Dangerous Deception by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Dangerous Deception by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Published 2015, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Stars: ★★★★☆ (3.5)

3.5 stars

It's no secret to anyone that I really enjoyed the Beautiful Creatures series.  While it wasn't anything groundbreaking or amazing, it was lots of fun and had a great concept and world.  The Claiming, Light and Dark Casters, etc, all really entertained me.  So you could color me excited when I found out that they were writing a follow-up series with Ridley and Link in the starring roles.

Dangerous Creatures, book one, was fast-paced and highly entertaining, though quite a bit different than the first series.  Unfortunately, Dangerous Deception fell flat for me.  I was really enjoying it until I hit the end, not even realizing it was the end until I turned a few pages and fell straight into samples from each of their solo books.  It just felt unfinished... like a filler story.  It moved the story along, sure, and introduced some radical new elements to the overall arc.  I just wasn't left satisified with the plot -- it definitely couldn't have stood both on its own AND as a part of the series.  It could only work as part of the series.

Because the introduced story elements were pretty awesome, I didn't drop my score completely... and I had lots of fun in the process, so I'm going to stick with my initial feeling of a 3.5 star rating.

I'll definitely finish the series, but I'm hoping book three will seriously up the ante.