I was excited to pick this up since I enjoyed the last, sadly I got bored halfway through so put it on hold for a while and that doesn't happen very often for me. As with all reviews of sequels this review may contain spoilers.
Beautiful Darkness carried on from where Beautiful Creatures left off. Everyone tries to go back to having a normal life but that never happens. Lena is distraught over a death she thinks she caused and she pulls back from Ethan, keeping secrets that could destroy their relationship. Lena has built up a wall and Ethan just can't break it down this time. He realizes he's on his own to face the visions that only he can see when before they both could. Even with Lena trying to get further away from him Ethan is always trying to save her but what if she doesn't need saving? What if the choices he thinks she's being forced to make are actually her own. Lena and Ethan grow further apart but can either of them actually survive without the other?
"Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.Sometimes life-ending. Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems."
I thought Beautiful Darkness was an okay book but it was very slow in the middle. Although I liked Lena before there was a huge change in her personality in this book which at first I put down to grief but she seemed to broken and it was a little annoying. She was the kind of character that you wanted to scream at to get a grip. Ethan was alright in this book as he was in the first but I still prefer his best friend Link. He's just very funny. There was one new character, Olivia, who I really liked but - get ready for a rant - she was supposed to be British. That's fine when authors like Cassandra Clare do it because they do it really well but I was really considering writing these authors a letter. This is how it would have gone:
Dear Ms Garcia and Ms Stohl,
Contrary to your beliefs ALL British know what Cotton Candy is, we may call it Candyfloss but we still know what it is. We have heard of the brand Nesquik whereas I've never heard of Ovaltine which your character kept going on about. Yes we call 'fries' chips but we do know what fries are. Finally why is Mary Poppins really the only British person she's compared to? There are so many others.
Yours,
A British Blogger.
Okay rant over, I actually really liked Olivia because she was really smart and personally I don't see why Ethan doesn't drop Lena to be with Olivia but we all know this never happens. One relationship I do like is Link and Ridley's, yes I realize Ridley was an evil siren but I still quite liked her. I would recommend this book to people who love magic and witchy things. I would give this book 3/5 stars because I did like it but it was too slow.
My favorite quote:
“My life had taken a stranger turn than I could've ever imagined. What was I doing on this path? Where was I headed really? Who was I to take on a battle between powers I didn't understand— armed with a runaway cat, a uniquely bad drummer, a pair of garden shears, and an Ovaltine-drinking teen Galileo?
To save a girl who didn't want to be saved?”
Email me at: confessionsofabookaholic@LIVE.CO.UK
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