A Darkness Strange and Lovely by Susan Dennard | Book Review #120

Hello lovelies! Today’s post is a review for A Darkness Strange and Lovely, which is the second book in the Something Strange and Deadly trilogy by Susan Dennard. Below there will be the book’s synopsis, so this is a spoiler warning!!!

“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 sees 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.”

A Darkness Strange and Lovely is a book that I had been looking forward to reading, even if I hadn’t thought that before starting to read it.

I’m always wary of reading Historical themed books because they just bother me so much. With this trilogy though, I always seem to forget that these books take place over 100 years ago. I managed to read this book in one go, and I was actually surprised by that A Darkness Strange and Lovely was a good read.

I still found that the end-game was slightly predictable. Which is very contradicting, because I thought that I had out who the bad guy was, but there were little hints here and there. Really, all over the place, and I didn’t catch on to who the “real” bad guy was before the end of this book.

There are still problems in this book though. Like how there’s still the love interest, but now it’s just…put to the side. And even Eleanor thought that as well! How their time for their love to even have the chance to bloom is always put to the side because they’ve just come from a battle or something.

I’d say that by the end of this book, I felt like there was more action to this addition to the story, than the last book! With a new character been introduced, it makes everything seems new and old at the same time. Who Oliver is as a character is so painfully obvious, but I understand that in the time period that this story takes place in, she wouldn’t get it right away.

I’m honestly really looking forward to reading the next book, Strange and Ever After.

‘Being in a library was like a gentle balm. No matter the city, no matter the time, you always know what you’ll find. My home was halfway around the globe, yet here was something as familiar to me as myself.’

Thank you for reading my review of A Darkness Strange and Lovely! If you want to check out this book on Goodreads, you can do so by clicking the cover above!

Thanks again!
Adele