Thursday, November 28, 2013

Review: Beautiful Monster 2 by Bella Forrest

PictureA Happy Thanksgiving to you all (or at least to those who celebrate it)! What better way to celebrate than a review :)

Beautiful Monster 2 by Bella Forrest
Steph's Rating: 3 stars
Overall: 3 stars

Format: Ebook
Pages: 202
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Publication Date: November 22, 2013

Goodreads Synopsis:
The second and final book in the Beautiful Monster series.

Liam knows his plan is so preposterous that it will either be wildly successful... or fatal.

But it's a risk he has no choice but to take - for his sake and for Amy's.

If Amy thought her first year at Leopard Academy was a whirlwind, she'd better brace herself for a typhoon.
 
Steph's Review:

I really did enjoy the first Beautiful Monster book, but I felt like this sequel was a bit lacking somewhat in comparison. From the get-go, I knew that I wasn't going to be captivated by this one. It wasn't great, just okay. 

After Porsche DeRitter's death, Liam Swift no longer has a Shield to keep him human during the night, and he must withstand the painful transformation into vampire at every dusk. The only solution is to return to chaining himself onto the wall in the basement of Leopard Academy, so that he won't be a risk to Amy, or any other student at his school. Liam knows he must put a stop to this to not be a danger, so he has gathered a coven of vengeful vampires for one purpose--to finally slay the mother of all vampires, Selene, and end the curse of vampirism. 

Beautiful Monster 2 overall just had a much more cheesy feel to it than the first. There was a lot of typical vampirism aspects like eating raw hamburger meat and unrelenting bloodlust that made me shake my head several times throughout the book. I had lots of "Really?" moments, because I thought Bella Forrest could have made the book much more suspenseful. I'd be reading a serious moment, only to have the magic broken by something ridiculously vampire. Vampires are a cliche topic overall, especially after the whole Twilight drama, but it is completely possible to still write a good vampire novel now as long as the author can make something unique about her definition of vampire--something not cheesy that would just make you sigh with melancholy.

I really loved Liam and Amy in the first book, but for some reason I just wasn't as drawn to them in this one. It's not really Amy's problem actually, more just Liam. I understand that Liam is going through all this angst because he doesn't have a Shield around anymore, and because he's trying to orchestrate an assassination of a centuries old vampire, but he just pissed me off in this book. His attitude wasn't charming anymore, and he spent the majority of this book in a bad mood. That meant I was spending the majority of this book mad at him. Not the greatest thing for character development, eh? There are lots of new vampire characters introduced in this book, but since the novel was short I didn't feel like I really got to know them well before the story ended. 

I also felt like some things were just left unexplained. Heads up, there might be a few ghosts heading your way in Beautiful Monster 2 :)--which I thought was cool, but I didn't really understand why they had to be there. 

The conclusion to Amy and Liam's story itself was quite well done. It was the only valid way I think to give the characters a HEA without seeming too unbelievable for the plot. The problem was within what it took to get to that conclusion.

This is a short read, so if you enjoyed Beautiful Monster this is something to put back onto your reading stack, but be forewarned that you might find yourself a little disappointed with it overall.

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