INSOMNIAC SONG

FANTASY

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

 

Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Page Count: 563 pages

Date Published: December 2009

Publisher: Little, Brown

Related novels: Beautiful Darkness; Beautiful Chaos; Beautiful Redemption

Related media: Beautiful Creatures film

Synopsis:  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.

 

 

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the novel after seeing the film.  On some levels, I was rather happy that I’d seen the film before reading the book. I would have been disappointed if I’d read the book first. It surprised me how many things were changed or omitted from the film version. Some of the changes seemed very needless such as omitting entire characters or merging them with others. While this wasn’t compelling, nail-biting reading, it was a fairly decent novel for its genre. Beautiful Creatures is ultimately geared toward young adult readers of the Twilight era.

The thing that makes Beautiful Creatures stand out in the mass of young adult novels that have been released since 2005 is that the narrator is a teenage boy. Usually novels with a romantic flair are regulated to having the story told by the female protagonist. Ethan is an unusual boy in his small town. While he plays on the basketball team and gets along with almost everyone, he dreams of getting away from the South Carolina town to find something bigger than he is. He’s always reading the books that have been banned from his school and church. Little does he know that the adventure he was dreaming of will land right on his doorstep when Lena Duchannes arrives in town.

 

Most will find the pacing and length of the novel a bit too drawn out. It could have been tightened and weaved a little more smoothly. However, there are characters that you only get glimpses of. Through Ethan’s point of view, we learn about Lena and her family. It’s only a brief section at the very end where the story is told from Lena’s point of view. I couldn’t help being curious about her thoughts more than Ethan’s. The story of her ancestors and the events that unfolded during the Civil War were ones that I’d hoped to learn more about as well. It simply doesn’t happen in Beautiful Creatures.

 

There’s a rich real history behind the novel’s backstory and locations. While Gatlin is a fictional town, other locations like Charleston are very real. There are lots of connections to the Civil War such as the very real Battle of Honey Hill which took place in Jasper County, South Carolina. I enjoyed those touches. I do think that there could have been a tighter plot that explored more of those locations rather than small mentions. What was life like for Genevieve and her lover during that explosive time in American history?

 

Regardless, Beautiful Creatures was interesting enough that I’ll pick up the sequels if I find them in the bargain bin. If you enjoyed Twilight, The Mortal Instruments, and other novels of that sort, you’ll like this series.  The length of the novel shouldn’t be enough to make you lose interest. Stick with it until the end.

 

Rating: 2.5/5