Review: Beautiful Chaos

Goodreads Summary: Ethan Wate thought he was getting used to the strange, impossible events happening in Gatlin, his small Southern town. But now that Ethan and Lena have returned home from the Great Barrier, strange and impossible have taken on new meanings. Swarms of locusts, record-breaking heat, and devastating storms ravage Gatlin as Ethan and Lena struggle to understand the impact of Lena's Claiming. Even Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals is affected -- and their abilities begin to dangerously misfire. As time passes, one question becomes clear: What -- or who -- will need to be sacrificed to save Gatlin?

For Ethan, the chaos is a frightening but welcome distraction. He's being haunted in his dreams again, but this time it's not Lena -- and the mysterious figure is following him out of his dreams and into his everyday life. Worse, Ethan is gradually losing pieces of himself -- forgetting names, phone numbers, even memories. He doesn't know why, and he's afraid to ask.

Sometimes there's no going back. And this time there won't be a happy ending.

This is the volume of the Caster Chronicles that I've been waiting for, the one that finally packed the emotional punch that stirred up all the feels and lived up to the intense plotline that the authors have crafted. I mean, I've really enjoyed the previous two novels [though the first one did take me awhile to get through] but they didn't quite resonate...they were great stories, had fun characters, and mind-blowing storylines but that extra little punch to give me the KO wasn't quite there...until now.

The writing was absolutely brilliant! Why? The reader is just as lost as the characters. You feel as if you're aimlessly wandering along with them. nothing is making sense. Nothing is coming together until it does for them. You're not readaing their story so much as living it. This is AMAZING. I love it when an author [or in this case, authors] allow the reader to get this lost in the story, to become part of it, to become someone whom the character is not only narrating too but make it so that it feels like you're there right alongside them the entire way. BRAVO!


Great cast of characters, even though you don't get as much time with all of them you still feel them and know they are there. You get all of the usual subjects, all of whom have grown since when we first met them back in Beautiful Creatures, but a few surprises just to keep things spicy. I love how deep these characters are, and I don't mean quite in the philosophical sense [though they have that going for them too...how could they not with the whole light/dark thing?] but the fact that they are so VERY three dimensional to the point of being real.

One of the themes that really stuck out to me in this novel was the blending of light and dark, good and evil. I loved that this was finally made a major feature of the novel. That the two coexist. No one is all one thing. There is a lot of gray in the world and this novel brings that home. It's been building up since the very beginning and this novel, this novel finally brings it to the head and you just know that things are going to go down and go crazy in the fourth volume of the Caster Chronicles...and because of this book, I CANNOT WAIT to get my hands on it.

5/5