A Beautiful Evil by Kelly Keaton

Book:  A Beautiful Evil

Author:  Kelly Keaton

Publisher:  Simon and Schuster

Date: February 21, 2012

Source:  Purchased

My rating:  4 ½  moons!

Myth and mayhem inhabit a richly reimagined New Orleans in this sequel to Darkness Becomes Her.After the epic graveyard battle at the end of Darkness Becomes Her, Ari and her friends know what they’re up against: Ari is facing the Medusa curse and is haunted by the image of what she will become. To make matters worse, the heinous goddess Athena has kidnapped young Violet and is threatening to destroy Ari.

Ari, along with the superhot Sebastian, is doing everything she can to learn more about Athena and to get Violet back. But the battle of good and evil is bigger than she realizes, and she’s about to be pulled into a world more horrific than she could ever imagine....

MY REVIEW

Initial reaction

God, I love this series!

Title and Cover

The title and cover are perfect for this book.  The title fits the story and the cover is a great representation of Ari.  It’s dark and it’s gorgeous and goes along with the book, which doesn’t happen much these days!  I loved both of them.

Plot, characters, etc.

This book picks up where the last one left off.  Ari is training and trying to learn to use her powers.  She’s also trying to research ways to break the curse and ways to defeat Athena.  She is unsure of things with Sebastian, but instead of being a whiny little girl and moping around for some boy, she is still jumping right into the action and trying to DO something!  She is a total kick-ass girl!!!

That’s one of the things I like about this series.  The girl is very action oriented.  Ari doesn’t sit around waiting on some boy.  Yes, she likes him.  Yes, there is some romance, but it’s not the center of the story.  Another nice thing is that Sebastian doesn’t try to take over and be all “I’m the man, I’ll do all the heroic stuff.”  Instead, he works WITH Ari to try and go after Athena.  He trusts her to do her part as well and that’s refreshing.

So, Ari is off to try and rescue her father and Violet.  Athena is still a wicked bitch who needs to just be killed.  There is not a lot of action with the secondary characters in this book.  The story mainly focuses on Ari and Sebastian and Athena, with some help from Michel, Sebastian’s dad, and a few other appearances from the other characters from time to time.

Once again, Kelly Keaton delivers on some awesome action scenes and some real plot surprises that I didn’t see coming and of course, ended the book by leaving me salivating for the next one.  So basically, this book is a great continuation of book one and has everything in it that the first book had.  All the elements that made Darkness Becomes Her a good book are here in A Beautiful Evil.

Once again, I am impressed with the unique combination of elements in this book.  The mixture of vamps, witches, shifters and magic with Greek mythology in a dystopian New Orleans sounds like a recipe for disaster, but somehow, Kelly Keaton pulls it off and makes it work!  If you are looking for something totally

Songs

Time Is Running Out by Muse

Savin’ Me by Nickelback

Beauty of the Dark by Mads Langer

The Final Score

This book gets a rating of 4 ½ .  It’s as good as the first one and leaves you anxiously awaiting the next installment.  In fact, since Kelly Keaton lives here in NC, I might just go camp out in her driveway to wait for it. : )