Beautiful Darkness Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.

Sometimes life-ending.
Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.
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Have you ever noticed in the second book of a series the love interest always leaves?  Because I have and it drives me insane.  New Moon, Beautiful Darkness, Tiger's Quest, Kissing Coffins, Frostbite, Dreamless, I could make a list a mile long of all the squeals that the male or female lead in the case of Beautiful Darkness are missing from most of the book.
Other than Lena being gone through out most of the book it was pretty good.  I must say I did like the first one better, but this is up there with it.  I like how Kami and Margaret expanded a little more into the Caster world.  We got to see more of the tunnels and find out about more of what type of Casters there were in the world.  We met more characters and we got to learn more about Macon and Ethan's mom, Lila.  
When Lena leaves Ethan it's the beginning of summer break and Ethan thinks that everything will be okay, sort of.  He's trying to cheer Lena up after Macon's death, sorry if I spoiled it for you, but I won't tell you how he dies.  She thinks it's all her fault that Macon's dead, and she says she can feel herself going Dark.  She's afraid that she's going to hurt Ethan and she doesn't want to do that to him.  So she runs away on the back of some other guys motorcycle.  I stared at the book completely dumbfounded when she did that.

Ethan goes after her of course because she's hanging around Ridley and you know that's not going to end well.  When Ethan does find her at some Caster club in the Tunnels she tells him to leave her alone and I think she tells him that she's going to the Great Barrier.  I'm not sure if Lena tells him that or if what someone else, it's been a while since I read this one...  So Ethan and his best friend Link and this new British girl Olivia, I'll tell you more about her later on in this blog post.  She's a keeper in training, Marian is training her.  Olivia wants to know more and see more, so she sort of tags along.  Then Ridley joins them because she doesn't like what John, that's the guy who she rode off on the back of the motorcycle with, and he's taking her to Sarafine and other Dark Casters.  Ethan, Link, Ridley, and Olivia are on the way to save her.  In the end they do, and biiiiiig spoiler alert: Macon comes back to life!  I was so happy because he's one of my favorite characters, I like his sassiness.  Ethan has to let him out of the Archlight, still not quite sure what that is exactly, but I know it can trap people inside.  Ethan's mom put him there.  And that's all I'm going to say.  I don't want to ruin the whole book for you.
So Olivia is a new characters as I said above.  She is Marian's apprentice.  Olivia is studying to be a Keeper like Marian, so she's in Gatlin and she sort of falls for Ethan.  Ethan is a little on the fence about Olivia because even though Lena is a little AWOL at the moment he still loves her.  So nothing really happens between them, but you know Olivia wants to happen.  And I'm like, 'Hell to the no!  He's Lena's!'

Link was Link.  He was his crazy funny self.  He was crazy about Ridley like he was the last time he saw her.  No matter how Ridley acts toward him I think she really has feelings for him.  The girl can deny it all she wants to, but I know she feels the same way.
If I were you I would read this series.  It is a amazing series and if you like anything that has to do with the supernatural than this is your series.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“High school sucked. It was a universal truth, and whoever said these were supposed to be the best years of your life was probably drunk or delusional.”

“Stairway to Hell or Yellow Brick Road? Why don't you give your Magic 8 Ball a shake and see if it's ready to play again.” 

“You can read minds, and you didn't tell me?” Link stared at me like he just found out I was the Silver Surfer. He rubbed his head nervously. “Hey, man, all that stuff about Lena? I was yankin’ your chain.” He looked away. “Are you doin’ it now? You're doin’ it, aren't you? Dude, get out of my head.” He backed away from me and into the bookshelf.  “I can't read your mind, you idiot.”

 “Great. Another girl with a notebook.”

“So he's like a human compass? As far as superpowers go, that's pretty lame. You're like the Caster equivalent of Aquaman.” 

“Maybe Ridley was like chicken pox; you could only catch it once.”

Overview:
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company 
First Published:   October 12th, 2010
Pages:  503 
Series Book: Yes
Will I Read The Next One: Yes, I will.
~ Ariadne
P.S.  I know there was a movie for the first one, but I'm not sure if there's going to be one for this one.  I hope there is because I liked the first movie.  Some might complain because it didn't follow the book, but if you don't judge it by the way it wasn't like the book it was a pretty good movie.  So my fingers are crossed to hoping there is a second movie.  
NOTE:  If you want to see the trailer for the first movie just go to my review of Beautiful Creatures to see it.