Review: Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Beautiful Darkness 

Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Series: The Caster Chronicles, Book Two
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 503 pages
Release Date: October 12, 2010
Source: Mid-Columbia Libraries

Synopsis: 
  
After the whirlwind of events that took place on Lena’s Claiming night, only one thing is for sure, things will never be the same. Lena has suffered a tragic loss and blames herself. Ethan is in the dark about the true events that occurred that night and can’t figure out why Lena continues to pull away. Things only get stranger as Ethan starts having visions that Lena can’t see. When Ridley shows up with a mysterious guy, Ethan knows that something bad is going on. With Lena falling deeper and deeper into despair, he must fight to save her and break the curse that has haunted her family once and for all. But doing that is easier said than done. This journey is going to be like nothing Ethan has ever imagined and may be one he won’t come back from. Will he be able to unravel all the secrets and save Lena in time?

My Review:
 
This book was really hard for me to get into. It felt really slow after all the action that was packed into the first one. It was reminiscent of New Moon by Stephanie Meyer to me. For those of you who haven’t read the Twilight saga, in the second book Bella is pretty much depressed the whole time and the plot just drags. I mean I understand that Lena is grief stricken over her loss, but after a while, I just wanted to scream, enough is enough! The action did pick up, but not until well over halfway through the book. Once it picked up I got into it, but I was disappointed that it dragged out for so long.

Lena is completely lost to us in this book. We have no idea what is going on with her because she is so withdrawn. I missed her throughout the book, because I felt like she was never really there, even if she was. At first I understood, but then I really missed her character. I missed the intense love between her Ethan that was absent for the majority of the book.

Ethan on the other hand, grows even more in this book. He learns more about the Caster world and more about his mother. His love for Lena is unmatched. The harder she tries to push him away, the harder he tries to reach out and save her. We also feel how draining it is for him to love Lena. He is physically and emotionally exhausted throughout the book, reminding us just how mortal he really is. His courage astounds me. The situations he willingly walks into for Lena would make me go screaming and running as fast as I could. There is nothing that he won’t do for this girl. I desperately hope that they can find a way to truly be together in the end.

Overall, I was disappointed with Beautiful Darkness. I was geared for an action packed book like the first one, and was met with an almost stagnant plot line. Even once the action picked up, I didn’t feel the excitement that I did with the first one. I think that it largely had to do with the fact that Lena’s character was so empty in this book. We did get to meet some new characters that were interesting and added new twists to the story which I liked. I thought we would learn more about Sarafine, but we really didn’t which was another disappointment. I just wasn’t a huge fan. Hopefully Beautiful Chaos and Beautiful Redemption are full of riveting, exciting action and love like Beautiful Creatures was.   

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