Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Release Date: May 20, 2014
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
ISBN: 9780316335522
Source: Netgalley
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A new series returns to the world of Beautiful Creatures. Some loves are cursed…others are dangerous.
Ridley Duchannes will be the first to tell you that she’s a bad girl. She’s Dark. She’s a Siren. You can never trust her, or even yourself when she’s around. Lucky for her, Wesley “Link” Lincoln can never seem to remember that; quarter Incubus or not, his heart is Mortal when it comes to Ridley. When Link heads to New York City to start a music career, Ridley goes along for the ride-and she has her own reasons. As if leaving small-town Gatlin for the big city, trying to form a band, and surviving life with a partially reformed Siren isn’t hard enough already, Link soon learns he has a price on his head that no Caster or Mortal can ever pay.
After reading Dangerous Dream (review here), I was really excited about reading Dangerous Creatures but I don’t think that this spin-off series is for me. Sure, this spinoff is supposed to be all about Ridley and Link but for me it was all about Ridley because she’s the more interesting character and the one that matters most. So. This story was exciting at first but quickly it just became interesting and then it became kind of sad to see Ridley yield towards a more normal, or mortal lifestyle for Link. Oh, the things we do for love. I could get past that but the thing is…there’ more…
That wasn’t my only issue. With two markers out, Ridley calculates her moves differently now. That’s to be expected of course. She’s bound to someone that’s not Link for a year because of a stupid mistake and now she has to pay. I just wasn’t a fan of Ridley foiling so easily. Not embracing the space that she’s in no matter how terrible. She’s less impulsive and more cautious. At this point, the NYC subway – or the people within it scare even Ridley. What? Really? In Dangerous Creatures, Ridley is… dare I say, boring. Sure, there are moments that I love in Dangerous Creatures but they were few and far between. The exact opposite of what Ridley is all about.
Ridley tries to normalize herself, even by getting a job (this, I found to be hysterical) and she also has secrets that bind her which severely limits the danger she typically gets into. I love change but I didn’t find the change to be in character with the Ridley I remember (having only read Beautiful Creatures). I know she’s grown since then and perhaps my limitation in reading the entire series at this point may impact what I think here? Though Ridley’s got a tough exterior and of course that comes from hiding her vulnerabilities but I felt like there wasn’t a healthy balance between the two here. It was more about her vulnerabilities than anything else. And that’s okay! Someone might enjoy that. For that, this was a great book. I just wanted an even balance is all.
Plainly put, I don’t like seeing Ridley without power. Even as a siren, she can still find herself in a place holding so little power. As we see here. Sure, it’s fun to see her be challenged. But Ridley seems like the type of person who would challenge or revel in anything and everything, even with her doubts and fears. She faces fear in the face. But with the markers and the secrets… she can’t pretend that she doesn’t care about certain things and maybe she has too much time on her hands here to think about those things. I absolutely love, love, love that Ridley has such an unhealthy relationship with the truth. I wish that had been challenged even more here.
All of this said, Garcia and Stohl are great storytellers and I found myself at the end of Dangerous Creatures in a matter of hours. This is definitely a different side of Ridley than I was expecting but that doesn’t mean this book wasn’t good. It’s a good book. I simply hope that in future installments of the series, the stakes are raised so much higher and Ridley goes back to being the (excuse me, but I don’t know any other way to say it), badass that we all know she is and love her for being. Ridley accepts the consequences of her mistakes (which is awesome to see) but that doesn’t mean she can’t continue to kick butt in her signature siren ways or challenge herself to evolve those ways. Have you read Dangerous Creatures? What did you think?
Dangerous Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is available now.