At 563 pages, Beautiful Creatures is a brick. They're not short pages either, mind you. Written by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, this is a tale made for lovers of the Twilight Saga. This epic centers on a small town teenage boy, Ethan, living in Gatlin, South Carolina. Like any small town boy with a superiority complex, a dead historian mom, recluse writer dad, and an elderly voodoo-master-housekeeper-pseudo-grandma, he's just ready to bust out and explore a world that is far more intelligent and interesting than Gatlin. Everyone in Gatlin is hypercritical, disapproving, and dripping with an off-tasting, artificially flavored dumb-Southerner typecast. Imagine a town filled with nitpicking, brownie making, Chrysler minivan driving soccer moms congregating at the Baptist church for book burnings and video game protests. This is Gatlin. Garcia and Stohl put no effort into developing any characters, not even the main characters are well developed. Ethan’s bored out of his oversized skull until suddenly, the girl of his (literal) dreams, Lena, appears in a hearse (because the Oscar Meyer Weiner mobile had already been rented) beginning a whirlwind, star-crossed romance filled with a forbidden love at first sight, stereotypes, dead parents, the Civil War and magic (obviously).
As we would expect, Lena is unrealistically ostracized by the angry villagers of Gatlin because she doesn't fit in. Spoiler-but-actually-not-a-spoiler-alert, Lena is a witch or “Caster” who has a special telepathic connection with Ethan that no one can explain and they take mini-vacations to battles in the Civil War. Lena also smells like rosemary and lemons, which apparently is a very appealing scent, even when you’re not a chicken. My favorite part was when they spent five pages talking about how they couldn’t be together because she was too dangerous, but he was so in love with her that he couldn’t stay away. Sound like Twilight yet?
I picked this baby up because I heard it's going to be a movie with Jeremy Irons and Viola Davis and the trailer looked interesting. I need to find my receipt. This book is about 300 pages too long and is horrifically unoriginal and repetitive. For your own safety I suggest you avoid it, unless you're into Ulysses sized novels about supernatural star-crossed lovers, chicken perfume, and impending doom. If this sounds like you, you can have my copy.
(Cough, cough, Twilight)
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