Review: Pretty in black, by Rae Hachton

Ellie Piper was a common girl, like everyone else. She had great notes at school, a best friend, a boyfriend, and even a beautiful happy family. She even was the leader of the cheerleaders, and for this she was envied by many girls. She had a perfect life. Then, suddenly something has changed.

 „I didn’t feel like myself anymore. The girl who used to be a cheerleader, I no longer knew who she was. The new me dressed different, spoke different, had different interests than the old me.”

Once with the death of her sister Darcy, killed by a murderer yet unknown, her parents’s divorce, and the moment she found out that her boyfriend cheated on her right when she was living a nightmare because of her sister’s death, her life turned from pink, to grey. Actually, even black. 

 „After my sister’s death, I thought I’d die, too. So, Declan decided since I couldn’t spend time with him, since I was “too busy grieving when I should get the hell over it already,” that now would be the ideal time to bail-out and cheat on me, which he did, and left me alone to cry. Two weeks before school started back, he told me he was sorry, he just didn’t know how to deal. I never forgave him.”

She gets to spend her time in the cemeteries and anywhere she can escape from the nightmare that her home turned out to be.Her dad moved to New York to have a better job, and her mother… her mother is like she wouldn’t exist, only worst than this. And like this wouldn’t be enough, she got stucked with a step father that seeks to make her life an inferno.

 Spending her days wherever she can, her life is filling with more bitterness. She wishes she was asleep, like forever. Now, all she wants to do is to end with this life. 

 „I had an absent father and an irresponsible mother. I felt like disappearing at times because I couldn’t deal with my relationships with guys or any of the emotions I experienced. I didn’t care about my school work anymore like I used to. I just wanted this whole high school thing to be over and done with.”

Death doesn’t freaks her out, actually it’s quite contrary, she considers it the only solution. So being in the cemetery and having a blade, everything becomes clear like a mirror. She knows what she has to do…

“Death isn’t so bad— It’s the only thing that keeps me alive.”

…she thought she was dead, but death couldn’t be so kind, isn’t it? Like sleep without dreaming, but still awake with the consciousness. She gets ready to embrace her end, seeing the angel of death coming to collect her, something else couldn’t be, he was too beautiful to be human.  Long, black hair, brooding eyes and the richest ruby lips she has ever seen. Then, Ellie realises her heart is still beating.  

It’s not a dream, she is alive and everything is real.

And that angel of death is real too, only that he came not to take her into the deep darkness of death, but to bring her to the light. He is the one that wakes her up from the dream she thought it would have been the last one.

 The mistery is floating in the air near the stranger with brooding eyes, and after many acid replies between them(more from Ellie than from the stranger), she finds out that his name is Marcus Marble, he is a totally freak, and… that’s it. Together, they look like the mice and the cat. Marcus seems to want Ellie, and she rejects him again and again, and again, until when this possibility is fading away. 

<< He turned me around to face him. “I want to hear you say it.” My breath was short. “I don’t want you to kiss me, again.” “I think you mean everything but the ‘don’t’ part.” I shoved him. “Go away.” He inched back and leaned against the brick wall. I stared at him. He stared back. “You’re still here with me, Ellie.” “So?” “If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to kiss you again and you’re going to end up kissing me back.”  >>

After many meetings with Marcus, more or less randomly, because he seems to be following her everywhere, Ellie gets to know him better and falls in love with him. Even though she doesn’t know much about him, she feels he is the one by the way she feels around him and by the way being with him changes her. Their love makes her feel more alive than ever.

„To be alive is to be able to feel.

 It’s love unified with the possibility of death, but knowing that’s the only way to truly be alive.”

Only that next, faith is stubborning to show them how cruel she can be… Until the end, there is a long road, Ellie fiind out she is The Chosen, the one who must kill the ones from the Corvidae origin, the ones who come back to life, some monsters without any compunction. And when she discovers Marcus’s true nature, and that she is supposed to kill him, her life changes again… radically.

In the end, will their love survive?

My opinion:

I LOVED, I LOVE and I will always LOVE this book. It’s original, stunning, and the story and the characters are simply fabulous, they will totally conquer you. I was simply trapped in their web, from the very first page, leaving me torn apart, sighing for more, and more, and more. The main charachters are so charming, and I’m not exagerating. At all. :D And above all, they seem real. And not just them, even the secondary charachters are like this, all of them being very well built.

Ellie was marqued by her sister’s death and she’s suffering not only because of her, but also because of the life she once had. A perfect life. She’s changed radically since then, she talks, she dresses, and she feels different. She doesn’t feels entire anymore. And then Marcus appears, „the white raven”, and makes her feel complete again, alive. I love the hole story around him, with the Corvidae Dynasty, the Society, and the role he has it in it. You’ll see what I’m talking about when you’ll read the book, I guarantee you’ll like that. :D

Well, I think Pretty in Black it’s the first book I would reread again and again without feeling sorry about that. Maybe it’s because I fiind myself in it and in Ellie’s charachter. And the gothic style of the book, so dark, it’s wonderful, more than interesting. Especially the atmosphere designed, wich fits very well with the book cover and the story. I know, I praised this book like it’s the only one I’ve read, but I could not help myself, so much I loved it. I fully recommend it to everyone, but first, open your minds and make some time for it, so you can read it without interruption, and you’ll enter Ellie’s and Marcus’s world like you’d really be there.

 Happy reading!!! :D