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A review by hannahtrahair
The Beautiful Creatures Complete Collection by Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl
3.0
Ethan Wate has been having dreams, strange dreams, and so when the girl who has been featuring heavily finds her way into his high school, he's a bit freaked out to say the least.
I saw the trailer, I like the Deep South, so I picked up the book. Witches (Casters, I know) have never been my favourite supernatural element because I always feel like problems are too easily solved - oh, there's an old spell book which just HAPPENS to have the exact reversing spell that I needed - but I really liked the claiming idea so I decided to go ahead anyway. I can't say I was wholly disappointed.
The setting lived up to my expectations, I absolutely loved Gatlin with all the Confederate references and the DAR because I'm a total nerd about that. Furthermore, periphery characters interested me a lot, Macon and Ridley in particular, which really leads me to my main problem with this book - the main characters. Ethan was the worst, I don't think I've ever met a boy who talks (or thinks) that much like a girl. But, above that, his incessant mumblings about how much better he and his family was just annoyed me beyond words. Yes, his parents have a college education and write books, yes the DAR and Civil War reenactments are pretty backwards, but he just refuses to accept that he is just as human as they are.
Lena wasn't as bad, but I found her pretty bland, aside from when she got angry which was when things got interesting. Again, Ridley was just so much more interesting and I wish I had seen more of her character instead.
The ending was interesting enough for me to probably pick up the sequel, but felt like it was designed to rely upon the next book a little too heavily. I think it's always important to come away from a book as part of a series feeling that it could have stood alone, particularly if it is the first one, but this one definitely didn't feel that way. The whole thing already feels like the series will just be building towards the final book and that it's just been spilt into separate novels for ease of holding. Nevertheless, I will probably watch the film and pick up the others some time in the summer.
I saw the trailer, I like the Deep South, so I picked up the book. Witches (Casters, I know) have never been my favourite supernatural element because I always feel like problems are too easily solved - oh, there's an old spell book which just HAPPENS to have the exact reversing spell that I needed - but I really liked the claiming idea so I decided to go ahead anyway. I can't say I was wholly disappointed.
The setting lived up to my expectations, I absolutely loved Gatlin with all the Confederate references and the DAR because I'm a total nerd about that. Furthermore, periphery characters interested me a lot, Macon and Ridley in particular, which really leads me to my main problem with this book - the main characters. Ethan was the worst, I don't think I've ever met a boy who talks (or thinks) that much like a girl. But, above that, his incessant mumblings about how much better he and his family was just annoyed me beyond words. Yes, his parents have a college education and write books, yes the DAR and Civil War reenactments are pretty backwards, but he just refuses to accept that he is just as human as they are.
Lena wasn't as bad, but I found her pretty bland, aside from when she got angry which was when things got interesting. Again, Ridley was just so much more interesting and I wish I had seen more of her character instead.
The ending was interesting enough for me to probably pick up the sequel, but felt like it was designed to rely upon the next book a little too heavily. I think it's always important to come away from a book as part of a series feeling that it could have stood alone, particularly if it is the first one, but this one definitely didn't feel that way. The whole thing already feels like the series will just be building towards the final book and that it's just been spilt into separate novels for ease of holding. Nevertheless, I will probably watch the film and pick up the others some time in the summer.