Beautiful Creatures Review & Beautiful Darkness News!!

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Released: December 1, 2009

Hardcover, 576 pages

rating:



Description from bn.com
There were no surprises in GatlinCounty.
We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that's what I thought.
Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.

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.

Review: Ok, I realise I've been giving out the 5-cupcake rating like candy lately, but I'd have to say...LUCKY ME for picking up such fabulous books! :) This one is very deserving of my highest rating! I loved this books. It's a hefty book---at a whopping 576 pages, any book that long has the danger of dragging in parts. Not this one. Almost every chapter captivates, while others quietly and satisfyingly fill in little bits of story. Now, I have never been to the south except for a very short stay in Florida, but this book put you right into the whole southern experience. The sounds of the night, the culture, the looks and smells; I felt completely submerged. I could hear each characters heavy and charming drawl.
The story itself was amazing, it felt epic and magical, like Gone with the Wind written as a paranormal teen romance. The historical parts added just the right touch and were smoothly transitioned into. I loved the characters, the family dynamics (although it took me a bit to distinguish whether Amma was a grandmother or a nanny!), especially Lena's Uncle Macon and Ethan's aunts. I loved that your were constantly second-guessing which side certain characters were on. The romance between Lena and Ethan was sweet. It made me wonder what it would be like to have your feelings constantly displayed like "writing on the wall" (read the book---you'll understand this reference!) I admired that although Lena knew she was powerful and strong, she always had integrity when her name was being dragged through the mud and got her small revenges in funny yet harmless ways.

I don't want to give away too much. It was wonderful---if you haven't yet, read it!

And while I'm sure you've seen this over and over again around the blogosphere, I want to have it gracing my blog with loveliness as well!! The cover and synopsis to the next installment in this series were recently revealed and its gorgeous! I can't wait for this to release on October 26th, 2010!
Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.

Sometimes life-ending.

Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.