Review: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

by Carmen Shaw 3:08 AM 2 comments

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.

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Let me start off by saying that this book took me forever to finish! Like... 2 1/2 weeks to finish. That's forever.

It's about this boy named Ethan Wate. He lives in Gatlin, which is a really small town in South Carolina. Everything has been the same since before he was even born. So of course, he's bored. He plans to leave once he graduates high school to travel to more exciting places. Then enters Lena Duchannes! She is a misfit. She doesn't wear the "right" clothes, or say the "conventional" things, or do what everyone expects. But for some reason, Ethan wants her... bad. They meet; fall in love (though Lena was wary); and you'd think everything was perfect. Well, you're wrong. Turns out, Lena is a Caster girl. In other words, she's a witch. An unclaimed witch. When she turns 16 years old, she will either turn into a Dark Caster (bad) or a Light Caster (good).

This book is written in Ethan's point of view, which I liked because there's not enough books with male pov's in my opinion. And I was really fond of Ethan! He seemed like the kind of guy any girl would be proud to bring home to their family. He was laid-back yet passionate in his love for Lena; smart but not annoyingly so. He didn't care about what others thought of him, AND he was described as a cutie! He wins Lena's heart by all those winning characteristics.

The things that I didn't like about this book was that it ran a little too long for me. The authors would describe something with explicit detail! Don't get me wrong, I love when an author is able to paint a picture for me of the setting or the characters or whatever. But after a certain amount of words, I get bored.

I was also often annoyed by Lena's pessimistic attitude. She was such a Debby Downer all the time! Granted, she had good reasons. I mean, her fate was going to be decided for her on whether or not she was going to turn evil or stay good on her 16th birthday, but geez! Ethan was ALWAYS comforting her and telling her that everything was going to be okay. Believe him, Lena. He's cute!

I loved the ending though, I'm not going to lie. It was very action-packed and there's a TWIST! Because of the epic ending, I've rated this book 3 targets and not 2 targets like I planned.

3/5 TARGETS!