Book Highlight: Dangerous Creatures

This spin off duology from Kim Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures quartet follows fan favorites, Wesley “Link” Lincoln and Ridley Duchaness. The adorkable wannabe rocker and the emotionally-stunted bad girl of the Duchaness clan. This is mainly Ridley’s story as you can tell from the beginning that she is fully aware of her Dark Caster. She makes no bones that she is not the saintly princess you’d want to take home to your mom, she’s the siren that will tear your castle down.

And if you’re like me, that kind of intro makes for my favorite kind of anti-hero. She knows she’s cursed and most of the time she embraces it, but you can also see the underlying sadness and bitterness that comes from being seen as the “bad one” almost all your life. What can you do but embrace it? Even if it warps your self-image and ability to believe that you’re capable of good relationship. Well. . . there’s a bit more to just Ridley’s insecurity in her relationship with Link.

She has an underlying connection with the equally alluring and “broken” club owner, Lennox Gates. He’s the reason why Ridley and Link head over to NY for Link to make his big break. However, Ridley may have pulled some strings- a legit bad thing that will be the downfall of RidLink. As well as herself as Lennox is involved with other villains (that you remember from the original quartet) who targeting the Siren for his collection.

I know I’m not explaining this very well, but it’s hard to talk about without spoilers or if you’re unfamiliar with the Beautiful Creatures quartet. But the main hook is exploring a girl’s insecurity and self loathing in a deeply emotional journey of possession, obssession and gilded cages. It’s as compelling as Lennox Gates who really gives Link a run for his money. But don’t worry Link gets plenty of chances to shine too, showing why he is the rockstar of Gatlin County plus an edgy cast of new supporting characters too alongside the old.

Supposedly it’s a trilogy but since it’s been several years, it seems to be unfortunately canned which is sad because it was left on a huge cliffhanger.