Beautiful Darkness is the sequel to Beautiful Creatures — I started off not liking it as much as Beautiful Creatures. I was also troubled by the addition of Summerville/Charleston references. She’s put Gatlin too close to my hometown (not that it was far from home in the first book re: Santee and Lake Moultrie, but I could hang onto the invisible fake town-ness of it before…)
Anyway, barring that hometown problem, I ended up liking this one a lot. It just took me awhile to get used to less Lena and more of the other supporting characters. I should have liked it right off the bat since I never loved Lena to start with.
I do love Ethan, Amma, Link, Marian, and Macon. Heck, I even like Ridley more than I like Lena. So yea, this was a good darn book once I settled in.