Review: Death and the Girl He Loves (Darklight, #3)

Author: Darynda Jones
Series: Darklight, #3
Release date: October 8th 2013
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Paperback, 272 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: The Book Depository

The fate of the world is not something a girl wants on her shoulders, and that is especially true for Lorelei McAlister. Unfortunately for her, that is exactly where the world’s fate has decided to take up residence. Lorelei has seen firsthand the horrors that lie beneath our everyday world. And those horrors are getting her friends killed. Because of this, she agrees to leave the sanctity of her hometown and is sent to a different world entirely. A boarding school. But even here she is being watched. Someone knows what she is. What she carries inside her soul. And on top of that she’s seeing visions. This is nothing new for Lorelei. But these visions are something more: death, destruction, and the end of the world. Lorelei must face the fact that there are people who want her dead, and no matter where she goes, no matter how far she runs, the lives of her friends and family are in mortal peril. Lucky for her, her friends and family include the handsome Angel of Death, a fiercely protective half-angel, and a ragtag group of loyal supporters who aren’t afraid to get a little dirty in the name of fighting pure evil.

Death and the Girl he Loves appears to be the last book in Darynda Jones’ Darklight series (or apparently a trilogy – I must have been living under a rock), and as such, it is the best one by far. The first two books have been pleasant enough, but not extraordinary or even particularly memorable. With this third book, however, I can say that my opinion of the entire trilogy and of Darynda as a YA author went up a notch.

Still, the improvement didn’t erase the fact that this trilogy felt forced from the very beginning, almost like Darynda wrote it because she felt she needed to for some reason, and never really took the time to think things through. In all honesty, I never felt that she put her heart into it like I feel with her Charley Davidson series. This was more of a byproduct, here because someone somewhere thought Darynda needs to write for a younger audience too.

The thing is, it doesn’t suit her, it really doesn’t. She shines the brightest when she can let loose, make borderline inappropriate jokes full of sexual innuendo, all of which YA simply doesn’t allow. So while this was pleasant and entertaining, it was a far cry from Darynda’s usual standard.

I suppose it took placing Lorelei into an entirely unfamiliar environment to make this series somewhat more interesting for me. I didn’t think I’d appreciate her being taken away from everything and everyone she knows, but without her grandparents, Brooklyn, Glitch and even Jared, I finally got a better sense of her as a character and I must say I started to appreciate her more. Lorelei always seemed so young to me, which is part of the reason why I never warmed up to her entirely, but this time, I felt closer to her than ever.

In the first part of the book, Lorelei is hiding in an elite school in a different state and under a different name. Then she starts getting constant visions about the end of the world and she realizes that she accomplished nothing by leaving her home and her friends. In fact, her grandparents’ decision just made things worse. So she goes back and she rejoins the Order in the attempt to stop the gates of hell from opening and swallowing world as we know it.

The final battle was perhaps a bit choppy and awkward, but it did result in what I appreciate the most – a long Happily Ever After I could bask in to my heart’s content. I think it’s fairly obvious that I have some mixed feelings about this trilogy as a whole, but I do think it’s worth reading. Even subdued, Darynda’s humor is better than most, and as I always say, she doesn’t take herself too seriously, which is a quality I certainly appreciate. Also, Jared’s really hot, so there's that to consider.

A copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher for review purposes. No considerations, monetary or otherwise, have influenced the opinions expressed in this review.