Review | Predestined

Predestined by Abbi Glines
Review by Dana
March 2012
213 pages
Amazon + Good Reads

"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."

-Good Reads

Predestined is the sequel to a book I loved Existence which is by Abbi Glines. Predestined was actually 50 or so pages longer that Existence so there was more story in this one. In Predestined, Dank is definitely humanized as a character. Mainly because there are scenes that follow him exclusively.

After that crazy cliff hanger in Existence I wasn't sure what was going to happen with Leif. He becomes this "villain" but in my head I couldn't make him into the bad guy. I just felt bad for him and his up bringing. Predestined veers off into this different direction than Existence. In which this story deals a lot with voodoo. I haven't read any books that deal with voodoo. It was a strange new genre for me that I really wasn't a fan of. The plot for this book was okay. It had the potential to be better but it was weird. Pagan was going to die as a baby and her mother took her to a voodoo practitioner and her soul was sold to the voodoo king. Leif his son would have Pagan as his wife and had been with her for most of his life but made her forget that. 

The story could have been great but the actual voodoo realm itself was disturbingly odd. This is where most of my pity for Leif came. I can't describe it but if it wasn't for having already developed a bond to these characters I would have not finished this book. That being said I loved seeing more of Dank and Pagan actually together. Their relationship is really sweet. 

Predestined was much darker than Existence and very different from that story line.  I read these two books very fast and enjoyed them when I read them. They have that addictive quality that most of Abbi's books have. You may not enjoy every aspect of them but something makes you want to devour the book anyway. I am excited to read the next and last book is this trilogy.

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