Darkness Falls is a YA urban fantasy/paranormal and the second book in the Immortal Beloved trilogy by Cate Tiernan.As Darkness Falls is the second book in a trilogy, it’s obvious this review will contain spoilers of the first book, Immortal Beloved. So, if you haven’t yet read Immortal Beloved (and you really should, it was great), you should instead read my review of Immortal Beloved, which I posted on Friday.
If like me, however, you have read Immortal Beloved – read on…
Y’all should remember what Immortal Beloved was about (unless you’ve ignored my previous warning about spoilers – if that’s you, what are you doing still reading this???).
Nastasya Crowe is over 450 years old and still looks about seventeen. She’s an immortal. And only recently did she realize how utterly pointless and empty her long life has been. Taking up an offer from almost a century ago, she showed up at River’s Edge – a farm/rehab for wayward immortals. She met the gorgeous, golden Reyn who was strangely familiar and began to try and make peace with her history.
Then, as I’m sure you recall, she found out she wasn’t safe at River’s Edge either. Her past came calling and other threats to her healing were revealed.
And it was awesome, right? Well, I most certainly thought so.
So, now here we are in book two. Things start where they left, basically.
Only her initial hope and optimism of a New Year bringing relief from her ugly, dark past begins to wane. Things start going really bad at her job – worse than usual – even though she’s trying to help. She’s also dismayed to see that nothing she says to Dray, the juvenile delinquent she’s run across more than once, is improving anything.
Plus, Reyn’s fevered kisses war in her mind with the revulsion she now feels knowing how their pasts are linked. Nothing’s going as well as it should.
And it’s all her fault. It’s pointless, she feels. So, why keep trying to change? Why ruin it all for everyone else?
This all leads to a reckless change of course.
But is she really better off away from River’s Edge? Or is she in more danger than ever?
Okay, that’s all I’m gonna give you. Why ruin all the surprises, right?
One thing I absolutely loved about Darkness Falls was how the tone was exactly the same as Immortal Beloved. Sometimes when I read sequels right after the initial book there’s a weird change in tone you have to adjust to and get over initially – not here! And the story continued seamlessly with great consistency.
Without revealing too much of where the plot goes, I’ll say that Cate Tiernan really upped the suspense in Darkness Falls. I was nervous and worried for Nastasya, feeling the tension that reverberated tightly on each page.
Scary developments peppered the story throughout, as well as quite a few personal ones. It still had the fantastic straddling of the line between fantasy and literary fiction, giving us that character development and meditative narrative that is truly unique.
Darkness Falls is introspective, mysterious, poignant, and surprising. The self-realization is poetically and suspensefully done. There’s tons of horrifying, chilling twists (Incy really freaked me out) – not to mention moments that are incredibly romantic.
I did at times get frustrated with Nastasya and her choices in Darkness Falls – yet I still loved her as a character and felt that what she was doing made sense for her character, even if I might want to clench my teeth a little while she did it. I’m being just vague enough for you to do the same, aren’t I? Sorry! Gotta read the book for yourself!
Essentially, I found Darkness Falls to be an exhilarating read, yet again. I can’t wait for the third book and I hope it won’t take too long to come out!
By the way, if you don’t ordinarily read YA you should still consider Immortal Beloved and Darkness Falls because there is a maturity to the story that is easily accessible to older readers as well. Check it out!
*I received a copy of Darkness Falls from Hachette Book Group. Their generosity in no way influenced, nor sought to influence, my opinion of the novel.
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