Review: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness by K. Garcia and M. Stohl

Published by Little Brown Books

Genre: Paranormal YA

$17.99 (US hardback)

503 pages

What it's about:

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

My thoughts:
This book reminded me of New Moon so much it wasn't even funny. Then add in a little Deathly Hallows, and Battle of the Labyrinth and you have the plot of Beautiful Darkness.

The main reason this book reminded me of new moon is...
1) You have a relationship between a mortal and a paranormal person
2) Something happened to the mortal in the first book, and now the Paranormal is freaking out and blaming themselves for it.
3) The Paranormal leaves and this leaves the mortal depressed and not willing to move on
4) Mortal finds  a new mortal friend and they think about a relationship with them
5) paranormal gets in a life or death situation and mortal has to save them.

Doesn't that sound so familiar? Same outline, different plot. The one thing different about Beautiful Darkness is while Ethan does mope around for a while, he actually doesn't take no for an answer and tries to save Lena throughout the book.

While I loved Ethan and Lena's relationship in the first book, this one sort of ruined Lena for me. I thought that she was being ridiculous. She was acting like such an idiot and I had a hard time liking her after this book. Let's hope the next one makes her look really good.

 There are a few things that have me a little confused, like how did Ethan not recognize his mother, or how does Ethan wake up all wet or dirty from his dreams. Those are some things that I don't really understand.

Overall, I liked this book. I didn't like it as much as the first one, but it was still good. I'm excited to see how a few things are going to play out in the next book.

My rating: 9/10