I loved this book! So much better than the movie! ( )

I still think that overall, these books are really interesting. That said, the authors take such a long time telling their stories. Beautiful Darkness was so unnecessarily long. Most the first half of the book was just following Ethan as he runs around like a chicken with its head cut off. He knows something is wrong, but doesn’t know what. I understand that the authors were trying to set the scene, but it was set in the first hundred pages.

That said, I like the characters in the world enough to keep reading the series. It isn’t what I would buy, because I know that if I sat down to read it, I’d end up giving up. That was the struggle I had with the first book. But as audiobooks borrowed from the library, I am interested enough in the story to listen to them at a 2X speed and follow Lena and Ethan’s ongoing story. ( )

Still, and even more, falling deeper and deeper in love with series. I'm going to end up devouring the whole thing likely before the movie for book one. (At least I'm hoping to be able to accomplish that.)

I love how much of this series is Ethan, and Ethan's point of view, and how he is an unreliable narrator, and we know that because teenagers are unreliable and they don't know everything, and so watching Lena fall apart knowing things both she knew and Ethan didn't, and not knowing what was going on with her, for a goo 90% of the book was so powerful and I was so impressed.

I'm in love with getting more Gatlin, and all it's Down South-isms, another famous event. I loved out brand new character, and the unexpected twists and turns both she, and a good half-dozen of our very well worn in characters took. I love how the hinted histories in book one were examined jut a little more in this book, drawing even more out (and making me dizzy with longing to figure out what can fill two more books).

I love how the ending is not an ending, but a whole other beginning. I love how the climax comes between 90%-95% of the book, again, and we still deal with all manner of fall out and trying to collect what just happened before the story comes to a close, as much ended as it is rebegun. I love when people find their own patterns for how to handle layout like that, without copying everyone before them.

Most of the formatting issues i had in book one were totally gone here, so I'm going to bolster this one up to five. Hopefully somewhere around the middle of this week I'll be able to dash myself head long into book three and four. ( )

It was a 2.5 read for me. I like the first book better. ( )

It felt like nothing happened in the first half of this book... ( )