Buck was on a personal quest now, looking to satisfy deep needs. For so many years he had rejected the idea of a personal God or that he had need of God—if there was one. The idea would take some getting used to.
So Buck's conversion comes kind of out of nowhere, and it's not because it's an unbelievable twist. At the start, Buck has a confrontation with the supernatural, and now he's faced with a choice. Setup and payoff is there, but the problem is that this wasn't Buck's arc. His non-commital to religion was never a driving conflict for Buck. He's spent the whole book tracking leads, dodging explosions, and shmoozing with the Antichrist. At no point would his actions our thier outcomes be changed by him being a Christian. But now he gets the climactic conversion scenes. It feels off, unmotivated. However, the character who *has* earned this scene is Chloe. She's spent the whole book trying to decide what she believes in a dramatically changed world. And her relationship with Rayford, the main protagonist, completely revolves around her conversion. It is the closest thing this book has to a main conflict.
I spend a lot of time making fun of the writing and dialogue and crazy theology, but what I want to point out is the core reason this book doesn't work: it fails to deliver a satisfying story. At a structural level, the author does not provide a clear, motivated arc for the audience to grasp onto.
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