“Providence” by Caroline Kepnes
Published: June 19, 2018 by Lenny Books, an imprint of Random House, directed by Lena Dunham & Jenni Konner
Genres: Romance novel, Mystery, Suspense, Coming-of-age story, Paranormal romance, Paranormal fiction
You cannot go into the book “Providence” expecting it to be like Caroline Kepnes’ first book “You”. Kepnes has a way with story telling, but in this book it’s not nearly as compelling as “You”.
The story is about a 13 year old boy named John, who is the target of bullies and when he goes missing the only people who seem to care are his parents and his best friend, Chloe. Chloe being a popular pretty girl is already a little stretch of the imagination, but hey we’ll let that slide. She is obsessed enough with his disappearance to draw pictures of him and do interviews about him, but not enough to continue to look for him for the 4 years he’s gone, but enough to decide that she’s in love with him.
When he returns he discovers that the person who kidnapped him did something to him to make him poisonous to other living things he runs away again after only having seen Chloe once and having only connected with her over the phone and the computer. This time he cuts all ties with her.
Somehow after all the years apart and not having truly seen each other since they were 13 years old, these two remain madly in love with each other, never having dated, well into their twenties. This I find seriously unbelievable. The rest of the story was good, but I was so hung up on this that it brought the book from 4 stars to 2 stars out of 5 for me.
The story line including the detective, Egg, and his wife Low, was okay. I think you’re supposed to see Egg as a broken human right from the beginning. He is obsessive and difficult to like. He loves his wife, but I can’t figure out why she’s with him.
The supernatural part of the story was the most interesting part and it was so underdeveloped. The writing was good, but had the story been about the supernatural with the love story taking a backseat the book could’ve been so much better. I just feel like this was two books mashed into one and neither one got to be what it should’ve been.
I’ve read some other reviews of this book and many people liked it, but a lot of people didn’t. I was surprised though that the ones that didn’t like it didn’t mention anything about the awkward love story. Most of the negative reviews were people comparing this book to “You”.
Sorry, but as much as I have liked Caroline Kepnes’ other work I cannot recommend you spend time on this one.
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