The twenty-eighth book I read in 2014 was Beautiful Redemption by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. I finished this book on 4/21/14. This is the fourth (and last) book in the Beautiful Creatures series by these authors. The first three books in the series were discussed in my previous three blog posts. I rated this book 4 stars out of a scale of 5. This book picks up where the third left off, right after Ethan jumps off the water tower. As I said in the previous post, if you haven’t read the other books yet and you plan to, then I would avoid reading this review as some items mentioned might reveal plot twists from both the first three books in the series.
Unfortunately, Ethan sacrificed himself at the end of the third book so that a New Order could restore the Order that Lena broke when she claimed herself for both the Dark and the Light at the end of the second book. In the Otherworld he gets to see his mom which is sweet. His Aunt Prue though helps him figure out a way that he can get back to the land of the living. Turns out he was never supposed to die. One of the Keepers has been going rogue for hundreds of years and has apparently teamed up with Abraham Ravenwood to try and destroy all Mortals. Ethan was getting in his way so the Keeper got rid of him.
However, after Ethan finds out how he can get back to Lena he sets off on his journey to accomplish just that. Its a multi-step process that involves getting a lot of help from people along the way, including Lena, Amma, the Greats, his mom and friends he meets along the way. I thought it was interesting that this book had sections that were from Ethan’s point of view and then went to Lena’s and then back to Ethan’s. Especially with them at opposite ends of the universe it would have been hard to jump back and forth with every chapter so I liked that there were designated sections.
While I did like this book and I thought it was a great book to end the series, I did have some unanswered questions at the end of it and I hate having items that I can’t wrap up. For example, Ethan goes through this whole journey to come back to the land of the living. But the whole time he’s doing that, his human body is decaying in the ground. When he comes back to Lena’s world from the Otherworld, did he get a new body? Did his old body get magically fixed and transported? He jumps straight back to the water tower so did it just erase everything like his whole death never happened or did he come back after Lena had to live without him still for months? I just don’t fully follow how that whole thing went down and I feel like it could’ve been explained a little better. (I also wanted to know what happened to the whole business with Ethan’s fractured soul, did he get put back together?)
Other than a few open questions at the end of the story though, this book was quite fascinating. I loved the new world that Ethan got to experience as a dead guy, it was very interesting. Great read and what a great series. I would definitely recommend.
I’ve discovered by reviewing the author’s website too that there are 2 novellas connected with this series, one of which leads into the next series starter “Dangerous Creatures.” Stay tuned for reviews of these novellas, I’ll be reading those next!
Link to author website: http://beautifulcreaturesauthors.com/
Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Redemption-Creatures-Kami-Garcia/dp/0316123536/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1398170512
Rebeccabookreview 