Review: The Destiny of Violet and Luke by Jessica Sorensen

Title: The Destiny of Violet and Luke (The Coincidence #3)
Author: Jessica Sorensen
Published: January 7th 2014
Add It: Goodreads
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository
*An ARC was provided in exchange for an honest review*

Luke Price's life has always been about order, control, and acting tough on the outside. For Luke, meaningless relationships are a distraction-a way to tune out the twisted memories of his childhood. He desperately wishes he could forget his past, but it haunts him no matter what he does.
Violet Hayes has had a rough life. When she was young, she was left with no family and the memory of her parents' unsolved murders. She grew up in foster homes, living with irresponsible parents, drugs, and neglect, and trying to fight the painful memories of the night her parents were taken from her. But it's hard to forget when she never got closure-and she can't stop dreaming about what happened that tragic night. To make it through life, she keeps her distance from everyone and never allows herself to feel anything.
Then Violet meets Luke. The two clash instantly, yet they can't seem to stay away from each other. Although they fight it, they both start to open up and feel things they've never felt before. They discover just how similar they are. But they also discover something else: The past always catches up with you...

Jessica Sorensen is an author plenty of people talked about last year. She has tousands upon thousands of ratings and reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and she is one of the leading ladies of New Adult fiction. Since I truly enjoyed reading about Lila and Ethan (my review can be found here; I wanted to link it to prove that I did, in fact, enjoy it thoroughly), I decided to give Violet and Luke a try as well.

“It's all about her. Every movement, every breath, the way my heart beats firecely inside my chest, is all because of her. Violet owns me.”

Me and this book did not start our journey on the right foot, I’ll be honest with you. I was really frustrated because in Ethan and Lila’s story, we get those flashback scenes to their younger years to see what all went wrong in their youth and whatnot. We don’t get the full picture, of course, but it (usually) doesn’t make me all that excited when I read a book with a structure similar to a book I have already read by the same author. Plus, all these kids who cry for their mommies and daddies and see murders, house fires and such just make me want to vomit. I have a soft spot for kids, what can I say, but at the same time can we not?

In addition to that, the first 40% of the book read like every other NA book out there. I was ready to put this baby to bed and DNF it, but for some reason I decided to read for another 15 minutes and what do you say?! Soon I found myself giggling and smiling and swooning and everything. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? *shakes head* I’m as clueless as you guys. While I didn’t appreciate the dark pasts, unhealed wounds, constant trips down the memory line and messing one’s future up as they walk their way to the future, the sweeter scenes, the bantering and the chemistry really got to me—no point in denying that. Too bad it lasted for only a few chapters and that wasn't enough to redeem the rest of the book.

While the middle part really started to pick my interest, the ending lost it completely. Why? Because after having read 20% of the book, I already knew where the story would go, how it would end in a cliff hanger, because, apparently, that’s what Ms. Sorensen is good at—cliff hangers. While I don’t mind a good cliff hanger (Everbound by Brodi Ashton, The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin forgodssake—still not over that ending), I do mind when it’s obvious that the story will end there and, honestly, it loses its shock value big time. 

[It's like reading an Abbi Glines book where you know they'll break up at the end of the book, because the relationship is over thanks to some "dramatic" plot twist *eyeroll* and then you have to buy the next book for an enormous amount of money to get a happy ending you were so eagerly anticipating for. Yeah, I'm not down with that. When I requested this book I had the idea that Violet and Luke would be a standalone, but later when I checked on Goodreads it turned out that it's a three book series. Ehhhh.. Not that excited.]

I do feel like the characters were very stereotypical and didn’t differ a lot from other NA characters. I especially disliked Seth who was quick to judge and basically bullied Violet. However, his boyfriend Grayson was a great character and I appreciated a gay couple being written in the story. Also, I did appreciate that Luke an Violet weren’t in a relationship or anything casual either until the final third of the book. It was a slow-burn with insta-attraction more than anything else.

All in all, it isn’t the most horrible piece of work I have read, but I enjoyed Lila and Ethan way more and  the plot was just so darn predictable that it sucked the joy out of reading, though the middle part more than made up for it, especially the card playing scene. Overall I want to say that I enjoyed it, but other than a few parts here and there, this book did nothing for me. My opinion doesn't matter the least though, because this book and author have tons of fans and the average rating on Goodreads (4.17) shows how much people adore Violet and Luke's story. Unfortunately, this wasn't for me.

Overall rating: 1.8 out of 5.0
Stars: ★★

Thank you to Netgalley and Forever for a review copy.

Meet the author

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads