Review: Predestined, by Abbi Glines

Author: Abbi Glines

Title:  Predestined

Series: Existence (#2)

ASIN: B007Q3O7C6

Publisher: (March 29^th 2012)

Buy your copy: Kindle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“You would think after helping save her boyfriend from an eternity in Hell that things would go back to normal. Well, as normal as life can be when you can see souls and your boyfriend is Death. But for Pagan Moore, things are just getting weirder.

The high school quarterback and reigning heartthrob, Leif Montgomery, is missing. While the town is in a frenzy of worry, Pagan is a nervous wreck for other reasons. Apparently good ‘ol Leif isn’t your average teenage boy. He isn’t even human. According to Death, Leif doesn’t have a soul. The quarterback may have skipped town but he’s still showing up in Pagan’s dreams... uninvited.

Dank has known from the beginning Leif wasn’t human. But he hadn’t worried about a simple soulless creature. Now, he realizes he made a grave mistake. Pagan’s soul has been marked since birth as a restitution, to a spirit so dark not even Death walks near it. Dank knows saving Pagan’s soul won’t be easy but Pagan is his. And he’s already proven he’ll defy Heaven to keep her. If Hell wants a piece of him too, then bring it on.” GoodReads’ blurb

I read Existence. I liked it, I could see how it’d appeal to a lot of paranormal readers, but there were a couple of things that didn’t quite click with me.  Back then, I wanted to read Predestined, but I could wait.

Now, I’m officially counting the days for Existence #3 release date.

I’m not going to lie. I still have an issue with Dank(an issue other than his name, I mean) and that’s his possessiveness and jealousy. It’s not something I deal with well, so they’re not endearing traits in a book boyfriend. That said, though... Ms. Glines did a wonderful job writing him as a believable Death. In the end, I even excused his faults because he was learning, and because the tagline for book 3 announces that... Well. Go and read the tagline. Not spoiling it (what? I hadn’t seen if before I reached the end of book 2 and it made me go all ‘ohmygosh’).

The thing is, in Existence I rooted for Leif. He had been there, he had had a relationship; Dank was just passing through! In Predestined, we see that the relationship is even deeper than I’d thought... and not half as healthy. I don’t know if Leif was ever genuine, if what he did could be understood or excused. The fact remains that he’s officially made me team Dank.

Being more time inside his head also helped. The intensity of his feelings, his lack of experience in that department, they way it’s changed him... everything endeared him to me.

The rest of the cast was just as good as it was back in Existence: relatable, nice, consistent. People I’d like to hang around with. People whose own grief I could (and did) share.

I think you should check this title out. The books are easy to read, fast paced, with a comfortable prose: it’s a perfect read for the upcoming lazy days. Come on, you know you want to check out a paranormal where you don’t have vampires, angels or demons. Where you have... Death.