Beautiful Creatures

by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
576 pages

Can you change your destiny?

At a daunting 576 pages, Beautiful Creatures is Gothic romance packs it all in. Fans of historic fiction will love the Civil War flash backs and fantasy lovers will beg for more of the supernatural world that Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl created.

In Gatlin, South Carolina there are no secrets. Everyone knows your business the moment it happens. Or at least that's what sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate always thought. Ethan is counting down the days until he can leave Gatlin and start fresh in a place where no one knows him as the "boy whose mama died". But everything for Ethan changes when he meets the new girl in Gatlin, Lena Duchannes.

Lena is about the furthest thing from Gatlin's norm. She doesn't wear the right cloths, drives a hearse, and is the niece of Gatlin's biggest recluse, Macon Ravenwood. But Ethan and Lena are linked by something from their very first meeting, and maybe even before.

As Ethan and Lena become friends, she starts to share some of her family secrets. Secrets that involve the town that Ethan thought he knew so well. Lena's family are Casters, each has some magical gift, but on their sixteenth birthday they are claimed by either the light or dark powers of the casting world. Lena birthday is quickly approaching and the pair try frantically to find a way of sparing her from the fate of a dark Caster.

Ethan is the narrator of the story, which I think worked perfectly. Seeing the situation through him allows you to understand the more human issues in the story. The authors did a wonderful job of developing the minor characters as well. You really got a sense of who they were and loved them for their little quirks. Gatlin itself is a character, full of DAR members, Civil War reenactments, and things that aren't always what they seem. Another plus for this book is that it has a cool librarian.

Beautiful Creatures will have you enthralled from the beginning, and while the plot moves quickly, maybe some of the length could have been trimmed back. Still, the ending is exciting, and will leave you wanting more, but there is defiantly room for a sequel.

The verdict is: Must read for fantasy and historical fiction fans.