Book Review: Darkness Becomes Her - Kelly Keaton

DARKNESS BECOMES HER:

Published: February 22, 2011

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Format: Hardcover

Page Count: 273 pages

Source: Borrowed

Ari can’t help feeling lost and alone. With teal eyes and freakish silver hair that can’t be changed or destroyed, Ari has always stood out. And after growing up in foster care, she longs for some understanding of where she came from and who she is.

Her search for answers uncovers a message from her long dead mother: Run. Ari can sense that someone, or something, is getting closer than they should. But it’s impossible to protect herself when she doesn’t know what she’s running from or why she is being pursued.

She knows only one thing: she must return to her birthplace of New 2, the lush rebuilt city of New Orleans. Upon arriving, she discovers that New 2 is very...different. Here, Ari is seemingly normal. But every creature she encounters, no matter how deadly or horrifying, is afraid of her.

Ari won’t stop until she knows why. But some truths are too haunting, too terrifying, to ever be revealed.

Going into DARKNESS BECOMES HER, the first chapter really swept me off of my feet. Our protagonist, Ari, goes to a Mental Institution to find where her mother has been for Ari's entire life. She then finds out that her mother committed suicide six months after she gave up Aria. But she committed suicide because she was imagining snakes trying to crawl into her head.

Ari then finds a box in the Institution that belonged to her mother. There was a note inside the box telling Ari that she is very different and that she needs to run. And also, never to trust anybody. So now in a place called New 2 (which was once New Orleans), we follow Ari in a house with other strange kids.

To be honest, DARKNESS BECOMES HER was a very big disappointment. I thought it would be action packed and just a kick-butt novel. It did have some action scenes, but for some reason, I felt that it dragged on and on. 

Kelly Keaton's writing style just made me want to step away from the novel. I'm okay with curse words in books, but when there is at least ten cuss words in each chapter, we need to step back and take a breather, okay? 

The characters honestly bugged the crap out of me. I honestly thought Ari was super whiny at times, like when something happened, I never heard the end of it from Ari. I just don't like her character. And then Sebastian was very bipolar. One minute, he hated Ari and wanted nothing to do with her, and then the next minute, he wants to help and save her? No. That is not how it works. Stick to one mood and one mood only Mr. Change-Up. 

I thought that some stuff in DARKNESS BECOMES HER could have been removed and something a little bit better could have been added here and there. Some points in the book, it was really fasted paced and I loved it, and then the next three chapters would have absolutely no purpose to the story. I'm sorry, but this was a huge disappointment for me.

Overall, Kelly Keaton's DARKNESS BECOMES HER really let me down. It was a good novel, but it wasn't the best I've ever read. I'm not sure whether or not I'll be picking up A BEAUTIFUL EVIL.

My Rating:   

Read at your own risk.