"Beautiful Creatures" by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

SUMMARY :
There were no surprises in Gatlin County.
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.


PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Little Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre:  YA Fiction/Supernatural
Pages:  592
Series
Find it here:  Barnes & Noble 


ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Kami Garcia is a teacher and reading specialist with an MA in education, and leads book groups for children and teenagers. Margaret Stohl has an MA in English and studied creative writing under poet George MacBeth at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. They both live in Los Angeles, California, with their families. Beautiful Creatures is their debut novel.


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

I've had my eye on this book for quite a while.  It captured my attention because of the small Southern town setting and the "To Kill A Mockingbird" sort of hype.  It didn't let me down.  From the earliest chapters I was caught up in the story of a young man whose father and elderly housekeeper reminded me happily of those "...Mockingbird" surroundings.  Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl are not to be overlooked as just YA writers with a light story to tell.  This is a book with depth and interest for a cross-over read for adults, as well.

The primary characters, Ethan and Lena, are sophisticated and well drawn with plenty of interesting dialog and formidable backgrounds to draw upon.  I loved the suspense of finding out all the intricacies of their attachment to each other.  And, I enjoyed learning about their Southern roots and the people who intersected their previous and current lives.  Some things never change in small towns in the South!

The circumstances of witchcraft and mysterious happenings just adds thickness to the soup in this novel.  It's the pre-life that intrigued me most.  Garcia and Stohl bring an over all eerie magic to their setting.

I look forward to reading all the books in this series.  It's charming and well-written, and the characters are worthwhile.  I can see how they would stand up to more.  Interesting and exotic.  I highly recommend this book!

5 stars             Deborah/TheBookishDame