Beautiful Darkness
by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Book Synopsis (from Goodreads)
There were no surprises in Gatlin County. At least, that’s what I thought. Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin as a place where nothing ever changed. Then mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes revealed a secret world of curses and Supernaturals with terrifying abilities. Lena showed him a Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen. Sometimes life-ending.
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.
Review
I was able to get an ARC of this at the Little Brown Booth at BEA! Read it on the way back home.
Spoiler Alert!
Having loved reading from Ethan’s perspective in Beautiful Creatures, I was excited to be able to dive back into his head with Beautiful Darkness.
Honestly, I had no idea what to expect from this well-anticipated sequel. BC was such a hit, though, so I knew it would be good!
I read it on the way home from New York, and I was captivated from the moment I opened the page.
Kami and Margaret created layer after layer of their magical world of Casters. In Beautiful Darkness, we learn more about how things work, the technical information.
And while learning all these things, you will be sitting there, pulling your hair out, and screaming at Lena. The girl has gone…dark. I won’t say anything else on that topic, but I will defend her in saying that she’s suffering so much. She’s holding this whole world of grief and guilt on her shoulders, and Kami and Margaret really portray that well.
I enjoyed Link a lot more in this book. Many times I was laughing out loud at his funny sayings and the way he looks at things.
I also was able to tolerate Riley in this book. Yes, she’s back.
And as I mentioned before, I loved reading Ethan’s point of view throughout the whole book. I actually tend to enjoy reading more from boy POVs than girls, so it was a refreshing read. But I also was yearning to see what was going on in Lena’s head, too.
I would do a lot to have something from her perspective, to see the world through her eyes.
I did enjoy Beautiful Darkness even more than Beautiful Creatures; I see this becoming another well-known and admired book.
