Review: Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margeret Stohl

Summary: 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. (from goodreads.com)

Review: I enjoyed this book alot. I will admit that I was not the biggest Beautiful Cretures fan. I struggled to get through it, to connect to the charecters and to get invested in the story. Still, there was enough there that I wanted to see what would happen next. I'm so glad I didn't write this series off, because in my opinion, Beautiful Darkness was a great book.

This book picks up pretty much where Beautiful Creatures leaves off. Lena has survived turning 16, but now a new countdown has begun, and it is pulling her from Ethan, and into a much darker Caster world.

Part of what I missed in BC was a connection to the charecters- but in Beautiful Darkness I felt it immediately. I hurt for Ethan as he saw his world come apart at the seams. It's not often in YA that we have a male main charecter, it's more frequently a girl dealing with her supernatural counterpart, but here we see mortal Ethan dealing with Casters and Keepers and all manner of supes in between. I love that he doesn't really ever give up on Lena, even when she gives up on herself. I also loved that, with the introduction of Liv, that we see Ethan conflicted. It would be too easy (and rather unbelievable) if Ethan didn't at least have second thoughts about his place in the grander scheme of things, if he's really meant to follow Lena into the dark. As a reader we know he will find his way there eventually, but a teenage boy would not be without doubts. I also really liked that Riley was a bigger part of this book, her relationship with Link is humourous, but not a distraction.

I also thought this book, beacuse all the groundwork was laid in BC, was able to jump right into the action. The adventures of Ethan, Link and Liv (and eventually Riley) was far more interesting to me then the emerging relationships we saw in BC. Seeing what Seraphine was really after was also fun- I felt the danger much more in this book and consequently became far more invested in the entire book.

I will admit that I was a bit dissapointed in the ending. Without giving too much away, I will just say that I wanted a concrete ending, a conclusion of some sort, and then be left to ponder what the fallout would be until the third book arrives. I felt the ending was a slight let down, leaving us pretty much where we began. It will be interesting to see where the book goes next, and I hope it doens't just become a rehashing of the same basic story over and over again. That being said- this was still a really entertaining book and totally worth the read!

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