Thank you to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for sending me an eARC of The Damned in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I will start by saying that I did like the author’s writing style, it was easy to capture my attention and kept me reading. Also, I think that there are many good ideas in this book series, and that I thought The Damned to be a more solid book than The Beautiful.

I also enjoyed the development of the characters and back story, something that has been missing in the previous book. Also, Celine and Bastien’s love story sounds more credible now.

However, I have a lot of issues with the story, which became more difficult to ignore as I read more of the book. Here we go:

- So Émilie loves her brother so much that she goes deeper into a burning building to save him, and now she wants him dead? I get that she wanted to be saved by her uncle and all and ended up being saved by a werewolf, but… she wants her brother dead as a revenge against her uncle? She ran deeper into a burning building! How can she want him dead now? No logic whatsoever. Her character and involvement in the plot seems so forced, and adds nothing to the story.. the feud and the developments could have been achieved in a different way, she also gets almost no air time in this book and when she does it to repeat the same story. I did not buy this part of the plot

- In this book Bastien gained an internal voice not very different from Louis’ in Anne Rice’s novels… I could not be happy about this… and this is actual a common theme throughout the book… let’s see:
a. The revelation that Celine is part fey, and the fact that Michael is a in-line-to-be-werewolf sounds so much like The Southern Vampire Mysteries.

b. At some point when the Lady of the Vale gives Celine the light bauble and said “In moments of unrelenting gloom, let this be your light”, I thought to myself, wait a second I’ve read this somewhere else…. Yep when Galandriel gave Frodo the light of Eärendil's star she said “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”

- As I said At least we get a bit of back story. Even if the story of the Sylvian Vale, Sylvian Wyld, the courts and the feuds and all that seem flimsy and poorly constructed. When we get to go to the Vale and the Wyld, this construction becomes more solid and I got myself interested in reading more about it, but it was just in and out, literally. At the end of the book I felt that this was rushed so the story could finish where it did. So yes, the end of the book felt rushed and I wished the author made the book a bit longer and gave the journey through the Wyld, for example a few more pages.

- Also the sex scene seemed forced into the book and ate a lot of the Vale air time. I’m sure we could’ve waited for a better sex scene in the next book and would be happy for the happy couple to be reunited with a kiss and a loving embrace in this book.


I really wanted to have loved this book but cannot overlook all its faults, and this is the end of the road for me for this series. However, I do see this series being a successful for most readers of the genre, specially if they have just started on Vampire books, and I will give it 2 stars for the potential.

Where the first book in this series didn't quite live up to expectations of sexy vampires, this sequel definitely walks the Anne Rice path with style. It's a bit of a slow burn and you're given a lot of information early on, but over all this was an immersive and beautiful read.