Review: Destiny Gift by Juliana Haygert

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 (click the cover image above to add the book to your to be read pile)

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Format: eBook

Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Synopsis: 

Thirty years in the future, a sinister New York City exists in permanent darkness.

A student at the secured NYU, nineteen-year-old Nadine has visions of Victor Gianni, an imaginary guy she has real feelings for. Afraid of being truly insane, she explains the visions away as simple daydreams, but she can no longer deny them when she bumps into Victor in real life. But this Victor doesn’t know her, and turns her away. After the encounter, Nadine’s visions change to those of eerie fates, gods she’s never heard of, demons with sharp claws they are not too timid to use … and instructions.

To discover if she’s losing her mind, Nadine follows the vague directions—with the real, rude and reluctant Victor—leading to a man who knows it all: Nadine can restore an ancient creed by unveiling the clues on her visions, and bring sunlight and peace to the world again. But that’s only if the demons and the other evil forces behind the darkness don’t stop her first.

Review:

Destiny Gift takes place in a world where God has forsaken the world and left humanity with a whirlwind of natural disasters, corruption, demons, and none-stop crime. In this world, stores like bookshops, clothes shops, etc are locked up and you need to ring a bell to get in to purchase something.  Every house and building has a security system. Every newspaper and news channel is filled with terrible things happening every single day. I’m talking about Tornadoes; whole cities being blown up on one go by an unnatural fireball that appeared out of nowhere. This alternative universe is scary.

I took notes all throughout reading the book and in all of them, I'm always remarking on how smart Nadine (the heroine) is (Sarcasm). There are many occasions that seriously made me doubt Nadine's common sense. There are these big bat-like beasts roaming the planet and drunk idiots trying to rape girls and Nadine seems to have no regard for her safety and just chooses to "hang out" with them.

For example, Nadine is about to go out with her friends to a Club and when they're about to leave, the phone rings and Nadine picks up. She has to take the call and asks the girls to go ahead without her and that she'll meet them there. Yeah right! She goes off on her own and on foot too! Talk about a meat beacon for the demons.

As I continue to read, I hope wholeheartedly that she gets better along the way. But no... Nadine just continues to frustrate me! I don't know if she was written to be so irritating by the author or not.

Anyways, the storyline is actually good. It consisted of the books own versions of the Roman and Greek Gods. It even had the Fates. Throughout the book, I did manage to predict some events but most of the time the plot is unpredictable and does wow you here and there. Aside from that, the romance was just too transparent and angsty. I couldn't even connect with the characters at all and that is one thing I really hated.

On the plus side, the book was very entertaining and actually got really good once you ignore Nadine. Even the ending was such a cliffhanger that I literally yelled "What?! That's it?" when I finished it. So, I give the book a big O. K. and 3.5 stars out of 5.

3.5/5 stars