Beautiful Darkness: Review

Review:

And the saga continues. As is typical with books in a series, I must warn you that you may not want to read this review if you want to avoid spoilers.

In this installment, Lena has to deal with the loss of someone very close to her. She’s understandably distraught and moody, and Ethan feels helpless, and almost desperate to hold on to her. When her “dark” cousin, Ridley, comes back into the picture, Lena becomes even more distant, and Ethan more desperate. To further complicate matters, there’s a mysterious new Caster boy who has entered the picture, and Ethan can’t help but feel a little threatened. Enter Liv, an intern training with Marian. Her appearance causes Ethan to wonder if maybe he would be better off with a mortal since, supposedly, he and Lena can never be together. She also adds a little jealousy to Lena’s side of the story.

When some very strange things begin to happen in Gatlin, Ethan is sure that Lena has fallen under Ridley and John Been’s evil influence, and when they disappear, Ethan, Liv and Link go to the underground Caster tunnels to track them down with the help of Lucille, Ethan’s aunt’s cat. What they find is even more danger, and if Ethan doesn’t get to Lena in time, he could lose her forever.

I have to admit, while I liked this book, I didn’t LOVE it. There were parts of it that I really liked, but a lot of it seemed to really drag for me. I tore through the first one back in September, and had to force myself to not read too far ahead since we were reading it for a read-along (and I had a ton of other books to get through). With this one, I was okay leaving it alone for a few days.

What really bothered me about it was that it seemed unnecessarily long. I felt that the time Ethan and company spent trying to track down Lena, Ridley and John could have been condensed greatly. It seemed like every time I picked up the book they were still walking around searching for clues. I also didn’t get why Liv and John were added to the mix. By the end of the book, a new thread popped up that showed me John will be a bigger part of future installments, but the addition of Liv seemed pointless, and quite honestly, she annoyed me.

Now to the good. The story, when things were happening, was very engaging. I love the world the authors have built, and the characters are great. I was especially glad that we got to see a lot more of Ridley and Link (I almost like them more than Lena and Ethan), and I can’t wait to see what is in store for them. There were also quite a few other twists that took me by surprise, and a few others that were expected, yet still executed well. All in all I did like the book, I just wish it hadn’t dragged on for so long in spots. Still, it’s a good read and a nice addition to the series.