This sequel to Beautiful Creatures, while engrossing, suffers a bit for me under the weight of its mythology. Although Ethan and Lena evaded Lena’s potential fate as a Dark Caster at the end of Beautiful Creatures, Lena is just as confused as ever in Beautiful Darkness, suffering from the weight of her guilt over a loved one’s untimely death and fearing that her seventeenth birthday will now bring the determination of her fate. As Lena begins to avoid Ethan, hanging out instead with the eerie, inscrutable John Breed, Ethan is pulled even deeper into the Caster world beneath the town of Gatlin. Aided by Link, Ridley, and Liv, Marian’s new apprentice, Ethan must figure out how to stop Lena from leaving him–and Gatlin–forever. While the reappearance of old characters was welcome and the new characters were well-integrated into the already established universe, I felt like there was almost too much mythology in this sequel, too many details piled on to one another. Nevertheless, Garci and Stohl excel at both world-building and sensory details, creating a vivid world that leaps from the page.

A fascinating compilation of intriguing recent scientific studies of child development that purports to upend tradition thinking about both childhood and parenting. The authors reveal why lying is actually a good thing in children, how praising children can end up backfiring, why parents should speak to their children openly and honestly about race, and what exactly encourages optimal and advanced language development in children. Narrator and co-author Po Bronson has a warm, engaging voice that truly invites the reader in to his fascinating research, and the book itself is quite accessible. While some of the advice that claimed to be revelatory in fact seemed like plain common sense to me, NurtureShock was nevertheless an intriguing read.