Book Probe

My Rating:★★★★It is nearly impossible to review this book without giving away spoilers being the second in the series. I enjoyed Beautiful Creatures slightly more, but there are parts of Beautiful Darkness which I really liked too. The world in the Caster Chronicles is great; fully-developed and real, but the only criticism I have to the books themselves is that they get to be too lengthy and dragged out, providing me with that chance to put it down and read something much more shorter and straight-to-the-point. And in my case, I did put it down. And for a few months at that, stopping about 100 pages in because I was aniticpating something exciting to happen. But it wasn’t until I thought of the prospect that the third book Beautiful Chaos will be released soon and while spoiling myself a tad bit to the changes that one of the character’s lives take at the end of Beautiful Darkness by reading what the novella Dream Dark is about, that I was determined to finish this hefty book once and for all. And glad I did.There’s one aspect I love about this series. It is that Ethan Wate is male. And the protagonist. And his voice is written. It makes me extremely relatable to him which is thumbs up to the writers. Ethan became stronger through all the adversities he faces along with newfound friend Liv and longtime friend Link, to save Lena. In Beautiful Darkness Ethan is found to be more vulnerable and alone because he doesn’t have the comfort of Lena there to lean on (and so too when you flip the coin), but because of it we see more of his feelings as an individual by himself. Ethan is a very likeable character. As is Link, who is as humorous as always, along with Liv bringing a British flair to the story, and we do see a drastic change and then not-so-much change in the character of Ridley. And I won’t go on.We are exposed to a lot more history and lore of the Caster world and of Gatlin which played a part in my liking. I love to read up on what had lead up to the present day events so it was a joy to discover what had occurred in the past to affect these characters we now read about in the present.A few people have said Beautiful Darkness is sadder and more depressing, but I thought it’s predecessor was more emotional. Maybe they were just sad over the fact that not all relationships work out at times and that a lot of books in YA today are all about ‘fitting in’. And fitting it was.