Book Review: Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal Romance)
Date Published:  October 12, 2010 
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

The Blurb:

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 Review:

Beautiful Darkness is the second book in The Caster Chronicles by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Check out my review of book one, Beautiful Creatures! Through this book you'll meet some new characters and find out new things about some of the old characters. That part was pretty fun. I enjoyed Liv's character quite a bit. I would love for her to date Ethan instead of Lena to be quite honest. Lena was exceptionally broody through this book. I completely understand why, but it just wasn't too much fun to read. There seemed to be a lot of down time in this story, so I had a very hard time staying focused. It took me a long time to finish reading this book, and I read several others in the mean time. I really wanted to enjoy it. Especially if they keep making movies for this series. I always like to read the book before I see the movie, but they are just too darn long to not completely enjoy. The ending makes me want to know what happens next, and there were a few interesting twists thrown in. I'm not sure if it was quite enough to make me read the next book. Maybe. All in all, I guess this series is just not for me.

The Book Trailer:

About the Authors:
Kami Garcia is the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly & international bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels (Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos & Beautiful Redemption). Beautiful Creatures has been published in 48 countries and translated in 37 languages. The Beautiful Creatures movie releases in theaters on February 13, 2013 from Warner Brothers & Alcon Entertainment, directed by Academy Award nominee Richard LaGravenese, and starring: Viola Davis, Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum, Alice Englert, and Alden Ehrenrich.
Kami is also the author of Unbreakable, the first book her solo series, THE LEGION (coming Fall 2013), which is currently being developed as a major motion picture.

Kami grew up outside of Washington DC, wore lots of black, and spent hours writing poetry in spiral notebooks. As a girl with Southern roots, she has always been fascinated by the paranormal and believes in lots of things “normal” people don’t. She’s very superstitious and would never sleep in a room with the number “13″ on the door. When she is not writing, Kami can usually be found watching disaster movies, listening to Soundgarden, or drinking Diet Coke.

Kami has an MA in education, and taught in the Washington DC area until she moved to Los Angeles, where she was a teacher & Reading Specialist for 14 years. In addition to teaching, Kami was a professional artist and led fantasy book groups for children and teens. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, daughter, and their dogs Spike and Oz (named after characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

To learn more about Kami Garcia and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Margaret Stohl is the author of ICONS, the first book in the Icons Series, forthcoming from Little, Brown in Spring 2013 – as well as the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Indie-Bound and Internationally Bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels (with Kami Garcia.) Including BEAUTIFUL CREATURES (2009), BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS (2010), and BEAUTIFUL CHAOS (2011), BEAUTIFUL REDEMPTION (2012)– along with DREAM DARK, a Beautiful Creatures story available exclusively online (August, 2011) – the Beautiful Creatures Novels have been translated into 28 languages and 37 countries. The Beautiful Creatures movie based on the books comes out February 14, 2013 from Alcon and Warner Bros. It stars Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Thomas Mann and Zoey Deuthc with the Academy Award nominated writer/director Richard LaGravenese.

Beautiful Creatures was an ALA William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist in 2010, as well as a SCIBA award finalist, a NYPL Book for the Teen Age, and a YALSA Teen Top Ten Pick. Beautiful Creatures was named the #1 Teen Pick from Amazon in 2009, and the #5 Editors Pick, Overall.

A longtime veteran of the videogame industry, Margaret’s work includes – to name a few – SPIDERMAN, FANTASTIC FOUR, DUNE 2000, THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE LEGEND OF JACK SPARROW, DEFENDER, THE SOPRANOS, SLAVE ZERO, APOCALYPSE, ZORK NEMESIS, ZORK GRAND INQUISITOR, SPYCRAFT, COMMAND & CONQUER: RED ALERT RETALIATION, and COMMAND & CONQUER: TIBERIAN SUN.

After working with Activision (now Activision/Blizzard) and Westwood Studios (now EA), Margaret became a co-founder of 7 Studios with her husband, Lewis Peterson. She has previously been nominated for “Most Innovative Game Design” at the Game Developers Conference.

Margaret has participated in the Nashville Screenwriters Conference, the Tribu dei Lettori in Rome, and the BAU Institute/Otranto Residency, as well as the LA Times Festival of Books, Romantic Times, and the Texas Book Festival. She was the Director of Programming for the 2011 YA Capitol Bookfest in Charleston, SC, and a founding member of the Smart Chicks tour.

Margaret has been featured in Amherst Reads, and is a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has been a member of the WGA West and PEN West. Margaret’s original screenplays have been optioned by Clasky-Csupo and Nickelodeon Movies for feature film.

A graduate of Amherst College, where she won the Knox Prize for English Literature, Margaret earned a MA in English from Stanford University, and completed classwork for a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. Margaret was a teaching assistant in Romantic Poetry at Stanford, and in Film Studies at Yale. She attended the Creative Writing Program of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, where she was mentored by the Scottish poet George MacBeth.

Margaret loves traveling the world with her daughters, who are epee fencers, and living in Santa Monica with her husband, also a writer, and two bad beagles.

To learn more about Margaret Stohl and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Twitter.