The Damned

De: Renée Ahdieh

Narrado por: Lauren Ezzo

Instant New York Times best-selling sequel to The Beautiful

Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly.

But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can't quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn't know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she's not ready to learn.

Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.

The Damned, Renée's latest installment in The Beautiful series is just as decadent, thrilling, and mysterious as her last, as she continues her most potent fantasy series yet.

©2020 Renée Ahdieh (P)2020 Listening Library

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Forbidden romance and harsh consequences set up this highly anticipated sequel that will leave you wanting so much more." (Seventeen.com)

"Expansive world building...romantic...steamy...Decadent escapism.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Forbidden love, sultry romance, and clashing immortal factions fill this sequel...[and] will keep readers engaged...For fans of vampire love stories.” (School Library Journal)

Narrator got in my nerves

Thee narrator was terrible. I struggled to get through because of it. The story was great though and I look forward to the next part of the story!

Wonderful story, amazing reading!

The story was great! The reading by Lauren Enzo was amazing!!! She really brings books to life with different voices, accents, and tones! What a wonderful combination!

Not the worst

I bought this not realizing it was the second of the series. so I checked out and read the first one. I never got into the story. Everything felt a little glossed over for me. I was hoping the performance for the audiobook would have snagged me into the series, as there are some fun elements.
Nope. Made it worse. I did not care for the performers choices. Which pulled me out of what little depth I got into the story.
The story itself did get kind of interesting 3/4's of the way through this book.
I can't quite place my finger on what is missing from this book for me. As I mentioned, there are good elements. Just not enough depth.

Wow!

What an ending, did not disappoint. I can’t wait for the next one. And the narration was excellent.

Boring Story but GREAT Narrator

I found this book pretty boring. It got interesting once it went into a different world but most of the time it’s just the characters monologuing their sadness which wouldn’t be a bad thing but it goes on and on and I want it to move on. Nice book cover and great narrator but boring story

A MUST read!

This story was FANTASTIC! The Beautiful, the first book in this series was slow moving and I admit I had to force myself to finish. But the author blew this book out of the water!!! I'm already planning on listening to it a second time I enjoyed it so much!
I cant wait for book 3!

I wanted a little.... more

Don’t get me wrong. This book is amazing. It surpassed the first by leaps and bounds, but there was a lot of pining versus actual love between the main pair, not enough of the characters that were left out of the little adventure a trio takes, and there wasn’t a eureka moment more of just suddenly overcoming the main issue in the book because, well, why not just suddenly get rid of the biggest plot in the book to wrap it up? All in all, still very good but the ending was a little more than frustrating in a not pleasant cliffhanging way and now I want the third book ASAP.
The positives are that it was amazing as usual from Renee Ahdieh, the characters were still pretty solid to how their personalities were originally along with deeper insight, lots of character development, and some great side plots.

Much better

This 2nd book is much better than the first! Flows much better! Glad I stuck it out. Now onto the next.

Better then Twilight

I feel like this book and series is everything I wanted twilight to be. The characters are more dynamic an interesting. You can relate to their internal struggles and growth. I also feel that the setting and magical world is so much more diverse and engaging. I love it!

Ezzo's Narration Makes a Messy Story a Rough Read

I really loved the first book, The Beautiful. I found Lauren Ezzo's narration to be serviceable there, but it was nothing to write home about. Through no fault of Ezzo's own, though, her performance here was, at best, distracting, and at worst, utterly laughable when it came to accent work and making some characters stand apart from one another.

This is a book which contains one of my greatest literary pet peeves in that it has multiple POV's, but, rather than all of these POV's being written in a consistent style (either first-person with immediate past tense, or third-person with present tense) the style will change between certain POV's and it is infuriating. What's more, the one first-person with present tense POV we get is Bastien's and, rather than hiring a man to read the only first-person chapters in the book, the producers make Ezzo read his chapters. This is not entirely an uncommon or unforgivable thing, but the most frustrating and grating part is that Bastien has a French accent and Ezzo's French accent sounds like a Swede who is constantly gagging over her words. It is truly one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had with an audiobook, and Ezzo's struggles with accents neither begin nor end with Bastien's chapters. There is a character who is meant to have a Yorkshire accent in this book, but no matter how good and "Close Enough to Yorkshire" the beginnings of Ezzo's sentences begin, they always devolve into something that sounds like a cowboy in a bad western.

Unfortunately, the combination of Ahdieh's confused switching in POV's and Ezzo's extremely poor accent work really made this a difficult experience and, if I hadn't wanted to find out what happened next so badly, I would not have made it to the end. The story is still one worth experiencing, I think, but if you've read The Beautiful and wish to find out what happens next, I'd certainly suggest skipping the audiobook on this one.