Read or Die: Book Reviews by Emily

(Grade 7 and up) The order of things has been broken ever since Lena Duchannes’s seventeenth birthday, and in Gatlin, Georgia, life has never been stranger. Drought, heat, and insects have descended on the town like Biblical plagues, and before long, even worse disasters are laying waste to the Mortal World. Casters are being affected too; most of them, even Lena, are having trouble controlling their powers, and though everyone’s trying to prepare for whatever might happen next, no one knows what to expect, except that things will probably go from bad to worse.

Ethan Wate knows that things need to be fixed somehow before the eighteenth moon arrives, but answers are increasingly hard to find, and everyone that Ethan knows and loves seems to be in danger. Can he and Lena uncover the truth in time? Or are some things, once broken, forever beyond repair?

First and foremost, I have to say that I enjoyed “Beautiful Chaos” more than “Beautiful Darkness” (mostly because Lena and Macon were present for the bulk of the novel; not so in the previous book in this series, though I missed seeing Liv as much this time around). The tension here felt real, and the consequences of Lena’s claiming herself were as dire as I’d hoped, given the cataclysmic nature of such an event. However, my favorite thing about this novel was the relationship between Ethan and Lena, and their attempts to navigate their strange new world together. I can’t wait to read “Beautiful Redemption,” and with that thought in mind, WHY ISN’T IT OCTOBER YET?!?!? (4.5 out of 5 stars)

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 1 edition (October 18, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316123528
• ISBN-13: 978-0316123525 (Source of Publication Data: Amazon.com)