You can run from your past, but it will always catch up.

Nastasya has lived for hundreds of years, but for some reason it never seems to get any easier. She’s left behind her days of debauchery to find peace and forgiveness at River’s Edge, a safe haven for wayward immortals. There she’s uncovered her family’s epic history, reclaimed her magickal powers, and met Reyn, whom she dubs “the Viking god.” Just as she settles into her new life, Nastasya learns that her old friends might be in town…

Reuniting with her gorgeous and dangerous ex-best-friend, Innocencio, Nas wonders if she’ll ever be truly free of her dark legacy. Is Incy dangerous, power-hungry, and wicked? Or is he the only one who truly understands Nas’s darkness? Either way, Nas is desperate to find out who she really is—even if the answer kills her.

As I’ve mention before, I started reading Darkness Falls right after I finished Immortal Beloved. I really enjoyed Nasty’s story and couldn’t have enough of it in the first book, so I jumped right away into the second—with no regrets.

We follow Nastasya as she tries to figure things out with Reyn. She’s definitely attracted to him—and he’s definitely attracted to her—, but they have so much baggage that is hard for them to stay together. She’s trying hard to follow River’s directions on what she should do to be a better person, but in this kind of situation nothing is easy nor is supposed to be easy. Especially when it seems someone is messing up with people at River’s Edge, more specifically Nastasya. And, as expected, she suspects that Incy is behind it.

We get to know a lot about Nasty’s pass with Incy on Darkness Falls, how they met, where they’ve been during all those years of friendship and such. I really liked to see Nasty regressing on her progress, after all, as I’ve mention before, I think she seems real, and real people slip too. She’s still strong and Nasty, but she’s learned a lot and it keeps coming.

I honestly had a hard time keeping Immortal Beloved and Darkness Falls separated in my mind, probably because I read the second one right after I finished the first. I had to scan the book to write this review—which is quite common when it takes me a while to write a review after finishing reading a book—, to make sure I didn’t spill the beans on Eternally Yours. That’s one of the aspects I like about this trilogy: is so well built that I can’t really tell when a book ended and the next one started, the story is really tied up together.

Author: Cate Tiernan
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre(s): Young Adult, Fantasy Fiction
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date: January 2, 2012
Pages: 400
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Rating:

My favorite quotes on this book are bellow.

Look at me: “we.” I’m all about the “we-ness,” as if I belonged here at River’s Edge, rehab central for wayward immortals. Sort of a twelve-step program. Which in my case had more like a hundred and eleventy steps.

Are you dizzy from being flung into my world like this? I feel the same way every morning when I open my eyes to find I’m still me, still here.

“I’m not going to leave you alone.” Promise? Threat? You decide!

Solis had accompanied Nell to what I assumed was some kind of asylum for immortals who were completely bananas.

Quick aside: The word cupboard is about as descriptive and simple as you can get. It began, literally, as a board to put your cups on, way back in the day. And wardrobe? Ward-robe. It would ward, or guard, your robes. Your gowns. Interesting, eh? Stick with me— you’ll learn a lot. Not all of it reprehensible.

So I was the most untrusting person in the world, and he was the unhappiest person in the world.
We were quite a pair.

Like a lover, I feared its power and its ability to hurt me. But like a lover, it also promised such incredible joy, such a blossoming of power inside. It was revealing itself to me—and so revealing me to myself.
Whoa, listen to me! Next I’ll be writing a self-help book! Joy through Witchcraft!

This was Reyn, kissing me, and everything felt new and unique, despite my four and a half centuries of kissing.

When I was with him like this, connected to him, I felt safe. Nothing could get to me. Nothing could hurt me now. Except him.

If you can’t face your feelings, all of them, then you’re never going to be strong enough to break free of the past.

I was 459 years old and full of schoolgirl jealousy over someone I didn’t even want.
Crap.

Probably a regular person would have realized the truth in her words at this point and backed off. That’s so not me.

It was possible that the one thing I most valued was the one thing I couldn’t have.

I just needed—
I had no idea what I needed. But I had to move, had to do something.

I had just gotten my coat off when Anne hurried in, holding a basin, some rags, and a first-aid kit. And, of course, a mug of steaming tea, because you couldn’t sneeze around here without someone rushing over with a mug of tea. Arm get cut off? Have some tea. Legacy of darkness slowly destroying every facet of your life? Tea.

I didn’t know how she would be tomorrow.
I didn’t know how Incy had learned to do that.
I didn’t know how I could live with it.
So what would I do now?

“You and I are a pair. Bread and butter.”
I used to think so, too, without question. Now, not so much. At all.

I almost choked on my drink and gave an awkward cough. Good Lord. “Oh my God, can you see me? I thought I was wearing my invisibility cloak.” Yes, I’m suave. I’m mysterious. My name is Crowe—Nastasya Crowe.

I had thought of him as my best friend, my other half. It had seemed like a good thing. Now I saw it as I was a building, and he was poison ivy covering the building, blocking the windows, creeping inside.

Is there a manual somewhere that lists abandoned ware-houses suitable for crazed maniacs to take victims to? On TV, in movies and books, there always seems to be one handy where the axe murderer of the week can hole up and do his dastardly deeds.

“It’s no picnic being me, either.”
That was number 6,237 of the things that had never occurred to me.