Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

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.

The first book in the series was really good. I was too conflicted to actually continue reading the series because I had a lot of issues with the first book but since the last book of the series came out. Beautiful Redemption came out I wasn't as happy with book one but I am eager to see what happens with the characters and I am determined to read this series. 

Ethan continues to narrate through the book and his narration is not horrible but it is hard to tell if Ethan is actually a boy, the narration is not too realistic for it to be a boy perspective, a book that had a boy's point of view down to the core was Wolves of Mercy Falls series. Lena, while she barely makes an appearance throughout the book, her behavior in this book angered me so much, I had to refrain from throwing the book out of the window, Lena was a bit too conceited in this book. There was an interesting storyline between Link/Ridley/John is pretty interesting and I hope it keeps developing throughout the series as I continue to read it until the end. 

Another cliche is the love triangles, or a love square for this particular books.The most common problem with this just like in Beautiful Creatures is the writing, the writing is not bad, but the story just lags on where the reader just wants to put the book down. About 175 pages in this book could have been cut out. 

Another thing that made me think that this book was just another carbon copy of Twilight was when Lena announces to Ethan that she and her family are leaving town after an incident that happened in the school parking lot. Sound familiar from another book? The Cullens leaving Forks due to the accident that happened on Bella's birthday?

WRITERS: Never write pages that lag on, a book should be so addicting that the reader should never want to put it down.  there could be dozens of pages cut out so the reader gets to the good juicy parts.