still enjoyed the story.

Favorite quote…

“You’re a mess. I’m trying to understand how a celestial being with magical powers, assigned to protect me, is a drunk who runs into the sides of buildings. This doesn’t bode well for my future.”

Meet the author…

Renée Carlino is a screenwriter and bestselling author of contemporary women’s novels and new adult fiction. Her books have been featured in national publications, including USA TODAY, Huffington Post, Latina magazine, and Publisher’s Weekly. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two sons, and their sweet dog June. When she’s not at the beach with her boys or working on her next project, she likes to spend her time reading, going to concerts, and eating dark chocolate.

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