Review – Touching Darkness (Midnighters, Book 2) by Scott Westerfeld (2.5/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Length: 336 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: January 2, 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0060519568
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Midnighters series
Source: Swapped through Paperbackswap.com
Rating: 2.5/5 stars

This is the 2nd book in the Midnighters series. I didn’t like this book as much as the first one in the series. I just felt like the story moved very slowly for the first half of the book. There wasn’t nearly as much adventure in the secret hour; with most of the mystery and events taking place during the normal hours of the day. Previous to reading this book I had read Westerfeld’s Uglies series (thought it was okay) and his Leviathan series (loved it).

The Midnighters are continuing to unravel the mysteries of Bixby. However, another danger…a danger from the Daylight hours threatens one of their group. This time it is not Jessica who is being hunted but another in their group…

There wasn’t nearly as much as action and adventure in the book. I was also disappointed that much of the book takes place in the daylight hours rather during the creepy and eerie midnight hour. A lot of the creepiness and creepy crawlies were fairly scarce in this book as well (I was really hoping to see more types of shadow creatures and learn more about them).

Additionally this book was just plain boring. I felt like there was very little plot and story here and what was here could have been told in a short story rather than a book. I honestly struggled with staying engaged in the story and almost didn’t finish the book.

We again jump between a number of characters. This constant changing of POV didn’t work well for the book. It made it very hard to engage or care about any of the characters here. The story was better when the whole idea of the midnight hour was a novel and interesting one, but there really aren’t any new and interesting ideas presented in this book.

Overall I was fairly disappointed in this book. I thought it was boring and struggled to stay engaged with the story. By the end of this book I had absolutely no interest in finding out anything else about these characters or the mysterious town of Bixby. If you want to read something by Westerfeld that is actually good I would recommend his Leviathan series.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge