ARC Review: Providence by Caroline Kepnes

“PROVIDENCE was nothing like I expected, in all the bad ways.”
~ Under the Covers

You know the thing about expectations? It can really crush the reading experience. I’ve enjoyed reading Caroline Kepnes in the past and when I saw she had a new book coming out, my love for YOU made me want to jump all over this with high expectations and not even read the blurb. What was I expecting? A great, riveting story. Thrilling and unputdownable. So that makes this so much harder for me because I expected to be blown away and was highly disappointed.

PROVIDENCE was nothing like I expected, in all the bad ways. The one thing about this book that stands out though, is the amazing writing. The writing is what kept me reading it until the end. Caroline Kepnes is such a talented writer that I was engrossed in reading something that I wasn’t even really enjoying. There’s something to be said about that.

The first thing you should know going into this book is that this is a paranormal thriller. I don’t do well with stories that have that thrown in like that, especially when I don’t know before hand. Should’ve read the blurb, and then should’ve skipped reading this. But here I am.

The beginning of this story was actually really good and I can honestly say the thing that also kept me reading was the fact that I genuinely felt bad for our main character Jon. His life was forever changed because of a tragic event from when he was a teenager and he never really figured out how to cope with it. The aftermath and what it did to him, what it turned him into. At the same time, I really disliked his best friend and love interest Chloe. Something about her character just rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn’t be bothered with her. Then there’s the story. Honestly that’s what felt the most underwhelming. I wanted it to be more suspenseful, more thrilling. In the end those were the very things it was missing. It was all very predictable, there was no big mystery to unravel. All the cards were laid out pretty early on and then we just went through the motions to see how things would turn up. The plot didn’t draw me in and keep me excited. And the ending was such a wishy-washy wrap up of the problems presented that it just made me angry.

I’m sad to say this was a miss for me but I am looking forward to reading what Ms. Kepnes puts out next. I’ll definitely just be more careful reading blurbs from now on.

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[about-author author=”Caroline Kepnes”]