Review: The Damned

Ｔｉｔｌｅ： The Damned

Ａｕｔｈｏｒ：Renee Ahdieh

Ｓｅｒｉｅｓ： Book 2

Ｒａｔｉｎｇ： ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

＊Ｎｏｔｅ：You can find the review for Book 1 here. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien.

Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can’t quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn’t know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she’s not quite ready to learn.

Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment for centuries. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.

“Real love may be a choice, but I plan to choose someone who steals the breath from my body and haunts my very dreams. That is the only kind of love worth having.”

I was so excited to continue this series after that exciting start in book 1. It left us with some very serious plot twists to follow up on. Although there were parts of this book I enjoyed, I don’t think I liked it nearly as much as the first book.

Bastien, now a vampire, attempts to cling to his humanity with every ounce of strength. He rebels against his uncle’s expectations and is determined to stay away from Celine so that she can lead a happy, safe life. I loved how determined he was to regain his human life, but I hated how impulsive and sometimes cruel he could be (especially toward Celine and his own friends). I understood why; he was full of so much anger after having this choice ripped away from him and he also wanted Celine to have a chance at a better life without him. I just didn’t enjoy it after he seemed to be making some positive character development in the last book because he took a bit of a step back in this one.

After it was revealed that Emilie was alive and behind the plot against her brother, I was looking forward to reading her POV. Her character made a lot of sense after we found out her backstory. It’s easy to see why her love for Bastien twisted into hate. As much as I appreciate her being well-written, I definitely hated her. At a certain point, all of that hate felt misdirected and I wanted her to come around and reconnect with her brother.

I also liked that with Emilie’s introduction, we were able to see more supernatural creatures (not just vampires). I liked learning about the werewolves and the history between them, but also about the fey world and the war in general. It was also a refreshing take on the traditional theme of vampires and werewolves being enemies. Usually when I see this idea used we can expect the characters to be love interests and an enemies-to-lovers romance, but in this case, they’re siblings and just enemies haha.

The biggest reason that I rated this book one star lower than the first was that it used a trope that I’m really not fond of: memory loss. Done right, it can be fun… but if it drags on too long, then it just comes off as lazy writing. The Damned falls into the second category. I think the rule of thumb for me is that memory loss should not make up more than a third of the book so that there’s room for new material. If the memory loss drags on more than that then the author has to work that much harder to make sure they offer new material otherwise it feels like a rewrite of the first. The Damned felt like too much of a repeat. Celine spent most of her time discovering the supernatural world (again) and falling for Bastien (again).

Emilie added some new material but it didn’t feel like enough. Even the “potential” romance between Celine and Michael wasn’t that exciting because it was obvious who she’d choose in the end (she already made this choice in the first book).

Another thing I didn’t like was that Bastien uncovered a really important piece of Celine’s past based on how someone laughed. I felt like the reveal should’ve been more built up but the delivery made it feel anticlimactic and lessened the impact. Overall, this was an interesting sequel but it still felt like too much of a repeat of the first book.