Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Mar 31, 2014 Pam rated it really liked it

Shelves: south-carolina, ya-fiction

AUTHOR: Garcia, Kami & Stohl, Margaret
TITLE : Beautiful Creatures
Date Read: 03/26/14
RATING: 4.5/B+
GENRE/PUB DATE/PUBLISHER/# OF PGS: YA/2009/Little, Brown & Co./563 pgs
SERIES/STAND ALONE: #1 in Beautiful sereis
TIME/PLACE: Present/Gatlin, South Carolina
CHARACTERS: Lena Duchannes/ new girl in town; Ethan Wate/15-yr-old

FIRST LINES: There were only 2 kinds of people in our town. "The stupid and the stuck," my father had affectionately classified our nieghbors. "The ones who are bound to stay or ...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Laura (booksnob) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013, young-adult, books-into-film

When Ethan Wate falls asleep at night, he dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. He knows they are connected and longs to find out who this mysterious girl is, when lo and behold she walks right into the high school he attends. The bad news is, that Lena, the new girl, has just moved into the oldest plantation house in town and her uncle is the town recluse. So of course, Lena is dismissed as being untouchable and unworthy by the popular girls yet Ethan is drawn to her.

Lena and Ethan soon When Ethan Wate falls asleep at night, he dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. He knows they are connected and longs to find out who this mysterious girl is, when lo and behold she walks right into the high school he attends. The bad news is, that Lena, the new girl, has just moved into the oldest plantation house in town and her uncle is the town recluse. So of course, Lena is dismissed as being untouchable and unworthy by the popular girls yet Ethan is drawn to her.

Lena and Ethan soon become friends with potential possibilities of the relationship kind. Ethan soon discovers Lena is different from other girls because she is a castor. A castor is a type of witch. Lena's 16th birthday is approaching and all castors from Lena's family find out if they will be become dark or light. Lena is fretfully worried and rightfully so. One day Ethan and Lena find a powerful talisman on the land of a burned down plantation called Greenbriar and they are transported back in time to the Civil War to witness the house being burned down by union soldiers and the events of their two families 150 years before they were born.

There is a dual storyline in Beautiful Creatures. The first storyline is the modern paranormal high school drama that goes like this; boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, girl needs protecting, boy tries and fails, the adults want to keep them apart and so on. The second storyline takes place during the Civil War. The interplay of the two story lines is what kept me turning the pages. Beautiful Creatures is interesting and unique and it appealing to history buffs and lovers of literature.

Beautiful Creatures is a southern gothic that contains a curse that has lasted generations, a town with a group of people who are a little bit stagnant and a secret that promises to change the status quo. Of course there is a budding romance and creative characters and creatures. With a spooky cemetery, a labyrinth of books and just enough crazy thrown in to keep you guessing. The authors do a good job of slowly revealing the mystery in bits and pieces and keep you coming back for more. Garcia and Stohl write in tandem and are both educators.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for awhile and since the film release is in a week or so, I thought it was about time to read it. Read the book and then see the film tends to be my motto. So I have big plans to see the film and I think Beautiful Creatures has intrigued me enough that I will read the second book and probably the third and maybe the fourth. Will there be a Fifth?

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Dec 02, 2009 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was ok

Shelves: paranormal, paranormal-romance, young-adult, angels-and-demons-and-good-and-evil, multiple-authors

I kept seeing this recommended, and I would think: "I saw that movie already" and pass it by ... So. Let me tell myself for the last time here: NOT. The. Same. Story. as Heavenly Creatures. But you can understand my confusion, right?

There are some REALLY mixed reviews here for this book. I kind of HAD to read it, to see for myself ...

And, the end result: this is one of those YA books that doesn't really cross over into the Adult market very well. It's very ... Young Adult.

The plot is simplistic ...more

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Feb 11, 2013 alana rated it liked it

Shelves: southernlit, books-on-the-big-screen, young-adult, series-in-progress

While I enjoyed the Southern-ness of this book, the whole forbidden romance thing was a bit too Twilighty for me. I find romance from a young adult perspective difficult to enjoy/endure when one has left the realm of high anxiety early adolescence. Regardless, here's to mixing witchcraft and Confederate lore! I would check out the next book if I found a cheap copy of it. ...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Vesra (When She Reads) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: b, series, hardcover, paranormal-romance, young-adult, fiction, author-g, pub-little-brown-and-company, pc-500-599, urban-fantasy

It was slow at first, but I ended up loving it.

Full Review @ When She Reads ...more

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Feb 11, 2011 mstan rated it did not like it

Shelves: american, for-young-adults-or-children, abandoned

Another paranormal thing - set in the South, of all places, this time - that's not worth it. The relationship is forced, and I'm not really interested in unravelling the civil war mystery. ...more

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