Review: Black Satin by Rae Hachton

Pretty in Black #2

Summary via Goodreads:

"He leaned me back, his hand entwined in mine, his other arm beneath my back. His long dark hair brushed against my skin like satin, as he pressed his ruby lips to my neck. My breathing was erratic, my pulse raced. 'Are you ready for forever?'

A race against time to save the one she loves. Will she make it?

The Cello

       Marcus decides to leave in order to give Ellie the life she deserves. Ellie Piper discovers that Marcus is a neolistic vampire and while he is away, she develops feelings for a gargoyle that will test her love for Marcus. 

If you weren’t who you thought you were? What if your whole life changed in an instant and you were released to a new identity?

What if you were forced to kill the one you love? What if everything you knew wasn’t real, and you awaken to a new world?

What if love could take you to unknown places? How beautiful is death really?

Marcus Marble has disappeared from Ellie’s life, and she needs answers to questions and he’s the only one who can answer them. How is her sister back from the dead, and why is Ellie still alive? When Ellie realizes Marcus isn’t coming back, she is forced to move on with her life the best way she can, in hopes of finding the answers herself, but when people at school begin to be viciously murdered, and Giles reveals to her a life-changing secret, she decides to investigate the possible truth of it. What she discovers is more than she thought she would. The only time Ellie feels normal is when she’s around Walter, the new guy at school. And normal is how she wants to feel, now that Marcus is gone from her life. But Walter may not be all that he seems, either, and she just might spiral into an even more dark world, she never thought possible. And when it occurs to her that Marcus has made the decision to pass on through to the afterlife, during the Risorgimento, she races against time to stop him, while knowing she has feelings for Walter, too.

Will she make it in time to stop Marcus from passing through, and if she does, what will she tell Walter? Her heart will have to make the final decision. But will the choice be worth dying for?"

Review:

The sequel to Pretty in Black is another beautiful tale that picks up where the first left off. Ellie is missing Marcus and wondering if she will ever see him again, trying to stay strong until that happens. Just as she starts to accept that she actually might never see her true love again and is trying to move on, Walter shows up in her life confusing her feelings.

This book focuses less on Ellie and Marcus, and more on the lore behind evermore's, the people who hunt them and the land of Nevermore. Which I found really interesting. I was glad that even though a new romantic interest was introduced for Ellie, it never felt like a real love triangle. Her heart was always yearning to be with Marcus again, even though she felt an attraction to Walter. It was a nice change in the whole "love triangle" thing that so many YA fiction books use. There was never really any question in my mind who she would choose.

Ellie finds out some interesting things about herself and her parents, and that they would be o.k. with her choosing to be with an Evermore. (I don't want to spoil things, it's a really nice plot twist that I just can't give away.) Ellie's character development was great. In the first book, she was a broken girl, desperate in needing a reason to be alive. And Marcus "unburied" her heart. In this book she becomes a true fighter, learning how to use her hunter's abilities.

Her attraction grows the longer she's around Walter, and when girls at her school start being murdered she finds herself as a target. When it's revealed that the person killing people is a bloodthirsty evermore sent to murder Ellie so that she won't be able to be with Marcus, Walter shows up revealing himself to be a Gargoyle. Together they travel to the Land of Naught, where she is trained. After a battle with an army of bloodthirsty evermore, Ellie is reunited with Marcus where he proposes to her.

I think these books just might be some of my favorite ones ever. I just really don't know what it is that makes me love them so much. It could be that these books are so different from anything that I have ever read, especially as far as vampire stories go. And we all know how many of those are floating around. Too many.