Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown

September 2011

ISBN: 978-0-316-07704-0

Pages: 503

Contemporary, Gatlin, South Carolina & Savannah, Georgia

Ethan Wate has always seen his small town as a place where everything is the same and nothing changes.  Then Ethan meets newcomer Lena Duchannes and everything in his life and town changes.  Lena has shown Ethan a secret world that has always been in his town but he never knew about until Lena came along. 

Then Lena Duchannes starts pulling away from Ethan and everything in her life after a tragic loss. 

Now Ethan is being haunted by dreams and visions and he has to make sense of them if he wants to help Lena.  Ethan is now caught in the dangerous network of underground passages that cross endlessly in the South.  It is also the place where nothing is as it seems.

Since Ethan has seen the darker side of his town of Gatlin nothing will ever be the same again.

This is the next installment of the series, Beautiful Creatures and it picks up where the first book left off.  It also continues a wonderfully told story that is sure to please all readers.  The mix of magic and non-magic worlds and how they affect each other is balanced perfectly.  This story is a wonderful mix of adventure and romance that will make it very hard to put down.  The way the characters have grown even in the short time between the first book and this one keeps the reader from ever wanting to leave this world. There is just enough humor to keep the story from getting bogged down in the darkness of loss and tragedy.  It will also have the reader eagerly reaching for the next book in the series just to see what Ethan and Lena will have to deal with next.  This is one series that shouldn’t be missed.

I give this one 4-1/2 red roses