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A review by trin
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl
3.0
This book is all about the setting for me. Yes, it’s a YA magical romance about people in high school in epic epic love—and, you know, whatever. I don’t particularly care about those parts. But the setting—the setting is just fantastic. The town of Gatlin seems so very, very real to me, in all its stuck-in-the-past small-town Southern glory. The community seems alive. The dynamics of high school are absolutely nailed—none of this Bella Swann “I’m the new girl and everyone LOVES me and wants to be my BFF and isn’t it just AWFUL” bullshit. Ethan, the narrator (yes, first person male narrator! also refreshing!), really struggles with the pressures to conform and fit in, and I found this, like all the non-supernatural aspects of the story, to be really vivid and realistically presented.
There are some wonderful details in the magical parts of the tale, too: the fact that Lena, Ethan’s potentially lethal true love (have I mentioned how much I enjoy this role reversal?), has a house whose decor changes depending on her uncle’s mood; the way Lena’s hair moves and twists when she’s working her magic. I do wish that almost every main character hadn’t in some way turned out to be involved in Caster society—it makes it seem less likely to me that the existence of magic and magic practitioners has remained a secret. (It was gang members! Gang members on PCPs!) But the gothic mood is consistently great, and while I was never as in love with Ethan and Lena as they were with each other, I was rooting for them.
There are some wonderful details in the magical parts of the tale, too: the fact that Lena, Ethan’s potentially lethal true love (have I mentioned how much I enjoy this role reversal?), has a house whose decor changes depending on her uncle’s mood; the way Lena’s hair moves and twists when she’s working her magic. I do wish that almost every main character hadn’t in some way turned out to be involved in Caster society—it makes it seem less likely to me that the existence of magic and magic practitioners has remained a secret. (It was gang members! Gang members on PCPs!) But the gothic mood is consistently great, and while I was never as in love with Ethan and Lena as they were with each other, I was rooting for them.