Beautiful Chaos

Beautiful Chaos - Margaret Stohl, Kami Garcia

These books just really drag for me. There are so many parts that I feel like I'm slogging through.

 

I continue to intensely dislike Ethan and Lena. Ethan started off the book complaining about how all his friends abandoned him, except Link. Honestly, after being in his head for 3 books now, I'm more impressed that he had friends to begin with considering he does nothing except look down on every single person that was supposedly his friend. Even with Link, Ethan can't help but put him down in his head when he refers to him. Trust me, Ethan, I got it the first few times that Link is not a good musician. Do you really have to remind me over and over and over again?

 

And then there's Lena. Her powers are acting up in this book. As in, sometimes when she's trying to do a simple spell, she does something completely different like set something on fire. Her aunt asks her to use her powers to make Ridley look like she's wearing something more appropriate to school, and Lena does it. Let me repeat that Lena has lost control of her powers and has accidentally set stuff on fire, but she agrees to do a completely unnecessary spell on Ridley that could have resulted in her setting Ridley on fire.

 

And putting Ethan and Lena together just makes things worse. I know I'm supposed to feel sorry for them that they can't touch without endangering Ethan's life. But the fact that they keep putting their hands all over each other constantly despite the great danger just makes it difficult to feel sorry for them when Ethan gets hurt. They know it will hurt (if not accidentally kill) him, but they do it anyways. Maybe I'd feel more sympathy if I actually liked either one of them, but I don't.

 

I was surprised to find myself disliking Link as well in this book. With his new powers, Link finds that Savannah is now super into him. He decides to go with it, despite kind of hating her. And the book frames this to try to make us feel sorry for Link for having to spend time with someone he hates. Sorry, not going to feel sorry for the guy who is using powers to make a girl like him, even if he doesn't mean to do so, and decides to just go with it. I would have felt bad for him if he had been trying to stop her, but just couldn't control it. It's the fact that he went along with it, but we were still supposed to feel sorry for him that I couldn't get behind. So I'm down to just liking Ridley, Liv, and John Breed.

 

Unlike the first two books, I felt this one was ridiculously predictable. Every mystery that they tried to solve or twist that the book threw at me, I had already figured out or called well in advance. And it took them forever to figure things out too. It just felt like a ton of stalling throughout the book.

 

I did like the ending of the book, although I don't think I was supposed to. What can I say?

Once I realized Ethan was going to die, I spent the whole book impatiently waiting for it to happen because I'm an awful person.

(show spoiler)

Not that it matters. The next book is almost certain to undo it anyways.