Ripping Through Those BEAUTIFUL CREATURES

Something I’ve always loved, ever since I was a very young, is when a big, giant, honking book reads as quickly as a little, tiny, featherweight book.  There’s something about turning page after page after page with endless enthusiasm through a book that weighs more than a dumbbell; it’s really satisfying in a visceral way.  (And this satisfaction may be another reason why I really like reading books that I can hold in my hand: feeling the shift in heft from right hand to left that keeps me with the paper and cardboard types of books as opposed to the electronic ones, though that’s a different subject.)  This big-book-reading-as-quickly-as-a-little-book was the experience I had reading Beautiful Creatures, a paranormal romance narrated by sixteen-year-old Ethan Wate, a boy who falls in love with a “Caster.”  Basketball player, meet Witch.  Witch, meet Basketball player.  You can see from the start that this will NOT be an easy relationship, even by most high school relationship standards.

And it’s not an easy relationship, but difficult relationships can often mean page-turning, rip-right-through reads, and Beautiful Creatures is one of those reads.  The story may never leave the small Southern town of Gatlin, but it doesn’t need to venture any further in order to include haunted houses and supernatural libraries and civil war battlefields.  Sure, there are over five-hundred and fifty pages, but they take the reader into such strange and romantic histories, populated by both magical creatures and high school cheerleaders (sometimes, the latter can be scarier than the former), and into a relationship everyone opposes but the two teenagers involved. 

I can see fans of the Twilight series eating up Beautiful Creatures and craving the next installment (and there are more installments, ready and waiting).  I appreciated the twist on that regular-girl-falls-for-supernaturally-powerful-boy equation.  Ethan’s the regular (sort of) teenager, and Lena’s the one with the powers.  Which is kind of awesome in my opinion.  Also, I’m totally intrigued by the fact that such a seamless book, a book that moves and flows with such ease, was written by not one imaginative author but two: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.  I’m super curious about this collaboration, as I’m curious about where the worlds—real and supernatural—will take Ethan and Lena next.