Review: A Darkness Strange and Lovely

A DARKNESS STRANGE AND LOVELY
Something Strange and Deadly #2
Susan Dennard
Paranormal Young Adult
406 pages
HarperTeen
Available now
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Amazon)
With her brother dead and her mother insane, Eleanor Fitt is alone. Even the Spirit-Hunters—Joseph, Jie, and the handsome Daniel—have fled to Paris. So when Eleanor hears the vicious barking of hounds and see haunting yellow eyes, she fears that the Dead, and the necromancer Marcus, are after her.

To escape, Eleanor boards a steamer bound for France. There she meets Oliver, a young man who claims to have known her brother. But Oliver harbors a dangerous secret involving necromancy and black magic that entices Eleanor beyond words. If she can resist him, she’ll be fine. But when she arrives in Paris, she finds that the Dead have taken over, and there’s a whole new evil lurking. And she is forced to make a deadly decision that will go against everything the Spirit-Hunters stand for.

In Paris, there’s a price for this darkness strange and lovely, and it may have Eleanor paying with her life.

MY THOUGHTS
A Darkness Strange and Lovely picks up a few months after the events of Something Strange and Deadly, the title aptly suggesting we'll find life for Eleanor a bit darker than it was previously. Our hearts instantly go out to her as her loneliness wraps around our necks with all the comfort of a garrote wire, slowly biting into our skin as the weight of death, loss and guilt continues to press in. Ms. Dennard does a beautiful job of reminding us exactly what happened to Eleanor and the Spirit Hunters at the end of the last book, thankfully not leaving us floundering as we struggle to remember, but also not simply dropping a summary of book one in our laps either. Instead she easily integrates a few clues to spark our memories here and there in the opening chapters before whisking us away to begin the grittier second leg of Eleanor's journey with the Dead.

Eleanor is a changed young woman from the girl we met initially in book one, a bit beaten down by the rather horrific past few months and the lingering whispers and rumors she encounters on a daily basis as Philadelphia society thrives on her misfortune, but she never wallows or pities herself, always moving one foot in front of the other even if the direction those steps take her is not necessarily one we want to see her travel. Forced to explore the ins and outs of necromancy thanks to an exceedingly powerful villain who simply cannot let her be, we find ourselves unable to look away as Eleanor embraces that which destroyed her brother, a myriad of interesting questions raised as we watch her dabble in what we previously understood to be dangerous and evil. It's unclear to us as she wades further and further into the murky waters of necromancy whether it's the type of absolute power that corrupts absolutely, or if perhaps the black and white view of the Spirit Hunters is in fact a bit more gray, leaving us morbidly fascinated and hoping Eleanor remains as strong through this latest trial as she has been thus far.

While questions as to the ramifications of Eleanor's newfound talent with necromancy keep our minds alert and invested, her complicated relationship with Daniel ensures our hearts are equally involved. Though they are not reunited for some time in this second installment, the tension between them when they finally come face to face again is palpable, her hurt and confusion as to his blunt admission at the end of book one seeming to rise to the surface of the pages and reverberate straight through us. Their romance continues to stutter, every step they take forward quickly followed by several steps back, but it's not in the irritating way of so many sequels where one person tries to the push the other away in order to protect them, rather all the things they need to say to one another as well as the complications of her necromancy form a labyrinth they both struggle to find their way through.

Overall A Darkness Strange and Lovely is a solid second installment, moving things forward both physically and emotionally for Eleanor while setting us up for a much larger showdown in the next book. The smaller villain and the case of the Dead in Paris is solved, leaving us satisfied that we didn't invest all our time in these four hundred pages just to be left hanging, but it's also abundantly clear that even bigger and badder things are on their way, hungrier and deadlier than anything we've seen thus far.

Rating: 4/5

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.