Bookaholics book club: Dangerous creatures

Dangerous creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Dangerous creatures book one

Available now

www.penguin.co.uk

What's it about?

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.

My review

If you were worried that Dangerous creatures wouldn't live up to the original Beautiful creatures series then fear not! Because it is just as good, I was hooked all the way through, and that ending, oh my god that ending!
I've always had a little bit of a nerd crush on Link so I was really excited to hear there would be a new series following him, its actually more about Ridley, who I did like also and I came to really like her in Dangerous creatures. She's so much different to Lena and Link is a lot different to Ethan so this book had a completely different tone to the others whilst still remaining true to the world. I enjoyed that it wasn't set in Gatlin, though I miss the place, it was good to expand on the Caster world, to meet some new characters and learn more about their different abilities.
As usual, Garcia and Stohl's writing blends seamlessly, they clearly both have voices that go together well so that you can't tell that the book is written by two authors and they tell a good story. The pacing was and build up was good.
Spoilers: I didn't love who turns out the be the bad guys to be honest, I'd have preferred something completely new rather than the same old bad guy because I thought it kind of took away some of the finality of the original series and it also stops it from being a series that can stand alone from that so readers looking to start with Dangerous creatures as their introduction to the Caster world will find themselves confused and have parts of the Beautiful creatures series spoiled for them. End of spoilers.
Other than that though, I loved it! I loved Link, as usual and it was great to see a new, sometimes vulnerable side of Ridley, I really feel like I know her better now. I'm not sure if the big cliff hanger ending was necessary but I guess I'll find out just as soon as I get my hands on book two... is it next year yet?