vendredi 13 mars 2015

Book Review: Beautiful Darkness (The Caster Chronicles, Book #2)

"In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light."

Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.
Release Date: October 12th, 2010.
Description: 528 pages, Paperback.
Availability: Amazon, $9, 89.
Genre: YA, Romance, Fantasy.
Rating: 2.5 Stars.

Resume: Ethan Wates is living in a different Gatlin. A Gatlin where mortals and casters must co-exist, but can't fall in love with each other. After the events of Beautiful Creatures, Lena Duchannes is left broken and confused. As much as Ethan tries to comfort her, Lena keeps pulling away from him. With Ridley's return and the arrival of a new, dangerous and handsome young man in town, Lena and Ethan's relationship will be put to the test like never before.

Review: I really wanted to enjoy Beautiful Darkness, but I couldn't. Unfortunately, the story is dragged over five hundred pages of predictability and redundancy. As the title of this second installment of the series announces it, Beautiful Darkness is dark. The whole tone of the book is set on the desperation of Ethan because he can't connect (physically and emotionally) to his girlfriend, Lena. 

If I praised the characters in the first book, Beautiful Creatures, it all went downhill with Beautiful Darkness. If Ethan is very much present, we only get some glimpses of Lena. The writers make it hard for the readers to connect and to care about Lena's journey. The character grew to be very annoying to me. The authors failed to make me feel empathy for a girl who just suffered a lost which is pretty terrible when a character's storyline revolve around losing a loved one. 

Ethan is dragging his feet throughout the story of Beautiful Darkness. There isn't much of a storyline there. At the beginning of the book, he is working at the library with Marian. His dad is briefly mentioned at the beginning and is completely forgotten about for the rest of the novel, which I thought was a shame. It could have been a interesting to have Ethan and his father trying to repair their relationship beyond the few awkward scenes we got from Garcia and Stohl. For the remaining of the novel, Ethan is desperately seeking Lena. He shows very little empathy towards to lives he might sacrifices to do so.

Liv and John are new characters introduce in this installment. The Liv character works really well and is quite likable. She is a charming girl from England. She is also bright and witty. She is a real breath of fresh air in Gatlin. As for John, the brooding hybrid coming to Gatlin for unknown purposes, he falls flat at being interesting or intriguing. I, personally, couldn't care less about him. The authors tried to form two love triangle; Liv, Ethan and Lena, and, John, Lena and Ethan. They failed with both as they were not credible at all. Link, which is a character that was quite fun in the first book, is just a equally funny in the second. Although, I didn't like how Garcia and Stohl ended his story. I also liked that Hunting and his Incubus pals were more present in that book and that we got to see more of their world.

Overall, there is no real twists that you can't predict twenty pages ahead in this book. By the time Ethan gets to Lena, you don't really care if he finds her or not. The ending doesn't make much sense and Liv was pushed out of the way after she served her purpose in a hurry. The wrapped up of her story was rushed and left me unsatisfied. I thought Beautiful Darkness was a huge step down from Beautiful Creatures.

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