Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl - Review

 

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Just took a break from my Harry Potter re-read to read the book club pick for my  Young Adult Book Club .  We read Beautiful Creatures which I was really excited about because the movie comes out next month.  Here is the goodreads description:

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.

I liked this book but didn't love it.  Since this is going to become a movie there is going to be some make-up from Ulta coming out for it: Beautiful Creatures Collection

I love when there is make-up that goes along with movies!!

 There may be some spoilers in this review so don't read forward if you were planning on reading the book!!  The small town talk over and over kinda bothered me.  I went to high school in a small town.. well not a tiny town but a town that's population was about 12000. It was about 8 miles from the city which was about 200,000. Both have grown now. I really didn't ever experience one person being excluded from everything. But I do know that in small towns the smallest things can make you popular. Sports, growing up in the town. There must've been more kids who weren't popular. This book seemed to just focus on the 5 popular kids and then Ethan and Lena. I wish we had heard about some of the other kids in town.
I thought throughout the whole book that we were going to find out something really cool about Ethan. But he was only a mortal. I kind of found it funny that I was wondering why the two didn't have sex when they got real hot and heavy. I just was expecting it... and then we come to find out had the two of them had sex he would've died. So I suppose it is a good thing they didn't because what a surprise that would've been!!!!!


I liked both their parents too. Well for Lena I liked her uncle not her mom. Though I do feel bad for Ethan and how his dad has checked out. We really didn't get to find out too much about what happens to him after all the events at the end of the book.

Sometimes Lena annoyed me about this whole wanting to lead a normal teenage life. Really what she sounded like to me is what any teenager would want. To be popular. She wanted to go to the dancing with an amazing guy. She wanted to have a huge party for her birthday and have the whole school there.. um yea most teens want that. Sit at the table with all the cool kids at lunch. So for me it didn't sound like she wanted to be a normal teenager but a popular teenager. When I was a teen in school I wanted all of that too. I had a little issue with this.. it seemed like normal feelings every teen in public school has.

I enjoyed this book but didn't love it. Some areas of the book just went on and on. I am actually kind of surprised this was made into a movie. One of the things for me is .. did it really need to be 600 pages long? Maybe that was too much.

The end of the book was amazing. I loved the last 100 pages or so. Exciting and things were finally coming together. I liked that some of the plot lines where hidden from us until the very end. Some I didn't even guess.n Larkin being Dark was a big surprise to me for example. I really loved the library in this book... though it would drive me nuts it's only open like 6 days a year!

I really loved Link as a friend. He was great and fun.

Question: was the dog killed? Boo was thrown to the side... did he ever come back? How did Ethan's mom die? (did I miss that part)? Deanna brings up a good questions that I didn't think of before that I feel should've been answer in this book. Why could Lena bring back the dead but not Genevieve? Because she was Natural and the chosen one?

I may wikipedia the rest of the series just to see what happens!

Some of the book was expected to me. Like the whole scene that was similar to Carrie when Lena and Ethan were at the dance and the bucket of wet snow landed on them. Really no teacher noticed this?

Overall I thought the book was OK... I think the movie will be much more fast paced and so therefore more enjoyable.

Would you recommend me continuing with the series???

The crystal ball says about this book:

Clouds are covering! A read that lets me down every now and then but peaks out of the clouds!