Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Review: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (Spooktacular Paranormal Reading Challenge)

Released: December 1, 2009
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Series: Caster Chronicles, #1
Star Rating: 5 out of 5
Source: Borrowed
Edition: Hardcover
Page Amount: 563
Age Group: Young Adult

There were no surprises in Gatlin County. We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.At least, that's what I thought.Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.There was a curse.There was a girl.And in the end, there was a grave.
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Beautiful Creatures has been on my to-read shelf since it came out. Why I'm just getting to it now, I don't know, but I knew there was a reason I wanted to read it. When it comes to paranormal novels, witches aren't my favourite to read about. If you were to look at the array of paranormal books I have read, you would notice that witches do not come up in a lot of these novels. So, reading a novel about witches was definitely stepping out of my comfort zone. Even though that statement is true, Beautiful Creatures is up there on the best book I've read this year list.

Gatlin is a small town where not a lot happens. There's not a lot to do, and everybody knows everybody's else's business. I related a lot with the setting of this novel. Now, I must say my town isn't has bad as Gatlin, but I did see a lot of similarities in the two places.

I love when novels are written in a male perspective. Not a lot of young adult novels are written in the perspective of boys, and I am really drawn to novels with a male voice. I just feel like it's something different to read about, especially since I am not a male myself. I am so used to reading about girls that it's nice to change things up a little bit when reading.

Lena and Ethan's relationship is not a typical high school romance, to say the least. The one thing I do have to say is that in some parts of the novel, their 'connect' was worth of an eye roll, but for the most part I enjoyed reading about the two of them and their interesting connection. I fell in love with both Ethan and Lena's families (well, most of the family units). You could feel the strong bond between certain characters, you could tell how much their family meant to them.

I really enjoyed reading this novel, and I cannot wait to see what the next books have in store.

About the Authors

Kami Garcia:

Kami Garcia is the #1 New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal & international bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels (Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos & Beautiful Redemption). Beautiful Creatures has been published in 50 countries and translated in 39 languages. The Beautiful Creatures movie released in theaters on February 14, 2013.Kami is also the author of Unbreakable, the first book her paranormal solo series, THE LEGION (coming October 1, 2013. Kami grew up outside of Washington DC, wore lots of black, and spent hours writing poetry in spiral notebooks. As a girl with Southern roots, she has always been fascinated by the paranormal and believes in lots of things “normal” people don’t. She’s very superstitious and would never sleep in a room with the number “13″ on the door. When she is not writing, Kami can usually be found watching disaster movies, listening to Soundgarden, or drinking Diet Coke.

Margaret Stohl:
Margaret Stohl is the #1 New York Times, PW, USA Today, LA Times and Internationally bestselling co-author of the BEAUTIFUL CREATURES NOVELS (Fall 2009-2012) and author of THE ICONS SERIES (Spring, 2013.) 

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