The Damned by Renee Ahdieh – Review

Published: July 7, 2020

Publisher: G.P Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Series: The Beautiful #2

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Pages: 456 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 1.5/5.0

Synopsis:
Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien.

Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can’t quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn’t know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she’s not quite ready to learn.

Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment for centuries. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.

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Can I just unread this book? Because it was awful. It genuinely changed in tone so much from the first book that it’s like it wasn’t the same series anymore!

Starting off, I was hopeful. Bastien was turned into a vampire and is not coping well with his transition. Celine isn’t coping quite well either, since she gave up her memories of Bastien in order to save him. It seemed like it would be a great throwback to angsty teen romance.

And then it changed so much and it was out of nowhere and frankly, the quality instantly declined. I speculate that this is largely due to this going from an intended duology to a four book series. It needed more filler to extend the series. It turned into the cheesiest of stories – Celine becomes special due to her parentage and not just because she’s mentally tough, and then we take a trip into fairyland. Fairyland was mentioned in the first book, but honestly I could have done without exploring it in this instance. 

This was a book I probably should have DNF’d, but I continued to hope that it would end okay. I can say for certainty that this is a series I won’t be continuing.