Review of Beautiful Creatures

My copy of Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl is based on a paperback copy of the book that I purchased for myself. The following is my honest review of the work.

Goodreads Summary: "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."

In the interest of complete honesty I'll begin by saying this book was slow going. I normally can devour books in a few hours, at the most a few days; this book took me about a week. The book proceeded in this manner until the last fifty or so pages when all of a sudden I was flipping pages so fast, devouring story so quickly I didn't even notice the pacing difference.

I'm a big fan of witches, aside from the fey they happen to be my absolute favorite of the paranormal/supernatural bunch. I think that's what initially drew me to this book; the concept on the cover that reads "Some loves are meant to be...Others are cursed" combined with the fact that it is about Casters, a play on the witches typically found in fiction.

Something that stood out to me in this particular story was the growth of the main characters; the fact that you could see them evolving throughout the book, torn between being who they were meant to be versus the teenagers that they actually were. Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl did a brilliant job at creating two characters that felt completely realistic in a world that is so unlike, yet so similar to our own. I loved Ethan and Lena.

I think one of my favorite aspects of this novel was the relationship between Ethan and Lena. There was such strength to it; the love between them was timeless yet at the same time it felt true to the fact that they were sixteen year old kids. It was the perfect balance.

This was a beautifully written novel, with captivating characters and an irresistible story. I'm giving Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl a four out of five stars review and looking forward to the time when I get to start in on Beautiful Darkness.