Beautiful Creatures Review

                The book Beautiful Creatures, is the first book in a supernatural trilogy written by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl.  It’s the story of a small southern town who is so stuck in their ways and convinced anyone unlike them doesn’t deserve to be there.  In the small town of Gatlin, the town shut in who lives in the haunted mansion has a new visitor, a niece Lena Duchannes staying with Uncle.  She is different from everyone else and with her living in the haunted mansion of course she is shunned.  Not by all though, Ethan Wate is a guy who fits in but he always questions why he does and he wishes for something different whom he can be himself with, his real self.  The two are thrown together in a mystery of a shared dream, more like a nightmare and Ethan learns the small town of Gatlin has a deeper history no one in the local Historical Society knows about.  One of magic.

                Yes magic is a big part of the series.  I found this book hard to put down because it was so relatable.  No I don’t have magical powers despite my deep inner wishes.  Come on tell me having magic wouldn’t make life more interesting, it always does in books.  The small town feel, the way everyone knows everything about you even if you don’t really know a person.  Nothing is really yours.  Judgment about you as a whole if you don’t fit into what they consider the norm to be, especially in the South where even if you’ve been somewhere for 15 years you still are not from there and hence still an outsider.  It’s crazy, I understand and that made it relatable for me.  Then add in the mess with not fitting in and having no friends in school or being judges by your family.  Yeah things everyone can relate too I think.

                Then there is the romance.  It’s beautiful and innocent.  It was refreshing, stammering and uncertainty.  To be honest that’s why I adore reading YA books.  Everything is so intense for the characters you can’t help but feel that intensely about it and it’s amazing.  Mix that with the mystical powers and the mystery of the town he thought he knew and it makes for one hell of a story.

                I loved this book and I can’t wait to start the next in the series, Beautiful Darkness which I already have but need to do a few things before I lose myself to another book.