Review: Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I read this book as part of a book club; otherwise I might not have been driven to finish this book in a timely manner. I’m a little conflicted in my review and feelings about the series in general. The first part of the book was pretty slow going, but at 64%, the story really picks up and becomes the book I was hoping it would be. It became an action packed romantic mystery that gave us answers and awesome plot twists.

As I said, the first part of the book was pretty slow. There was a lot of misunderstanding, teenage angst, jealousy, and general drama. We also got schooled in a whole bunch of caster and town history. This really did not lend itself to my usual style of plowing through a book in 1 or 2 days. After all of the imagined love triangle (or rectangle?) drama and associated issues, the book finally begins to hit its stride. We get plot twists and the Lena/Ethan romance that book 1 made me believe was possible. I’m a sucker for a good YA romance and Lena and Ethan really have me rooting for them (at the end). I’m hoping this was the only obligatory love triangle book in the series and we can actually focus on the larger issues at hand, like changes in the stars, light/dark caster order, etc.

It really says something that Lucille and Link were my favorite characters in this installment. Overall, this author has a way of tricking me into reading the next one by making the last half of each book really great. I want to know what happens next for the characters that turned things around at the end. I want more town and caster history, but interspersed with the action and romance that is usually reserved for the last half. I can only hope that as the series moves along it gets more and more balanced.




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