Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Book cover blurb:

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.

My thoughts:

This book had a great deal of chatter on the book blogs when it came out last year, so I decided to give it a try when the opportunity arose. It was an entertaining, fast read. Definitely could see the Stephen King influence with the winter dance scene. A little too Carrie-ish on that for my taste…just without the blood. I found a few other things equally as predictable as that scene, but I won’t list since they would be considered spoilers.

I was surprised I went through 563 pages in four days. (That’s pretty quick for me.) This probably could have been cut down without some of what I consider the filler stuff that really didn’t have much bearing to the story. This seems to be par for the course for me with young adult books. (Probably because I’m not a teenager.) Anyway, it held my attention despite having some predicable parts and characters. I’d read the next book in the series.

3 stars