Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Release Date: October 12, 2010
Publisher: Little Brown
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 512
Source: BEA
Interest: Series
Challenge: None
Buy the Book: Amazon
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.
Oh, how I've missed you Gatlin. The one thing that really stands out to me about this series... isn't the incredible cast of characters or the engrossing story... it's the setting. I LOVE GATLIN. I want to live there... eat Amma's pies, ride in Link's Beater to the Dar-ee Keen, waft in the scent of lemon trees at Ravenwood. There is something truly addicting about Gatlin... and I often find it hard to withdrawal from the world within the pages.
Beautiful Darkness is one word is intense. So much more happens to our beloved, Ethan and Lena. Beautiful Creatures was just the tip of the iceberg... All that Caster information is well below the surface and I have a suspicion that Beautiful Darkness didn't even reveal it all.
The plot was a little slow at times for me... I knew we were getting to something huge, but it just felt like it took forever to get there! Although, it was totally worth all the suspense that had built up in those five hundred some pages. Loved the new characters in this novel! Liv and John... and I loved how Link and Ridley took some of the focus too! I am very interested to see what these new characters have in store for us in the next two books!
These are beautifully written novels and I truly admire Kami and Margie's talent! You ladies rock my world. This novel was great on its own... but I think it sets up something epic for book three.