Early Review: Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Dangerous Creatures #1

A new series returns to the world of Beautiful Creatures. Some loves are cursed...others are dangerous.

Ridley Duchannes will be the first to tell you that she's a bad girl. She's Dark. She's a Siren. You can never trust her, or even yourself when she's around. Lucky for her, Wesley "Link" Lincoln can never seem to remember that; quarter Incubus or not, his heart is Mortal when it comes to Ridley. When Link heads to New York City to start a music career, Ridley goes along for the ride-and she has her own reasons. As if leaving small-town Gatlin for the big city, trying to form a band, and surviving life with a partially reformed Siren isn't hard enough already, Link soon learns he has a price on his head that no Caster or Mortal can ever pay.

Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthors of Beautiful Creatures, are back and casting another magical spell. Their signature mixture of mystery, suspense, and romance, along with a dash of fun and danger, will pull fans in and leave them begging for more.

I have to admit, prior to reading this book I wasn't the biggest Ridley or Link fans. I could still take or leave Link to be honest, but Ridley really grew on me. She's just so harsh and abrasive. While in my mind I knew she hadnt had things very easy, it was hard to remember that when I would see how she would treat others. Now however, after being in her head, I realize just how truly damaged and broken she is. She's in an almost constant battle with herself between her siren nature and what she wanted from her life. It's a struggle to balance her desire to be good with her true nature, and the fact that she cannot trust and good emotions due to her influential nature, well it's utterly heartbreaking. Suddenly it all made sense why she always did things to make people angry with her, negative emotions she could trust to be real, but any affection may not be. And sometimes something real even if it's negative is better than something fake. So that being said, seeing her try to be with Link is painful to watch because you know she's trying so hard, but yet everything keeps falling apart. As I said, Iink's not really my favorite character, but since he has the potential to make Ridley happy, he's alright in my book in the end.

Can I just say that I am 100% over cliffhangers? I mean prior to reading this book I wasn't the biggest fan of them, but this one seals the deal. To me cliffhangers most times feel like a marketing ploy to keep readers coming back. But I'd rather come back because a book sold me on its own merits rather than a driving need to find out what happened after a shocking ending. I just don't see the need to leave readers frustrated for months if not years until the next installment comes out, especially in this case as the series can more than stand on its own without the need for this. Granted, this could be the way the authors wanted to tell the story, with the shocking ending, but frankly it's turned me off and overall lessened the read for me. It's to the point where I'm seriously struggling with how to rate this book. Without the cliffhanger, a solid, well earned four, but the cliffhanger makes me want to knock it down to a two. That's how much it's frustrated me, but in the end I'm going to ignore the ending and look at the rest of the book as a whole to rate it.

One thing to note is that even though this is a spin off series, it really isn't the place to start reading this world. There is no recap, no explanation or back story, so if you haven't read the main series, you will probably be pretty lost. Even as myself, having read the previous series, I still felt just a bit lost and scrambling to remember everything, so I think at least a little recapping would have gone a long way. That being said and frustrations with the ending aside DANGEROUS CREATURES was a pretty good read for me. I loved seeing Ridley in a new light and want to see where things head next

(Received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley)

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