Book #6: Beautiful Darkness

Title: Beautiful Darkness (Book #2 in the Beautiful Creatures series)

Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Date started reading: Jan. 21, 2013
Date finished reading:  Jan. 24, 2013

Publish date: October 2010
ISBN: 978-0316077057
Number of pages: 512

Official summary: "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." (http://www.kamigarcia.com)

Official book trailers:

How I obtained the book: Got as a Christmas present

My spoiler-filled commentary:

•  I don't understand supernatural-themed books sometimes. It's like the authors are determined to make every human into something supernatural. Ethan was merely human, but then it turns out he is a "wayward." Link was a human, then gets bitten by an incubus and turns into an incubus himself. Marian, Liv, and Link's mom all turn out to be Keepers. Aunt Prue turns out to know all sorts of things about the Caster world and has mapped out the Caster tunnels. And so on... No one can ever be truly human, or stay human if they start out that way.
• When I got to the chapter titled "Wayward Soul," I had this moment that my mind suddenly flashed to the show "Supernatural" because its theme song is "Carry on my Wayward Son." It took me a while to recover from my "Supernatural" feelings and be able to get back into this book. Stupid fandoms crossing over into each other...
• I was happy that the series introduced Liv as a secondary love interest for Ethan. Frankly, throughout the book, I actually thought she was better for Ethan than Lena, and not just because Liv is a human Keeper. Liv and Ethan just fit together better. Also, incubus John comes into the picture as a love interest for Lena, and once again I felt that was a better match. But in the end, Ethan and Lena had to go back to each other... of course.
• In the first book, Lena somehow was able to block out her 16th moon and delay her claiming. In this book, she claims herself as neither light nor dark. That was such a cop-out for the authors in my opinion. I know it sets things up for the rest of the series, but it would've been better to have her either go light or dark and see what happened from there.

Memorable quotes:

• "Around here, our traditions were so traditional it was hard to put a finger on them. They were woven into everything we did or, more often, didn't do." ~ Ethan
• "This town owned us, that was the good and the bad of it. It knew every inch of us, every sin, every secret, every scab. Which was why most people never bothered to leave, and why the ones who did never came back." ~ Ethan
• "The second I fell in love with a Caster girl, no one I loved was safe. Lena thought she was the only one cursed, but she was wrong. It was our curse now." ~ Ethan
• "Funerals were tricky like that. And life, I guess. The important parts you blocked out altogether, but the random, slanted moments haunted you, replaying over and over in your mind." ~ Ethan
• "I wasn't an expert on feelings, but Amma's were all stirred up in cake batter, and she wasn't about to share them. She'd rather give away the cake." ~ Ethan
• "All (Lena) had wanted, her whole life, was to choose her own destiny. Now she could, and it was like some kind of cruel cosmic joke." ~ Ethan
• "I had just about cornered the market on miserable. I was worse than miserable, lower than a flattened sloppy joe left behind on a lunchroom tray. I was alone." ~ Ethan
• "The Mortal part of our town was just as confusing as the Caster one." ~ Ethan
• "Ridley was like a beautiful snake -- you couldn't let her get close without the risk of being bitten." ~ Ethan
• "Think you're the only one who can find somethin'? Don't need to be a Caster to see what you fools are up to." ~ Amma to Ethan and Liv
• "Time passed slowly in Gatlin, kind of like dog years, only in reverse." ~ Ethan
• "My mom was Juliet in some kind of twisted play where Romeo was an Incubus, even if it was Macon." ~ Ethan
• "Never underestimate the power of the British accent." ~ Liv
• "Ladies first." ~ Ethan
  "Why is it men only say that when it's something horrible or dangerous?" ~ Liv
• "I owed my life to (Lena), but I didn't feel happy. All I felt was brokeness. The fear of dirt and nothingness and being alone. The loss of my mom and Macon and, in a way, Lena. And something else. The crippling sadness and the incredible guilt of being the one who lived." ~ Ethan
• "Ya'll are gonna find that gold-eyed Lena Du-channes. Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds himself a nut." ~ Aunt Prue
• "Maybe Ridley was like chicken pox; you could only catch it once." ~ Ethan
• "Think of me as the praying mantis of the supernatural world." ~ Leah
• "There was no one color that could paint Lena Duchannes. She was a red sweater and a blue sky, a gray wind and a silver sparrow, a black curl escaping from behind her ear." ~ Ethan

Buy on Amazon.com: Beautiful Darkness (Beautiful Creatures)