

Title: Beautiful Creatures
Series: Caster Chronicles
Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Rating: 3.5/5 ★★★☆☆
Release Date: December 1st, 2009
Type: eBook - NOOK
Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural, Romance, YA
Pages: 563
Synopsis:
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. [From Goodsreads (x)]
My Thoughts:
I have conflicting feelings about this book. I went into it having wanted to read it for a while and I think that made my expectations a bit too high and thus I was a little let down by it.
That aside, I absolutely loved the plot and the world that Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl have created in this book. It drew me in from line one and I all I wanted was to know more and more of how the world worked and what was going to happen next. They've created something very unique with this book and while the romance is a bit cliche, overly dramatic, and predictable the world and setting in which the books are built is not. Plus I'm a sucker for any writing that uses actual history, in this case the Civil War, and rewrites it to fit the world in the book. They did an amazing job of setting up the world in a way that sets the bar for the books after because for myself I can see the potential it has to grow as the story goes on.
However, there were a few things that deterred me, causing my conflicting feelings for this book. I felt that the characters were a bit too whiny for my liking. In a way they were completely over dramatic and caused me to roll my eyes a lot. It made the romance and a lot of the situations in the story turn cliche rather than take on the unique note the world held. Also I felt like the authors progressed things way too slowly in the book. There were those action pact moments when I couldn't put the book down but then there were more moments than that were things would linger for so long that I would get bored and walk away from the book. It has me questioning whether I want to read the rest of the series or not.
Don't let what I disliked deter you though because this book is definitely for people who love supernatural stuff, magic stuff, mystery, action, and romance. So, pick it up for yourself because there's always a big chance you'll love it. Because even though I had things I didn't like I would definitely recommend this book to others.
About The Author(s):
Margaret Stohl:
Margaret Stohl is the #1 New York Times, PW, USA Today, LA Times and Internationally bestselling co-author of the BEAUTIFUL CREATURES NOVELS (Fall 2009-2012) and author of THE ICONS SERIES (Spring, 2013.) You can visit her online at http://www.margaret-stohl.com/ [From Goodreads (x)]
Kami Garcia:
Kami Garcia is the #1 New York Times, bestselling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures Novels & the Dangerous Creatures Novels, and the author of the instant New York Times bestseller & Bram Stoker Award nominated novel UNBREAKABLE, and the sequel UNMARKED in the Legion Series.
Kami grew up outside of Washington DC, wore lots of black, and spent hours writing poetry in spiral notebooks. As a girl with Southern roots, she has always been fascinated by the paranormal. She’s very superstitious and would never sleep in a room with the number “13″ on the door. When she is not writing, Kami can usually be found watching disaster movies, listening to Soundgarden, or drinking Diet Coke.
Kami lives with her husband, son, daughter, and their dogs Spike and Oz (named after characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer). You can visit her online at http://www.kamigarcia.com/ [From Goodreads (x)]
Note: I cross-post on my goodreads so when I post a review here it shows up on there as well. [And then I slightly edit it because all the extra info I add on here isn't needed on there.].