Beautiful Darkness

Beautiful Darkness  by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

This is the second book in the Caster Chronicles Series.  You can find my review of the first book, Beautiful Creatures here.  

Now that Lena has managed to put off becoming a dark caster, you'd think that she and Ethan could finally enjoy themselves and their youth.  But, no.  Of course, the evil mother has hatched a plan to force Lena to become the dark caster she believes she's meant to be.  

Lena is pulling away from Ethan and he's struggling to hold on to her.  Both seem to have moved on when Ethan kind of hooks up with a librarian trainee and Lena takes off with a vampire caster kind of dude.

I was kind of okay with the first book, although some of the southern stuff was a little too thick for me.  The story was interesting and you could feel for the characters. Ethan was dealing with the loss of his mother, the shut in his father had become after her death and was falling in love with this mysterious girl whose  emotions affected the weather.  This time out, I just found the melodrama to be tiring.  

The kids are in constant turmoil, all of the grown up supernatural and supernatural adjacent types are taking sides and no one is communicating with one another. I found absolutely no enjoyment in this story. I don't mean that I need the happy shiny people to be on every page, but there was nothing fun in this story.  No scary fun, no fun adventure, no romantic fun, no fun at all.  I understand that there are more books in this series and I just can't bring myself to open another cover.  I've decided that it's time for me to move on from Gatlin and its sad and tortured inhabitants.