End of May Book Reviews-Existence, Predestined and Providence

Busy week! Besides the launch of my blog tour with accompanying contest (get details here) I also had my first Kindle Nation Daily sponsorship today. An excerpt of First Visions was mailed to opted in subscribers. Once the promotions are all said and done, I'll post my thoughts on the pros and cons of each. Here are the books I read this past week and my thoughts on each.

Providence by Jamie McGuire-Although I consider myself a new adult author, something McGuire is also known for being, I couldn’t get into her popular Beautiful Disaster novel. I found Travis way too unlikable and couldn’t get past his extreme assholeness. This made me a little skeptical over whether I’d enjoy Providence. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I get the readers who make the Twilight comparisons, but I think there was much more suspense in this book. The college-age characters were realistically drawn and McGuire didn’t get logged down in complicated mythology about the angels and demons. Jared was a little too tortured for my taste, but I think that’s because I always prefer the underdog love interest who doesn’t have a chance in hell of getting the girl (poor Ryan). I give the book four out of five stars.

Existence by Abbi Glines-This book equally had me on the edge of my seat and infuriated me. I must have really gotten into it though because I stayed up late to finish reading it and started the sequel right away. To start, my major dislikes were the NAMES and the lack of character development. Dank and Pagan? Really? Also, I was surprised over how quickly Dank fell in love with her and risked his existence when they seemed to have very few meaningful interactions at the start of the book. Plus, Pagan’s treatment of Leif seemed kind of crappy until the surprised ending kind of made it tolerable. Despite these couple of things, Dank and Pagan were definitely intriguing characters and there were a lot of twists and turns that made it a real page-turner. Four out of five stars.

Predestined by Abbi Glines-This is one of the rare incidences where I actually like the sequel better than the first book. I really enjoyed the alternating point of views and it was captivating to get inside Dank’s head. I think it made him more likable, especially since at times he comes off as a jealous jerk. The love scenes were great and it was another suspenseful novel. I would give it four and a half stars out of five. The only reason I’m taking away 1/2 a star is because the ending was kind of ho-hum. The conflict was resolved very quickly and the twist at the end was sort of predictable.