Reviews - The Damned | The StoryGraph

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In this sequel we follow the story of forbidden love between Celine and Sébastien. After Celine offered her memories for Sébastien’s life, she didn’t remember anything connected to him or the La Cour des Lions. Her loss of memories was explained by the doctor as the result of the attack on her in the past month. With Michael and Pippa on her side, she was recovering fast, however, the dreams and the feeling of lost didn’t want to leave her in piece. Nothing feels right. She sees the lies in her friends’ mouth. She decides to find the truth and the way to her lost memories.

On the other side, Sébastien is straggling with accepting the truth of becoming a vampire himself, like the rest of his family. He doesn’t want to adapt; he wants his humanity back. He wants Celine back in his arms. He doesn’t want to live life of the cursed immortal. He never wanted life like this, he knew the cost of it. His focus changes when he finds out about a one in a million chance to retrieve his humanity back.
Their lives cross once again and the fight for the future starts all over again.

The sequel of The Beautiful wasn’t the book I expected it to be. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad book, but I was lacking few details I really loved in the first book. First of all, I miss the mystery atmosphere that was heavily present in the first book. It was the part that actually was driving me into reading the first book so fast. I wanted to know more and more about the characters, the villain and the coming events. Everything was unexpected and surprising. However, in this book half of the book was boring as most of the events were obvious. Secondly, the picture of the vampire from the first book was transformed from the dangerous creature into a typical loveable vampire that most of the books introduce. Well, I should see that coming, however, I liked this aspect very much.

Beside these two things I enjoyed this book a lot. Even if the first half of the book wasn’t very intriguing, I enjoyed the second one vey much. I liked the connection between the fey world and Celine. I won’t lie, I was surprised as much as Sébastien when I figured it out, while reading. I knew there is something special about Celine, however, I didn’t know in what way. Moreover, let’s talk about how powerful Celine became after all that happened. I love her sassiness and that she doesn’t let anyone to mess with her. She didn’t let anyone to decide about her actions and future. She stood for herself in the times she knew people tried to control her because of her weakness of not knowing this world. I adore her character even more than after reading the first book. Sometimes the things she had done were reckless, however, she always could find a way out from it. Well, she is a smart woman so I shouldn’t be even surprised.

As much as I enjoyed Celine’s part of the story, I don’t know if I can say the same about Sébastien. I think his point of view was repeating itself through first half of the book and the action started first when he finally decided to find a way to get back his humanity. I really like his character, however, his POV were lacking something to interest me as much as Celine’s ones.

I think the worst POV of this book was Michael’s. I don’t know if I am the only one, but his character annoyed me so much. I couldn’t bare him talking. Honestly, as much as I liked him in the first book, as much I hate him in this one. THANK YOU, NEXT. Unfortunately, I think he will play a big part in the next book.

At the end of this review I would like to mention how good was the ending of the book. I suspected it, however, I still enjoyed reading it. I don’t understand exactly few parts of it, and I hope they will be better explained in the next part because without it, so many things wouldn’t have any sense. For example, Emelie’s character didn’t exactly appeared as I thought it will be. In the first book she looked as if she would be a very smart character, however, in this one she ends up as another desperate maniac who wants to destroy her own family. Her desperation was painful and unreasonable. Especially, what she had done to Odette, until now I do not understand how cruel you can be to do something like this just to hurt your brother. I thought that her revenge will be as good planned as in the first book, but it turned out to be chaotic and stupid.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Renée Ahdieh and Hodder & Stoughton for providing me this book! I cannot wait to read the third part of this story. I am very curious how the story will continue in the unknown world of fey.

louandlife's review against another edition

3.0

This book is in between a 3 star and a 4 star read for me.

I enjoyed reading this book but I felt like it was trying to do too many things in 400 pages and either needed to be 100-200 pages longer or develop some plot lines in the sequel. The last 50 pages was a bit of a mess and it felt very rushed. It made me question the characterisation of an important character. I didn't understand their actions because it didn't seem like it would be something they would do because of how all the characters were describing them. I'm sorry if I don't make a lot of sense, I'm trying to keep in ambiguous so there would be no spoilers. In addition, I'm not happy with a character death that happened at the end. It's not 100% sure that they are dead.

Spoiler

BUT WHY KILL THE ONLY EXPLICITLY MENTIONED GAY CHARACTER?! Especially when there are other vampires I didn't care about

I felt like The Beautiful was a far better story because there was a clear plot, but this book felt like it was trying to do 4 things at once which meant that I wasn't connecting with the plot. The pacing of this book was also slow. I recently finished Midnight Sun, and the way Bastien was acting made me feeling like I was reading an Edward Cullen 2.0. It actually made me put down the book for a few days because I had to read other books to forget about the comparison. Luckily this stops about 1/3 of the way through the book, and Bastien is less insufferable than Edward.

I did like the fact that we got multiple points of view in this book. It enabled us to understand more of the characters, even if most of the side characters still aren't that developed. I am also super intrigued to see where this series will go. Especially with the ending of this book. It's not a cliff hanger but it does leave you intrigued for more.

Overall, I enjoyed this book but the actual story was a bit of a mess. It was all over the place, but I was able to look past that when I was reading the book. I am looking forward to reading the next book, but I won't have high expectations. I would recommend The Beautiful, but not this book unless you were a fan of The Beautiful and wanted to continue on with the series.

hbelle01's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

angelsbookstaloves's review against another edition

3.0

Thank you so much PenguinTeen for sending me a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

This was a great sequel to The Beautiful, and honestly, I liked it better than the first one!

I really loved where the story went, it had me on the edge of my seat. I gasped who knows how many times. Also, helloooo VAMPIRES & WEREWOLVES!!

The audiobook for this is also amazing! The narrator does a great job with giving each character their own voice (I LOVE it when narrators do that).

I also cannot stop drooling over the beauty of this cover. The covers for this series are gorgeous!

Overall, it was very enjoyable, and I would recommend you to check out The Beautiful if you haven't already!

eli_b0204's review against another edition

1.0

the 'bury your gays' trope was the last straw for me. i'll still maybe read the sequel, and give this series a last chance, but i'm honestly not feeling too hopeful...