#32--Beautiful Creatures

Bibliographic Information

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl. Little, Brown and Company. (2010)

Price: $9.99 in paperback

Pages: 563 in paperback (not the one with the movie cast on it)

Note: This book was originally published in 2009 and is the first book in the Caster Chronicles

Plot Summary

Sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate cannot wait to finish his last two years of high school and leave his small town of Gatlin, South Carolina. While he loves his family he cannot bear the small-mindedness of most of the townsfolk. He even wouldn’t mind escaping his family once and a while as his father has practically become a hermit after the death of his wife leaving Ethan to talk to Amma, housekeeper, mother figure, and spiritual protector rolled up into one. Ethan finds it difficult to keep secrets from Amma but he does manage to keep one. Every night he experiences terrible nightmares that involve losing the girl of his dreams. When he wakes up in the morning he finds himself covered in mud and unable to erase the girl’s scent of lemons and rosemary. Although he knows that Amma practices voodoo of some sort he refuses to worry her with his nightmares.

Ethan expects, with the exception of the nightmares, that nothing of significance will ever happen to him while he is living in Gatlin but he is soon proved wrong when new student Lena Duchannes moves into town. Strikingly beautiful and unlike any girl he has met previously, Ethan is instantly intrigued by her. Quickly he realizes that she is the girl in his nightmares and the two become friends as they simultaneously try to discover why they have such a link. Unfortunately, they must unravel this mystery before Lena’s sixteenth birthday as she promises Ethan that something terrible will happen to her on that day.

Critical Evaluation

Beautiful Creatures is a highly enjoyable novel as it contains exquisite settings, a well-woven plot, and several intriguing mysteries. Ethan is a character that most readers will be able to sympathize with as he struggles to relate to his high school peers while wanting something more out of life. He is an interesting character in his own right as he is suddenly thrust into the exciting life he has always wanted only to discover that he may not be strong enough to survive it. His courage is continually tested with each new discovery he and Lena make about their past, the past of their town, and the secrets that their guardians have been keeping from them.

The world Garcia and Stohl have created is a fascinating one filled with multi-talented casters and old secrets that date back thousands of years. It is just the sort of world that many readers of fantasy will long to inhabit even if it is rather an unpredictable one. Although I haven’t read many Southern Gothic novels, Beautiful Creatures seems to nicely fit into the genre as was intended by the authors. This is partly due to the multiple mysteries contained within the book’s pages but is primarily due to the exquisite settings the authors have created. From ruined mansions to secret libraries, Garcia and Stohl give their book an old-world flavor that includes a town stuck halfway between the old and the new. Ultimately, Beautiful Creatures was a highly enjoyable book and I cannot wait to read the sequels.

As a side note, this book has recently been turned into a movie.

Reader’s Annotation

When sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate finally meets the girl who has been haunting his dreams he has no idea how exciting his boring town can be.

About the Authors

Friends long before they started writing together, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl met through their children’s school. They first became friends, then critique partners and finally writing partners (Dawn, 2010). Margaret first worked in the video game industry before she became a writer while Kami Garcia first worked as a teacher and reading specialist. Currently, both live in the Los Angeles area where they enjoy working on the Caster Chronicles together. When they are not writing Margaret enjoys traveling with her family while Kami enjoys watching disaster movies.

To learn more about Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl visit their website here.

Or read Dawn’s interview with them here.

Genre

Paranormal romance, Supernatural fiction

Readalikes

Intertwined by Gena Showalter

·         Also about a boy who sees a girl in visions and includes teens with paranormal abilities

Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

·         Similar premise to Beautiful Creatures except it is the girl who is attracted to the strange boy who insists that he is putting her in danger

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

·         The sequel to Beautiful Creatures

Tags

15 yr. old, 16 yr. old, Civil War history, Daughters of the American Revolution, libraries, Salem witch trials, South Carolina, viola, vocab words, witchcraft, Yorkshire terrier

Awards Won/Lists On

2009—Amazon’s #5 Best Book of the Year

2009—Amazon’s #1 Teen Best Book of the Year

2010—ALA Teens’ Top Ten

2010—William C. Morris Nominee

SCIBA Award Finalist

NYPL Book for the Teen Age

Professional Reviews

 AudioFile

Booklist

Kirkus Reviews
Publishers' Weekly
School Library Journal

Booktalk Ideas

Explanations of Ethan’s Life

·         1^st chapter towards the end

·         Mother died and father is absent

o   “The last five months had been hard for him. He had really loved my mother. But so had I” (p. 28).

o   “I wanted to know why my dad never came out of his study. I wanted to know why we couldn’t leave this worthless old house just because a million Wates had lived here before us, especially now that my mom was gone” (p. 30).

·         His struggle to want to get away from his town while part of him still belongs

o   “It wasn’t that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious. It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn’t” (p. 36)

o   “Everything had already happened, ten years ago. For our parents, everything had already happened twenty or thirty years ago. And for the town itself, it seemed like nothing had happened for more than a hundred years. Nothing of consequence, that is” (p. 106).

Explanation of Caster’s Abilities

·         Thaumaturge (healer) (278)

·         Natural/Cataclyst

·         Pamlimpset (182)

·         Siren (183)

·         Sybil (183)

·         Illusionist (184)

·         Shifter (184)

Bibliotherapeutic Usefulness

This book can be used to discuss fate, destiny, the balance between one’s responsibility towards oneself and family, and teen romance.

Reading Level/Interest Level

Reading Level: 4^th grade

Interest Level: 6^th grade and up

Level determined by AR Bookfinder

Challenge Issues

This book includes the following potentially controversial elements:

·         Attempted murder

·         Bullying

·         Corrupt authority figures

·         Disobeying authority figures

·         Grave digging

·         Illegitimate children

·         Library as church

·         Magic

·         Murder

·         Spirits/ghosts

·         Succubus

·         Tarot cards

·         Telepathy

·         Witches

Librarians can point out that the witchcraft portrayed in this book is a far cry from actual witchcraft. They can also explain the positive elements of the book including the beautiful writing style and the themes of loyalty, family and fighting for what is right.

Why Was This Included?

I chose this novel because I was doing a presentation on ghosts and it included them. However, I have been tempted to read this book for several years because I was intrigued by its description as a Southern Gothic young adult novel.