TITLE: Beautiful Creatures
SERIES: Caster Chronicles, Book 1
AUTHORS: Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
FORMAT: eBook, 376 pages
Life in Gatlin is incredibly predictable. In this small Southern town, the most excitement you’ll ever get is a rousing Civil War re-enactment. Ethan Wate is just counting down the days until he can leave Gatlin for good, papering his walls with maps of faraway places and dreaming of new sights. That is, until he begins to dream about the girl. He has no idea who she is, has no idea why the dreams keep coming, but it’s only the beginning. The storm is coming, and a girl named Lena Duchannes is about to change Ethan’s life — and make him question everything he thought he knew about Gatlin — forever.
I picked this up after randomly seeing the film’s trailer on TV one night. I was mildly intrigued by what looked like a fairly decent cast and a passably interesting premise, even if it did seem an awful lot like Twilight (and other such paranormal romances hopping on the bandwagon). I thought, why not give it a chance? Even so, I wasn’t expecting very much. It’s gotten harder for me to enjoy YA books. I’m 25 years old, married, and no longer living in a world where everything is overly dramatic, motivated by hormones, or revolving around senior prom. My high school days are over, so sometimes it gets really difficult to sympathize with high school-centric plots and characters. That being said, I still thought this book was a pleasant surprise. Not anything life changing for me, sure, but much more enjoyable than I thought it would be. I’m not going to say it was because I had low expectations, because I really feel like the authors got something right. It’s not a perfect read, it’s not going to shatter your perceptions of the paranormal romance trend, but it’s worth a shot.
Yes, Please:
If you’ve read the book synopsis or seen the trailers for its upcoming film adaptation, then you probably already know that Lena Duchannes is something else entirely. She’s a Caster, specifically — someone born with powers that, at the age of sixteen, will be claimed for either the Light or the Dark. Lena’s greatest fear is to be claimed by the Dark, and this is with good reason. For generations, a curse has meant that casters of Lena’s family are essentially forced to go Dark, regardless of whether they want to or not. It’s a price they are paying for a catastrophic choice made decades ago — a choice that links Ethan with Lena, and which will determine their fate. The book’s question is, who decides your fate? Over the course of the story, Lena fights to remain in the Light, but her efforts seem to be throwing her further and further into the Dark. Will the curse claim her, or will she claim herself? I didn’t expect the story to even delve this deep, so that was nice. I do think it would’ve been awesome for them to delve into it deeper, but I like that they went there in the first place.
I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that Ethan isn’t a very good narrator. Some go so far as to blast the authors, both female, for attempting to capture a male adolescent point of view. It is certainly very daring for female writers to choose a male pov, in the same way it’s daring for a man to try writing from the pov of a woman. I’m always wary when this happens, in either direction. I didn’t have any issues with Ethan, though. Actually I thought he was kind of refreshing. They don’t try to make him seem like a perfect guy — they make him seem like a good guy, and that’s okay. We need more good guys in the world. Ethan’s your standard Southern gentleman. I found his voice to be believably age appropriate. He made me laugh once in a while, really laugh, and I liked that he was ordinary. This made the impact of Lena’s arrival into his humdrum existence all the more vibrant.
The setting is vividly done. But I’ve always had a fascination for the antebellum south and anything mildly Gone With the Wind-ish, so I guess I might be biased in that sense. I thought the occult aspects of the story were crafted with care. The writing itself verges on lyrical at times, and I appreciate that. You need a little prose in there, I think. I’m not one of those people who rails against writers who use prose. There is magic mingled with history. There is wonderful use of sensory detail. Like I said, the writing was above my expectations. I cared about Ethan, Lena, and the other characters. Another thing I appreciated was the book’s exploration of grief. This appears in several aspects throughout the story, in different forms.
Not So Much:
As is my complaint with many books in the genre, it’s pretty hard to imagine two sixteen-year-olds falling in love forever and ever. This sort of steals some credibility away for me. You’re a sophomore in high school — you have no idea what you’re doing. I get that very strong feelings are possible, because I’ve been there and done that. But still, it always bothers me when I read romantic books about teenagers because I’m just not in that part of my life anymore. This is certainly nothing to fault the authors for, I mean I’m not their target audience or anything, but I do worry that it gives teenagers weird, unrealistic expectations of love. I wish Ethan and Lena had more time to decide if there was something more between them, something not determined strictly by the strange connection they had.
I liked the setting, and I thought it was well done for the most part, but the Southern-ness of it all seemed kind of over the top for me. I have lived in the South myself, and even for me it seemed like it was too much. The accents, for one, were annoying. Not everyone in the South sounds like that. Southern accents are hard to portray on paper without making them look, well, contrived. I would’ve liked less of that, and less of the usual Southern cliches, although the authors should be credited with bringing in small details that made it more realistic because they were obviously very knowledgeable about the setting. I thought the ending seemed hazy, confusing, and sort of rushed. I had noooo idea what was going on there for a while. It switches briefly to Lena’s point of view, but her voice didn’t seem all that distinguishable from Ethan’s. Lena, as well, was a pretty reactive character rather than proactive, and I wanted more out of her because she has so much potential to be different, a nice change from other female leads in YA. I wanted her to be as refreshing and real as Ethan.
RATING: 3/5
I’m giving this book credit where it’s due. For its genre, and for its target audience, it’s above the standard fare. Pick it up if you enjoy a paranormal romance with (gasp!) NO LOVE TRIANGLE! (You had to be expecting me to bring this up, right? It’s like my #1 YA pet peeve.) And give it a chance if you want to try the shallow end of Southern gothic, if you’re a Civil War enthusiast, or if you just like an easy read with a little magic, mystery, and history. I’d say you should at least read it if you’re interested in the upcoming movie, which I think is out next month.
About Paola
Paola is a teacher, blogger, and book devourer currently living in Las Vegas, NV. She has an unhealthy obsession with popcorn, office supplies, and Target.
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