Review: Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Sorry for the late review, I somehow managed to get my days confused. As a result of this late review, I will be posting my next review on Friday instead of Thursday.

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.

Beautiful Darkness is the follow up to Beautiful Creatures, which I reviewed a little while ago. I didn’t necessarily enjoy this story. I did get caught up in it and I wanted to know what happened, but the majority of the book I was just feeling sorry for most of the characters. Also for the majority of the book I was in agony due to the feelings created by where Ethan and Lena’s relationship stood.

I particularly felt sorry for Lena. I don’t want to give too much away but after the ending of Beautiful Creatures, Lena is lost and she only really went downhill from there.  It was hard to witness Lena’s downward spiral, especially as we were seeing it through Ethan’s eyes. I also felt sorry for Ethan because every time you thought that things couldn’t get worse for him, it did.

I really enjoyed getting to know the characters a little better, particularly Macon and Lila. I enjoyed learning about the history of both of them. I also liked getting to know Marian a little more, but there wasn’t enough of her in the book as I would like. It was great to see the characters develop particularly in their responses to certain events. I also liked the addition of new characters. I loved Liv, with her stubbornness, persistence and bravery. I loved Twyla and Arelia, with their sassiness and power. I didn’t know what to make of John Breed but I loved the idea of Abraham, even if I didn’t like him one bit.

The plot was great. I spent half the time confused at what was going on, but it was a good confused. I was confused because, like Ethan, I didn’t have all the information, so each time some other fact popped up I was able to make a theory and get a bit better idea of what was happening. There was only one plot line that I was able to guess and that was because the Beautiful Creatures movie gave away some of the story for me. I didn’t see the ending coming, but I was really happy with part of it and rather sad about another part.

I did get a bit annoyed at the length of some of the descriptions. There were parts in the book where I didn’t want to know what the shore looked like, I wanted know how everything was going to be solved. I just felt that some of the descriptions messed up the flow of the story and slowed it down.

I did like the book, it was an addictive read which I didn’t want to put down because I wanted to know the answers. I give it 3.5-4/5 stars because I didn’t exactly enjoy it and I felt that some of the descriptions were not necessary.

I read this book for the 2013 Witches and Witchcraft reading challenge hosted by Melissa's Eclectic Bookshelf.

Mel.

Up next: Review - Frost Bite by Richelle Mead