Woohoo, I finished another book! And a recent release at that. Pretty sure I bought The Damned on release day, and finished it within a week later. I can say for sure that it was such an improvement on The Beautiful!
*Okay, so before we start, the title says spoiler free but that’s only if you’ve already read The Beautiful. If you haven’t read this book yet, and don’t want spoilers for it, you may now exit this post. Or don’t, I’m not your mom. If you have read The Beautiful, there won’t be spoilers in this review for The Damned!
The Damned
By Renée Ahdieh
Published 7 July 2020 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readersfantasy | young adult | romance
My rating: ★★★★☆
New York Times bestselling author Renée Ahdieh returns with the second installment of her new sumptuous, sultry and romantic series, The Beautiful.
Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien.
Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can’t quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn’t know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she’s not quite ready to learn.
Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment for centuries. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.
What I Liked
Like I said earlier, this book is such an improvement on The Beautiful. I enjoyed The Beautiful enough to pick up the second book obviously, but there were a lot of things missing that could’ve made it better. You can find my full spoiler-free review of The Beautiful here!
Right off the bat, we finally get some real knowledge about this mystical world that all these characters are supposedly from. There’s also no more dancing around the word “vampire.” This is great, because the vagueness in the first book gave me some serious Twilight vibes.
“I know what you are”
“Say it”
Anyway. Plot wise, there is a lot going on, and there are some interesting developments regarding certain characters. Like I said, the world really got expanded here. We learn more about the mystical Sylvan Vale and Sylvan Wyld. Plus, we learn more about Bastien’s family, and thus him, which should really be an incentive to pick this book up.
I thought the writing itself was also a lot better in this book than in The Beautiful. The book was way faster paced, too. In my original review, I mentioned that The Beautiful was just a little too slow for me. But The Damned had no such issues at all. I wouldn’t call it fast-paced necessarily, but there is a lot more action.
What I Liked Less
There is really only one point that bothered me a little, and that’s the ending. Obviously I won’t give anything away, but I thought the ending went a little too fast. Yes, I know I was just saying how much more I enjoyed the faster pacing of this book compared to The Beautiful… I’m just hard to satisfy, hehe. But things just… happened super quick. Either way, book three is sure going to be interesting!
That’s it for today! In all I enjoyed The Damned much more than I enjoyed the Beautiful, and I can’t wait to see where this series will go!
You can find more of my reviews here!
I honestly can’t wait to read this book! I have it on my kindle ready but wondering about getting the hardback!
Author
I loved it! We get to know so much more about the world all the characters came from. I’d say get the hardback, because it is really pretty👀