Darkness Falls by Mia James

Release Date: 1st March, 2012

Publisher: Gollancz

Pages: 352pgs

The Story

April Dunne is having a rough time. There are vampires in her school. Not Goths, or Emos in fancy dress. Dangerous, blood-sucking semi-immortals. They run the school. They pretend to be students at it. And they're using their influence to recruit smart, rich students - aka 'bleeders' - to their own cause. What is that cause? April isn't sure. But she knows they killed a rock star for it, and innocents who got too close to the truth. One of them almost killed her. But that's nothing to what's coming next.

Gabriel, her kinda-boyfriend, is dying and unless April can find a cure then not only is she going to be boyfriendless, she's also going to lose one of her major allies in the school. And she really needs allies. Because it turns out April has an ability of her own, one that could prove leathal to the 'Suckers' who've taken over the school. If any of them figure out what she is, then losing her boyfriend will be the least of her problems . . .

The Review

DARKNESS FALLS is the second installment in the Ravenwood series and the book picks up right after the events of By Midnight. Now for me, I really enjoyed the first book (though I wasn't exactly a 'huge' fan of it but it was still good) but I was very hesitant in starting this sequel because so many sequels lately have fell flat for me, especially in regards to the storylines and its characters. As much as I wanted to love this sequel and have everything prove me wrong, unfortunately I was disappointed in this sequel even though it had some good points as well. Sad but true.

For the majority of the book, I felt like nothing much had happened within the first 200 pages and I wished there was more to get me into the book. Mostly I found the pacing and the romantic relationships were the main problems for the book. When I say problems I mean there was a lot of running around going on, a lot of characters talking to various people that I found were quite unnecessary, and there were others things like figuring out answers and other related events that were in place just to give the story enough amounts of mystery and tension . . . so like I mentioned above, I was quite disappointed. But in saying that, once you reach closer to the final pages, the pacing soon begins to pick up and excite me by delivering such a great finish!

However, while the ending pleased me, but the only other problem I had was in the romance department involving the two main characters, April and Gabriel. I loved them in the first book (I got why people fell in love with them too) but in this sequel . . . not so much. Okay so we have Gabriel who is the typical gorgeous, sexy, brooding, and mysterious young fellow with a lot of hidden spark underneath it all, but as much as you love his looks as described in the book, and even his romantic feelings that he constantly expresses throughout the book, but in the end his overall relationship with April's character was a little 'complicated'. Gabriel . . . I give you praise for being there for April, but I cannot forgive you for always giving April a chance when she has so little trust in you. Personally I felt like April, the main heroine of this story, jumped too many conclusions and rather too quickly too when it came to Gabriel, and considering she's supposed to be in love with the guy . . . I just didn't feel the connection between them as I've previously seen in the first book, By Midnight. There just wasn't enough to make me feel satisfied.

Overall, while the majority of the book had disappointed me on a couple of levels but I still enjoyed that explosive ending of Mia James's which will make all readers happy. If you love a book that's Buffy meets a little bit of Veronica Mars (only with a mystery revolving around the supernatural) or have already started this series, then DARKNESS FALLS is definitely your kind of book!

The Rating

2/5 stars