Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Advertising is evil. This is nothing new. And the ads for the movie Beautiful Creatures made me want to check out the book. I mean the cast and the director, etc are amazing in their own right, so yeah how could my interest not be piqued? I was not expecting Hunger Games good but something to keep me entertained while the world was coming to an end outside (aka Blizzard 2013).

Truth be told, I had never heard of Beautiful Creatures until the movie previews. I had no clue what the book or series was about. The book is set in fictional Gatlin, South Carolina. It is told by protagonist Ethan Wate, who lives with his writer father and housekeeper Amma. The story begins on the first day of Ethan’s sophomore year when he wakes up from a recurring dream he has been having about a girl he does not know. Shocker, the girl in his dreams turns out to be the new girl in school, Lena Duchannes, who happens to be the nice of Macon Melchizedek Ravenwood, the town shut-in.

I’m sad to say that the book was, for the most part, predicable. That does not mean I did not enjoy it because I did. I finished it in about a day and half, so I was entertained enough to where I did not put the book down. But I think that I want to prove to myself that I was right about how it would end rather than I MUST know how this ends because I have no clue. However, I did enjoy all the references to classical novels and stories, as well as all the quotes. Dr. Marian Ashcroft, the town’s librarian, is awesome, and how can anyone not like a book where the librarian is awesome? 

Beautiful Creatures has one or two unexpected twists at the end, as well as a few unanswered questions. I’m curious enough to want to find out how Garcia and Stohl move the series along that I’ve already purchased the 2^nd book in the series, Beautiful Darkness.