Beautiful Creatures (Book 1) (Beautiful Creatures)

by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Is falling in love the beginning . . . Or the end?

In Ethan Wate's hometown there lies the darkest of secrets.

There is a girl.
Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head. Green eyes, black hair. Lena Duchannes.

There is a curse.
On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it's been promised. And no one can stop it.

In the end, there is a grave.
Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided.

Ethan never even saw it coming.

* Don't miss the Warner Brothers and Alcon Entertainment blockbuster movie of Beautiful Creatures directed by Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) and featuring an all star cast including Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davies and hot young Hollywood talent Alice Englert, Alden Ehrenreich and Emmy Rossum.

Praise for Beautiful Creatures:
'This novel has been generating Twilight-level buzz.' - Teen Vogue

About the authors:
@kamigarciais a superstitious American southerner who can make biscuits by hand and pies from scratch! She attended George Washington University and is a teacher and reading specialist. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her family.
@mstohlhas written and designed many successful video games, which is why her two beagles are named Zelda and Kirby. She has degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities in the US and has also studied in the prestigious creative writing department at UEA, Norwich. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her family.
www.beautifulcreaturesthebook.com

Also available in the Beautiful Creatures series: Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos and Beautiful Redemption.

*Don't miss the brand new DANGEROUS CREATURES series, set in the world of Beautiful Creatures*

Exclusive ebook novellas also available:
Dream Dark
Dangerous Dream.

• ISBN10: 0141326085
• ISBN13: 9780141326085
• Publish Date: 4 February 2010
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 592
• Language: English

Reviews

I was in a huge reading slump before I started reading Beautiful Creatures. Beautiful Creatures brought me back to a world that I loved and made me remember why I loved reading so much.

The book is told in Ethan's Point of View (POV). Ethan is the good Southern gentleman. He always aims to do what's right. But at some points, I found Ethan to be a little girly. He would go on about dresses and tans and didn't seem guyish (If that makes any sense). I understood what the authors were trying to do with Ethan, making him a moral compass, but I think what put me off was the way in which he told the story.

The romance between Ethan and Lena was cute and sweet. They have a supernatural attraction, but it's not insta love. They take a bit of time to get to know each other and Ethan, being the good guy that he is, is always by Lena's side.

Macon and Ridley were my favourite characters, Macon was a mysterious character at first, but once I got to know him and saw his fatherly nature and protectiveness towards Lena, I began to enjoy hearing about him.Ridley was a scene thief. She was the typical bad girl, giving people nicknames, manipulating others to her will and towards to end, I felt that there could be hope for her.

At times the story was predictable and slow, but at other times the twists and turns surprised me and I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. Beautiful Creatures brought me out of my reading slump and I would recommend it to anyone who loves magic, spells, light vs dark and good guys.

[tellemonstar]

I enjoyed this. I haven’t read much ‘Gothic fiction’ before, but I thought Beautiful Creatures was beautifully crafted by the authors.

The world building, both of the town of Gatlin & Ravenwood House, but also Ethan’s internal world, was very well done. There aren’t a lot of YA romances where the viewpoint is of the male protagonist, but I think Ethan suited the role very well. He was a reliable storyteller, and his point of view was an interesting one.

Normally I think teen-romance is kind of meh, but it was well handled in Beautiful Creatures – especially since Lena wasn’t exactly happy about meeting him in the first place. But it was nice to see the relationship blossom over time, as opposed to them having known each other for about a week and going “I love you”. It was nice to see them learn things about each other and each other’s families, and for Ethan to actually fall for the real Lena, not just the one he’s being seeing in dreams.

The ‘Caster’ side of things was very interesting, and the choosing between Light versus Dark magic issue was a nice element that you don’t often see in YA fantasy. It’s usually ‘we’re the good guys, those are the bad guys’ so to discover that not everything is as it seems and that choosing to be Dark or Light is a difficult and tricky path to have to walk on, was nice to see.

There were some pacing issues, which had more to do with small parts of the plot that maybe could have been fused into other parts a little more, and a few bits edited out perhaps. Even with the plot-line being as intricate as it was, the pacing in some areas could have been a little faster.

[Stephanie]

In all honesty, I am late to this Beautiful Creatures bandwagon. The publishing companies have succeeded in their elaborate ploy to make a movie of a book to get me to read it first. So when I saw the cutesy stand at Barnes & Noble directing me to this series I took a peek … and immediately put it back down. It wasn’t until much later (I.E. a Scholastic Warehouse Sale and my resolution to read books before watching the movie) that I eventually gave this book a shot. Welcome to the New Year! Welcome to YA Southern Gothic! Welcome to Beautiful Creatures, Stephanie!

And it wasn’t too shabby.

I’ll be the first one to admit that paranormal romance is usually not my thing. I dabbled briefly in it during the Twilight upsurge, and immediately backed away. Beautiful Creatures does have that super paranormal romance, a la Romeo and Juliet style. But luckily for Garcia and Stohl, I am a fan of Shakespeare and fated lovers.

More at BOOKISH reviews

[nitzan_schwarz]

To read this review and more pop by my blog Drugs Called Books

3.5 stars
Beautiful Creatures has been on my to-read list for... forever. But for some reason, one I can't explain, I never read it. But with the hype over the upcoming movie, I decided it was high time to read it.

It was a good book, one I can certainly see where all the love to comes from. The only reason I'm not giving it higher stars is because it took me about ten days to read it. I usually read books super fast, to the point my friends think I'm some kind of a machine, so when it takes me over a week to read a book...
The book was interesting, but once I put it down I wasn't tempted or compelled to open it up again straight away. In fact, one time I actually put it down on my table and picked it up three days later.

The book was well written, interesting and had good characters.

Ethan is the main male character, and he's the one who tells the story. It was really interesting to read a story from a male POV (especially as the authors are females) and he was a very good main character, because he was very human and easy to relate to. He's kind, loving, and stubborn, and I really liked him.

Lena is the main female character, a Natural Caster (controls the elements) and a girl who is frightened by her upcoming birthday, which will determine whether she'll go Dark or Light. She sometimes annoyed me with her attitude, but most of the time I liked her - mostly because she was effected by the school boycotting her. It was so human because we want to be accepted and to have friends, and the people who say they like to be alone... well, that's usually just a front. Trust me, I have inside knowledge on the fact.

I enjoyed the romance in the book. It took time to develop, not happening overnight, and it was believable. It made me think that they fit each other well. They were sweet and cute together, and there was a process of them falling in love, learning to trust each other. I loved their telepathic connection, and all the avoiding the L word until they finally said it (so adorable).

As for the supporting characters... I actually disliked Amma, Ethan's caretaker, with a passion. She annoyed me beyond belief! The whole "you embarrassed me" part when he skipped school... that was the moment I knew I'll probably never like her.
Link, Ethan's best friend, though, I adored. There was just something about him. I hope he plays a greater part in the following books and I sincerely pray everything will be okay with him. Books like this have a tendency to do something to the main's best friends, sometimes even killing them. God, no.
I also loved Macom. ~sniff sniff~

The ending was good. I really had no idea what would or could happen, which was a nice feeling. Repeating past mistakes seemed a bit silly to me, though. Not what I thought they'll do... and it raises a lot of questions; how come it didn't work the first time, but did work the second?
There was one part from Lena's POV there, and I've got to say... Stick to Ethan. Something about Lena's POV was lacking, to me.

All in all, a really good book. I will be reading the next installments as soon as I can.

[elysium]

Lena moves to Gatlin to live with his uncle and ends up in pretty much middle of nowhere where you’re an outsider if you’ve lived there for 50 years. She meets Ethan who has been having dreams about this girl who’s face he never sees but when Lena shows up, he realises it her. He finds out that Lena is a Caster (witch) and on her 16th birthday something bad is gonna happen.

I was fearing this would be too YA and it kinda was. I liked that it was dark but it went little too overboard. Especially the first half was just I’m soo alone here, no one understands me kind of crap. Only thing that was missing was suicidal thoughts. Of course the cheerleaders were straight from Mean Girls.

It was refreshing that it was from male’s point of viw but unfortunately I just didn’t feel any connection with him, nor with Lena. The people I liked was Lena’s uncle Macon and Ethan’s great-aunts.

After all this bashing I have to say the second half was better. It took too long to actually start but after that there was parts when I was curious what would happen. So I ended giving 3 instead 2.5.