Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo (Alex Stern # 2)

Occult. Paranormal. Mystery. Magic. New Adult.

Reading my new signed copy!!

Rating: 4/5

Pages: 496

Started: 29 January 2022

Finished: 2 Feb

Summary:

    Darlington is in Hell, and Alex is determined to bring him back. As she and Dawes research rituals, they find themselves digging deeper into Yale's muddy history. When a ritual goes awry, and a series of murders begins throughout New Haven, Alex has no choice  but to rush forward and get Darlington back. At Detective Turner's request, they move the timeline up, prepare to descend, consequences be damned. But going to Hell means dragging up the past, and neither Alex nor her friends are prepared to face what they will find. 

Thoughts  (LOTS OF SPOILERS) : 

   So many cool things happened in this book; I finished it last night, and I'm still freaking out. First, Alex is just a generally excellent and badass character, and I love the way she views problems and people. So unsurprisingly, her relationships with the other characters was one of my favorite parts of the book. She and Dawes were really sweet, and I liked the way Leigh implied that they had gotten super comfortable with each other. Alex's interactions with Turner were very interesting, and I'm glad we got to know him more when we saw his past via their little Hell-journey. I also loved that Mercy was more present in this book, and that  her being a completely normal person introduced to magic gave readers more perspective, and a reminder that Alex's jaded, all-in, no-consequences perspective isn't the only one.     

    But Darlington. Darlington! The very end of this book is the first time we get to see him in "real-time," and he's both different than I expected and exactly what I thought he would be. To be fair, he is still partly demonic. Admittedly, his glowstick-penis situation while he's a demon is very, very weird. Very weird. And his intense sexual desire when he first transforms back to human felt obscene, like unexpectedly, uncomfortably obscene. His emotional connection to Alex, though, was so freaking good. I mean, she did literally go to hell for him, but also at the end he seems so obsessed with her, in a very good way. The Lethe dynamic with and without Darlington was interesting to look at; he seemed like such a reassuring presence, but he also didn't quite fit with the newer versions of Alex, Dawes and Turner. The scene where he feels out of place when Dawes takes Alex to bathe in the crucible is a good example--it's melancholy and odd--though the scene is also really funny, since it implies that Dawes is so used to healing Alex from near-death that they seem to have a comfortable rhythm. 

             Though Darlington telling Alex that his problem was "A predilection for first editions and women who like to lecture me about myself" comes in a treasured second, the best part of the book was hands down the final paragraph. If Alex had been alone marching off to fight the big flappy hell-demon, I would have been impressed, but her grabbing Darlington's leash and strutting out before a cut-to-black was iconic, incredible, stunning. Alex stern is my new hero. 

    I am very curious about how the third book will go. Leigh tends to favor time gaps between books, which is disappointing considering the immediate cliffhanger in Hell Bent, but there's a lot of potential for the third book. Will there be a Darlington-themed animal on the cover? Will Mercy be back? What is Alex going to do with their power? When and how will Darlington and Alex get together? Is Alex going to become a vampire? All told, I very much need the third book to come out, and though I know it'll be a few years, after Leigh's untitled Historical novel is released, I am very excited to see where the series will go.