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Monday, May 16, 2011

"Beautiful Darkness" (Caster Chronicles, #2) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

"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."-goodreads
Remember that time I wrote a review in which I was totally crazy about a Paranormal/Contemporary/Historical book called Beautiful Creatures? This is the sequel to that book and I loved it just as much!

The Paranormal/Historical/Contemporary elements are back and all there. The book is still written in a way that captivates you and makes you really see what is going on, at times rather poetic. The story is still fascinating. It continues to surprise with twists that you can't forsee no matter how hard you try. It's still a rather gothic novel. It was great!

There's always those times where I'm disappointed with the sequel as compared to the first book, but this wasn't a let down. Beautiful Creatures and Beautiful Darkness both start out rather slow-- even though it's good, it's slow-- but it's good that way. It doesn't take away for me. It just builds on and prepares you for the very complicated but very good things to come. It's a long book just like the first at about 500 pages, however, it's 500 pages of greatness. The way the world of Casters and the mortal world in Gaitlin combine in these books is seamless. The book was more emotional than the last, because of some very traumatic experiences going on and the ones that went on in Beautiful Creatures (which I can't talk about without ruining the whole thing).

I can't wait for the third in the series of the Caster Chronicles to come out, Beautiful Chaos in (fittingly) October! I'm sure there are more great things to coming yet in this series.

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