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mandieroz's review against another edition
4.0
The second in this book series is a doozy, but I loved it! Can't wait to see what happens in 3
ashction's review against another edition
4.0
So... this is NOT A DUOLOGY, RENÉE!
(Mild spoilers, mostly regarding this NOT BEING THE END OF THE STORY.)
I docked a star because there wasn't enough swoony romance for me, but this was a wild tale and the last half of the book kept me reeling from twists and turns!
The beginning of the book was great, too. Bastien dealing with his new state of being was especially well-written and I really enjoyed seeing his struggle play out on the page throughout the book. Celine remains fierce and magnificent, and even without her memories she's not willing to put up with Bastien's BS!
I'm mostly just shook that this isn't it. Once I hit 75% and there were too many loose ends, I just had a feeling... ahhhh! We also see so little of Bastien's sister here, and she's definitely going to be trouble, but on top of that we get introduced to the fey properly and that involves a whole other level of complications. There's so much to work with and I kinda hope this ends up being a quartet, because a trilogy doesn't feel like enough!
Thanks to Edelweiss and G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
(Mild spoilers, mostly regarding this NOT BEING THE END OF THE STORY.)
I docked a star because there wasn't enough swoony romance for me, but this was a wild tale and the last half of the book kept me reeling from twists and turns!
The beginning of the book was great, too. Bastien dealing with his new state of being was especially well-written and I really enjoyed seeing his struggle play out on the page throughout the book. Celine remains fierce and magnificent, and even without her memories she's not willing to put up with Bastien's BS!
I'm mostly just shook that this isn't it. Once I hit 75% and there were too many loose ends, I just had a feeling... ahhhh! We also see so little of Bastien's sister here, and she's definitely going to be trouble, but on top of that we get introduced to the fey properly and that involves a whole other level of complications. There's so much to work with and I kinda hope this ends up being a quartet, because a trilogy doesn't feel like enough!
Thanks to Edelweiss and G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
ghostsversion's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This was a good read. Not fantastic, obviously, but still good. I did feel like the start of any actual plot was at like the halfway mark of the book. Before it, it was more like the aftermath of the previous book i.e. Bastien becoming a vampire(which was most of it) and Celine losing her memories and basically everyone lying to her. Though I will admit, the reveal of the Sylvan Vale and Wylde was a nice suprise. But more importantly PLEASE DON’T LET ODETTE DIE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SHE NEEDS TO HAVE HER YURI MOMENT I BEG YOU RENEE PLEASE.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Drug use, Cursing, Sexual content, Alcohol, Violence, Murder, Medical content, Death, Gun violence, Blood, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Murder, Racism, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Sexual assault
sheiltheshell's review against another edition
3.0
Ugh I finally finished; idk this book was better than the first one for me but still didn’t hit its mark for me ya know?
blurrypetals's review against another edition
4.0
I read The Beautiful as my second book of 2020 and, after the atrocity that was The DNF'ing of Wolfsong by T.J. Klune, I found it to be refreshing, different, and fun. I ended up rating it 5/5 and giving it the highest honor 'round these parts: a spot on my "best-books" shelf.
That said, as the months have passed since reading it, I'll be honest: I don't remember most of what happened in The Beautiful even if what little memory of it remains is pleasant. Because of this, I naturally began to wonder if I would end up enjoying The Damned as much as book one once it finally came out.
Unfortunately, no, I didn't enjoy this one so much. It was still a really fun and refreshing read, but its lack of focus really dragged it down.
One of my biggest pet peeves in all of literature is when authors can't stick with a consistent type of POV. For example, one character's POV could be in first-person present tense which, as we've learned from The Hunger Games and its brethren, is not a bad way to write a POV, but then we switch to a different character and their POV is...third person omniscient immediate past tense? What? Fortunately, The Beautiful is, from my foggy memory, free of this problem, but The Damned is where this becomes a real issue for me as a listener/reader. Another thing that made this incredibly annoying is that we at last get a good chunk of the novel from Bastien's POV, it's in that first person present tense I mentioned before and he's the only character who gets that type of POV throughout the whole book. I genuinely am baffled as to why that is and this weirdness is only exacerbated by Lauren Ezzo's extremely rough French accent, as, for some reason I cannot fathom, they did not hire a male narrator for the one single character who is in the first person POV who is, incidentally, a man and Ezzo is left to flounder her way through complicated accent work she is very clearly not equipped to do. Her "Yorkshire" accent for Pippa was also extremely grating, as she would start sentences off as, "Now That's What I Might Call Yorkshire," before quickly devolving into, "Does Ezzo believe Yorkshire is in the American midwest and that Pippa is a cowboy?"
Despite this extreme flub on the part of the audiobook producers, I still found the story to be engaging and, despite the way it was written, it is incredibly fun to read Bastien's POV, as he provides a personal touch to the first third of this book, which is missing our main character, Celine (for good reason, since she lost her memory at the end of book one) that is sorely needed. I think I will end up struggling to recall certain details as time passes, though, and I expect that to be worse than it already is for me and The Beautiful, which is unfortunate, but true. This book's story, while fun and interesting, had a hard time holding my attention for long periods of time and I am already fuzzy on many details.
This is the first book of Ahdieh's that I didn't love, which I consider to be impressive, since I still liked the bulk of it. My biggest issues lie in the messy execution of finer details and the poor narration by Lauren Ezzo on the audiobook. I'll certainly be reading book three if and when it happens, but until then, I'll be content to busy myself with something else.
That said, as the months have passed since reading it, I'll be honest: I don't remember most of what happened in The Beautiful even if what little memory of it remains is pleasant. Because of this, I naturally began to wonder if I would end up enjoying The Damned as much as book one once it finally came out.
Unfortunately, no, I didn't enjoy this one so much. It was still a really fun and refreshing read, but its lack of focus really dragged it down.
One of my biggest pet peeves in all of literature is when authors can't stick with a consistent type of POV. For example, one character's POV could be in first-person present tense which, as we've learned from The Hunger Games and its brethren, is not a bad way to write a POV, but then we switch to a different character and their POV is...third person omniscient immediate past tense? What? Fortunately, The Beautiful is, from my foggy memory, free of this problem, but The Damned is where this becomes a real issue for me as a listener/reader. Another thing that made this incredibly annoying is that we at last get a good chunk of the novel from Bastien's POV, it's in that first person present tense I mentioned before and he's the only character who gets that type of POV throughout the whole book. I genuinely am baffled as to why that is and this weirdness is only exacerbated by Lauren Ezzo's extremely rough French accent, as, for some reason I cannot fathom, they did not hire a male narrator for the one single character who is in the first person POV who is, incidentally, a man and Ezzo is left to flounder her way through complicated accent work she is very clearly not equipped to do. Her "Yorkshire" accent for Pippa was also extremely grating, as she would start sentences off as, "Now That's What I Might Call Yorkshire," before quickly devolving into, "Does Ezzo believe Yorkshire is in the American midwest and that Pippa is a cowboy?"
Despite this extreme flub on the part of the audiobook producers, I still found the story to be engaging and, despite the way it was written, it is incredibly fun to read Bastien's POV, as he provides a personal touch to the first third of this book, which is missing our main character, Celine (for good reason, since she lost her memory at the end of book one) that is sorely needed. I think I will end up struggling to recall certain details as time passes, though, and I expect that to be worse than it already is for me and The Beautiful, which is unfortunate, but true. This book's story, while fun and interesting, had a hard time holding my attention for long periods of time and I am already fuzzy on many details.
This is the first book of Ahdieh's that I didn't love, which I consider to be impressive, since I still liked the bulk of it. My biggest issues lie in the messy execution of finer details and the poor narration by Lauren Ezzo on the audiobook. I'll certainly be reading book three if and when it happens, but until then, I'll be content to busy myself with something else.
belle2022's review against another edition
4.0
Okay but that cliffhanger though… I love the fact we got to see more of the side characters and even learn about their past such as Jae, Arjun and even Pippa. It was nice to see. We got to finally meet Celines mother the bloody lady of the Vale??? I didn’t think Celine would be magical but here we are.
Emilie just pissed me off and for good reason. She killed Odette when all Odette wanted to do was help her, Odette clearly had her guard down and Emilie used that moment to slit her throat.
Bastien was justified I think in trying to kill Emilie but of course the moral people have to turn up aka Celine. Like seriously??? Something dodgy is going on with Emilie, it’s almost like she wanted Bastien to retaliate and kill her.
It ends with Pippa over bearding Micheal transform into a werewolf. We know his family are the Werewolves but I didn’t think we’d get to see Micheal turning into one. Overall there was a lot more plot and action in this. Also a heap of internal monologue which was interesting to see. Often these characters don’t express themselves well so getting to see their inside feelings is quite nice.
Emilie just pissed me off and for good reason. She killed Odette when all Odette wanted to do was help her, Odette clearly had her guard down and Emilie used that moment to slit her throat.
Bastien was justified I think in trying to kill Emilie but of course the moral people have to turn up aka Celine. Like seriously??? Something dodgy is going on with Emilie, it’s almost like she wanted Bastien to retaliate and kill her.
It ends with Pippa over bearding Micheal transform into a werewolf. We know his family are the Werewolves but I didn’t think we’d get to see Micheal turning into one. Overall there was a lot more plot and action in this. Also a heap of internal monologue which was interesting to see. Often these characters don’t express themselves well so getting to see their inside feelings is quite nice.
eesh25's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 Stars
Note to self, the next time you think you're reading the last book in a series, maybe check to make sure that that's actually the case? That way, you won't end up having to rethink all your opinions toward the plot of the book.
Honestly, this was a weird reading experience for me. If you're familiar with Ahdieh, then you know that she's previously written two duologies. So I just assumed that it was the same with this series. I don't find out that this was only the second of four books until I finished it, realized the ending left like 50 plotlines up in the air and googled the series to see if there were going to be more books. Which there were because this was never planned as a duology!
At the end of The Beautiful, we left Sebastian turning into a vampire and Celine having her memory of anything relating to him erased. And Michael deciding to be an opportunistic douchebag by taking his chance with the girl without her memories. I really don't like Michael, something that doesn't change throughout the novel.
Now, the way I thought the story would go is that we'd deal with the memory issue, Seb's new vampirism, and his evil sister. Then there would be a happily ever after. Instead, the book introduces a bunch of new elements relating to Celine's past, potential new villains, and just a whole other major plot. And I couldn't figure out why the author was doing that because I thought this was the last book! But, having thought about it now, there were some very interesting developments. And I loved getting to know some of the side characters more. Arjun, for example, played a much bigger role.
The rating is still 3.5, though, because the book took some time to get interesting. It was always easy to read, but some parts felt a bit unnecessary. Like Odette's POV. I don't know what it had to offer to the story. And it was so ridiculously overdramatic that I couldn't take it seriously. I also thought certain parts were rushed, and why was Bastian's sister barely mentioned for over half the novel?
Also, the book's take on vampires is nothing new. It reminded me of The Vampire Diaries (the show), and it's not as if we haven't read about or seen vampires in media before. They're kinda old news at this point. So the whole I-am-darkness, I-am-a-monster stuff was tedious and took me out of the story. Odette's POV was the worst, but Sebastian's wasn't great either. Though the latter got much better and Odette only got two or three chapters.
My favourite POV was Celine's, except for the love-triangle. Which wasn't actually a love-triangle because there was no way Celine was gonna chose fucking Michael. So it was just annoying. Also, Celine made a few choices, regarding Michael, that I didn't agree with.
Overall though, this was a fast, engaging read. I do wish the book took itself a little less seriously because the purple prose-y ness was a bit much this time around. But for the most part, I liked the book and I'm looking forward to what'll happen next. I'm hoping that the next two installments will be better paced and, with plot intro out-of-the-way, more cohesive.
Note to self, the next time you think you're reading the last book in a series, maybe check to make sure that that's actually the case? That way, you won't end up having to rethink all your opinions toward the plot of the book.
Honestly, this was a weird reading experience for me. If you're familiar with Ahdieh, then you know that she's previously written two duologies. So I just assumed that it was the same with this series. I don't find out that this was only the second of four books until I finished it, realized the ending left like 50 plotlines up in the air and googled the series to see if there were going to be more books. Which there were because this was never planned as a duology!
At the end of The Beautiful, we left Sebastian turning into a vampire and Celine having her memory of anything relating to him erased. And Michael deciding to be an opportunistic douchebag by taking his chance with the girl without her memories. I really don't like Michael, something that doesn't change throughout the novel.
Now, the way I thought the story would go is that we'd deal with the memory issue, Seb's new vampirism, and his evil sister. Then there would be a happily ever after. Instead, the book introduces a bunch of new elements relating to Celine's past, potential new villains, and just a whole other major plot. And I couldn't figure out why the author was doing that because I thought this was the last book! But, having thought about it now, there were some very interesting developments. And I loved getting to know some of the side characters more. Arjun, for example, played a much bigger role.
The rating is still 3.5, though, because the book took some time to get interesting. It was always easy to read, but some parts felt a bit unnecessary. Like Odette's POV. I don't know what it had to offer to the story. And it was so ridiculously overdramatic that I couldn't take it seriously. I also thought certain parts were rushed, and why was Bastian's sister barely mentioned for over half the novel?
Also, the book's take on vampires is nothing new. It reminded me of The Vampire Diaries (the show), and it's not as if we haven't read about or seen vampires in media before. They're kinda old news at this point. So the whole I-am-darkness, I-am-a-monster stuff was tedious and took me out of the story. Odette's POV was the worst, but Sebastian's wasn't great either. Though the latter got much better and Odette only got two or three chapters.
My favourite POV was Celine's, except for the love-triangle. Which wasn't actually a love-triangle because there was no way Celine was gonna chose fucking Michael. So it was just annoying. Also, Celine made a few choices, regarding Michael, that I didn't agree with.
Overall though, this was a fast, engaging read. I do wish the book took itself a little less seriously because the purple prose-y ness was a bit much this time around. But for the most part, I liked the book and I'm looking forward to what'll happen next. I'm hoping that the next two installments will be better paced and, with plot intro out-of-the-way, more cohesive.
verihapunkt's review against another edition
3.0
I'm disappointed :( the author was suddenly in a hurry, that doesn't work for me..
crown_carmen's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0