I will admit. I am a sucker for a moody vampire. Bastien is the moodiest. Sure I can understand why he is. Afterall, he didn’t choose to be turned. He lost his life, his humanity and the girl he loved. As for Celine. She is recovering from the injuries from the end of the last book. She is struggling with her memory loss. To help her out is Michael, who she is dating, kind of and her friend Poppy. The narrative plays out in multiple POV’s beyond Celine and Bastien. The world has grown. It’s not just vampires but werewolves and the Fey. The story still revolves around Celine and Bastien but it also is no longer just their story. It’s a story of found family and secrets. It’s about overcoming trauma. Really more about dealing with trauma because there are definitely a few that never did deal with it and that is why we are where we are now. I am so glad that Kate recommend this series because I am very much enjoying it. I can’t wait for the next book to become available at my library so I can read what happens next. It sounds like it’s going to be a Poppy centered book and I’m stoked about that. She is the one character that didn’t get a POV chapter and the one I am most interested in.
The Damned is the second book in The Beautiful series and it continues some weeks after the end of the first book, so spoilers for The Beautiful ahead.
Celine finds herself in the hospital, Michael Grimaldi by her side, unable to remember how she came to be in the hospital. All anyone would tell her is that there had been a murderer stalking the streets of New Orleans and he would have taken her life if Michael hadn’t saved her. But, all her memories of the incident and some from the time before are just gone. Her doctor says that it isn’t uncommon for people with head injuries to forget things, and her memory may return in some time. Of course, we know where her memories have gone and have no expectation that she will ever get them back.
Bastien wakes above the restaurant Jacques’, surrounded by the other members of the Court of Lions, a vampire. And he is angry about it. He is made even angrier to find out that Celine has traded her memories and possible future with him to save him. Bastien hears of someone who may be able to unmake him and he becomes obsessed with the possibility of not being a vampire again.
Émilie, still consumed by rage, waits for any sign that she has succeeded in killing her brother and ending Nicodemus’s bloodline. Obviously, that would be delightful, but there is a possibility, she knows, that Nicodemus would have turned his nephew. And if he did, that is also to her advantage because she can use it to stoke the war between the Fallen and the Brotherhood.
So, we have Celine, trying to recall everything she has lost, Bastien struggling to come to grips with his new life, Michael Grimaldi, still in love with Celine and fawning over her in Bastien’s absence, a scheming werewolf still on the prowl, and to that we add newly engaged Pippa, and a whole bunch of scheming fey, just waiting to cause chaos. And chaos there is. This was also a quick read, even at 401 pages. Can Bastien come to accept himself? Can Celine recall her lost past? What other secrets will be exposed? This book was a good time. We learn more about the fey Otherworld in this book and we continue to watch our main characters grow and change. We learn more about the other members of the court, getting some more backstory on Madeleine, Hortense, Jae, Odette, and Arjun.
The end was a bit abrupt, but there are two more books left in the series so I don’t mind a cliffhanger (especially since those books are already out). We do get some resolution, with some storylines tying up so that we can move on. This was a fun read, so I am definitely going to pick up the next one.
I got this one from my local library and that is where I’ll be going for the next one!
2 Women, So Many Books 