A Beautiful Dark by Jocelyn Davies

On the night of Skye's seventeenth birthday, she meets two enigmatic strangers. Complete opposites;like fire and ice;Asher is dark and wild, while Devin is fair and aloof. Their sudden appearance sends Skye's life into a tailspin. She has no idea what they want, or why they seem to follow her every move only that their presence coincides with a flurry of strange events. Soon she begins to doubt not just the identity of the two boys, but also the truth about her own past.

In the dead of a bitingly cold Colorado winter, Skye finds herself coming to terms with the impossible secret that threatens to shatter her world. Torn between Asher, who she can't help falling for, and Devin, who she can't stay away from, the consequences of Skye's choice will reach further than the three of them could ever imagine.

A huge weakness of mine is comparing books of similar genres. It's awful and I've been wrong to do it before (see my review of Divergent) and it normally just bites me in the butt. This was the case for me when reading A Beautiful Dark. Having read reviews for this book previously I already knew going in that this was a book about Angels and automatically I thought of the Hush Hush series (a favorite of mine!) Now, you can see how trying to compare any book to this series is completely unfair, and unfortunately it didn't live up to such high expectations.

A Beautiful Dark centers around Skye, an orphaned teenager experiencing strange occurrences such as flashes of silver eyes and destroying thermostats without touching them. Growing up, Skye has been oblivious to what she truly is until meeting 'cousins' Devin and Asher. These guys are strangely competitive when it comes to winning Skye's attention and we soon learn that they have their personal and strategic reasonings why.

The storyline itself wasn't the problem for me. It wasn't very original, but it wasn't poorly executed either. I enjoyed the struggles of light vs. dark (not necessarily good vs. evil). The background plot of how Skye came to be was really creative and definitely added a quality of mystery as to what sort of powers and which side of the battle she'd choose.

For me, the issue of this story had to do with character and relationship development. I loved Skye and her best friend Cassie, their friendship was portrayed perfectly. I especially loved the balance between laid back Skey and drama filled Cassie. Their bantering back and forth was hilarious! However, when it came to Skye and her love triangle with Asher and Devin I was left wanting a little more. Maybe it was because everything took place in this one book and therefore seemed a little rushed, but I found it very disheartening how Skye so easily fell for not one guy, but two. I did like that Skye had a lot of inner struggles between the two guys, it made everyting a bit realistic, but her wishy washy feelings for the two for most of the book bugged me. I can't entirely blame Skye though for not being able to pick between Devin and Asher, if it wasn't for Devin's complete lack of personality, I probably wouldn't have been able to choose either which is a shame because I love being sucked in to a good book relationship.

The ending of the book is what saved this story for me and brought this book up from 3 to 4 stars out of 5. Davies was able to pull the story together and create such a chaotic mess between Skye, Asher, and Devin that really got the blood pumping and wheels turning in my head. Jsut when I thought I knew what was going to happen, everything just blew up in my face. I love when a book can surprise me it was just frustrating that I got hooked at the very end! I will be checking out the sequel to learn more about Skye, Asher and Devin!