Review: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

 

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Series: Caster Chronicles, #1

Published: December 1, 2009

Publisher: Little Brown and Company

Pages: 563

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.

Things I liked about this book:

The length 
The POV 
The writing

It’s not often these days you get a nice, hefty book with real content. My paperback version clocks in with 563 pages. It makes me happy that there are still authors that can write thick books.
The story is told from a guy’s POV. To put it bluntly, guys don’t bullshit us. I miss the days of Harry and Percy, and Ethan freshened it up a bit. I also *cough* may not have liked the alternative option much…but more on that later.

What did I like about the writing? It was so quite you didn’t even notice it was there. I’ve noticed a slightly annoying theme in YA where authors try to make their characters loud and obnoxious, and kind of overly casual way of addressing the audience. I enjoyed it the first time I read it. But it gets boring really fast. This book was written with more of a formal, classic tone, that allowed me to just simply sit back and enjoy the story.

Things I didn’t like about this book:

Lena
Lena and Ethan
and Lena

I know, I’m docking a significant enough amount of points for intense dislike of one character. But since this book is centered around the one character and the romance she has…Well, it significantly deterred my enjoyment of the book.

Lena is in no way self-sufficient. She’s quite frankly, naive and idiotic. Her heart completely rules her body, I don’t even know what happened to that brain of hers. I won’t spoil anything, but she makes decision after decision that so obviously leads to destruction. Honestly, she never thinks about the things she’s doing! I’m not saying using the heart is bad, but it should be tempered by the mind, just as the mind should be tempered by the heart. 

And it’s not as if Lena grows through the book. Rather, the more I got to know her, the more I found she annoyed me! She continually deteriorated through the book, ending with an act that takes the cake. Really. There is one final act that has absolutely no thinking, and the dire consequences…well, she gets what’s coming for her, that’s all I’m saying.

And Ethan totally should do better.

Though I don’t like Lena, I did love all the other characters. I mean it. It’s so hard not to become attached to some of these people, they’re so well built. It’s because of them that I’ll continue reading the series, though don’t expect the next book for awhile since my TBR pile is rather mighty.