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Beautiful Creatures (Beautiful Creatures) (Paperback)
Short Description for Beautiful CreaturesLena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided. Ethan never even saw it coming.
Full description- Publisher: Puffin Books
- Published: 04 February 2010
- Format: Paperback 576 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Fiction | General
- ISBN 13: 9780141326085 ISBN 10: 0141326085
- Sales rank: 12,312
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Reviews for Beautiful Creatures
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Top review
Beautiful Creatures Review
It took me a while to start this book. And then it took me a while to read it through. Yes, it's a good read, but the overall writing wasn't as captivating as I expected. It's kind of slow paced, and occasionally just not that fluent.
There's the whole thing with the Civil War. Yes, it's somewhat important part of the characters' history, but all the historical reenactments and history lessons just didn't do it for me. Same with the DAR and PTA. Witch hunt also included, but that was a big part of the plot, so that I could have lived with.
Parts about the Civil War could have been completely removed, and I probably wouldn't have noticed a difference. They only distracted me, and I wished those parts were replaced with Ethan's and Lena's romance. Since there could have been so much more details about that, then I would've been happy.
Overall, I liked Ethan and Lena. A couple, who are destined to be together, though the fate is against them. Especially when we find out the thing about Mortals and Casters not working so well together.
Ethan is a narrator, which was interesting considering women authors. Despite that, Ethan was a believable character. He's blind to Lena's flaws, but isn't that how it always is when you're madly in love with someone. They're the perfection and you would do anything for them. So Ethan's quite the knight in shiny armor through out the book.
And Lena. She seems so nice. So, so nice. She would never even hurt a fly, except when she loses the control of her powers. But then again, when she gains the control, her niceness starts cracking. The thing with the book and sort of brainwashing her aunt and cousin? Not nice! So even though I liked her and Ethan together, I liked Ethan more.
There's a bunch of other people hanging around, but only few I really liked, being Uncle Macon, Link and Ridley. Believe it or not, I really liked her! Especially the thing with "Sympathy for the devil"- song, that was quite funny. Luckily, there's more of her in the second book!
Overall, a good read. The ending saved the whole book, before that I had some troubles following the story, but the end was loud and clear. I cried like a baby. Like I always do, when there's a good story going on. This was the reason I started book 2 right away! by Satu Micklin -
Recommended
A lot of people have recommended this read to me so I just had to pick it up.
For the most part it was a good read for me. A boy growing up in a town that he wants to get away from and a new, completely unusual girl comes into the picture that interests him because she's so different to what he's used to. It's the basis of a story that can go anywhere.
It had a lot of exciting and shocking events within the story that made me feel for the main characters but the problem was it went on too long. It's fine for a book to be over 500 pages, but when it gets repetitive it's hard to finish for the storyline and not for the sake of finishing it because I had already read 400 pages.
The characters themselves were great. Lena was a strong character that didn't take no for an answer and Ethan was sweet. The supporting characters were good too. Link (Ethan's best friend) was funny and seemed to be the opposite to Ethan which was probably why they fit so well. The characters that are there to sort of test the protagonists - which they did in bucket loads - were written really well.
Beautiful Creatures is all about this curse that Lena has. It's all about counting down to Lena's sixteenth birthday when something disastrous is going to happen. The build up to the birthday is full of suspense which is definitely what kept me reading. Which brings me to another problem I had. The timing of this book was brilliant until it got closer to the birthday. It just seemed like as it got closer to the date in the book the time gap between events got shorter and shorter which put me off a little. It wasn't evenly distributed if that makes sense. Something would happen and then readers are reminded the date is three months away, but then something else would happen and then reader's are reminded that the birth day is the next week. It was a little frustrating.
The setting of the story - a small town called Gatlin - was brilliantly written. It was a place that was meant to be suffocating and stuffy. It was meant to put people off, at least people who had any sense according to Ethan. I think it was the perfect place for a story like Beautiful Creatures to take place. Gatlin was probably my most favourite aspect of the novel.
Overall, I did enjoy this read because it has a little of everything. I do recommend it for those who like novels filled with suspense, nasty schoolgirls and sweet romance that develops in its own time. by Maryam H -
AWESOME BOOK EVR
i love the humor in this story and i enjoyed it. i cant wait until im into Beautiful Darkness! This is a kewl story and i LOVE this book! (: by Ashley
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promising start
I like the humor in the story lines. Chapter one, and the book had me giggling on my lunch break with everybody giving me looks in the staff room. I think that earned the storytelling quality a 4 out of 5. The story itself even if it is not terribly original is quite captivating. The authors have seamlessly blended modern day teen culture with paranormal fantasy that as a reader I could believe in. If I have to grade the "suspension of disbelief" for this story I will have to give it a 4.5 out of 5. The ending however is a cliffhanger. Although the ending did close the book nicely, it is also the beginning of the next book. Gave the impression that the whole book is just chapter one of a bigger book. That earned a 2 out of 5. The cover art? It could do better. I have seen this book for sometime now in the blogosphere but ignored it for a few months just because I do not find the cover attractive to my fantasy reader's eyes. The art department who did this cover needs to be fired. In a marketing graph, this cover art would be a 1 out of 5. Overall, this book is a 3.5 out of 5. by Cherry
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Modern gothic tale
Firstly, I have to say I had a slight giggle to myself about the green eyes and black hair (I should really start a list to see how many paranormal protagonists we can find with green eyes and/or black hair).
The first person narrative is written from the perspective of the male protagonist (Ethan) something I did find hard to relate to being a girl and having three girls myself (J has to get in touch with his feminine side in our house or shut the door to watch sport).
There is dramatic tension almost from the first page. The background descriptions of the characters and the setting were fantastic and really fed my technicolor imagination.
The use of the Gothic convention of nesting (a story within a story) was deployed with great efficiency adding significance to the main plot.
There is clever use of the history of the civil war intertwining the story, although I can appreciate the detail and depth it added to the story it is probably easier to relate to if you are American and studied the Civil War. The references to To Kill a Mockingbird were intriguing and have certainly inspired me to read it.
I found the description of Ethan's aunts an ingenious parallel to the mythical fates or even the witches in Macbeth.
The references to religion and voodoo were extraordinary and well written, the cross-over element between religions was enlightening. Although, I found the classification of all paranormal/supernatural beings as Casters was too much of a generalisation for me, I appreciate that all things contain good and bad elements, the yin and yang if you will, but I like my neat little categories Vampire, Witch, Shifter, etc but that is just a personal preference.
The Gothic imagery was fantastic, I especially liked the description of the libraries (I wonder why!). The use of Latin and Welsh (yeah! WELSH) was just fantastic (not that I am biased because I am Welsh).
The action is tightly packed towards the end of the book and the ending is a cliff-hanger.
However, there were some elements that bothered me, I found the relationship between Ethan and Lena to be very intense considering their ages (15 & 16) perhaps it is just he mother coming out in me as I do not think I would be very happy if one of my daughters was in such an intense relationship at that age. I guess the point is that soul mates/reincarnation has no age limits. I also found Amma's changing attitude to Lena to be a bit confusing.
On the whole an enjoyable paranormal romance/thriller with some terrific quotes. by Emma Davies -
Beautiful Creatures = 4&1/2 Stars
I haven't seen a bad review about this book yet so my expectations of this book were exceedingly high... and I think that ruined it a bit for me. Don't get me wrong, I still thoroughly enjoyed this masterfully written tale, but just not as much as I thought I would.
First of all, I loved Ethan. I thought he was extremely sweet and honest protagonist. He wasn't pretending to be a saint, but nor did he do anything bad. Lena on the other hand... I just couldn't bring myself to like her. I tried very hard, but I just couldn't feel a connection with her, and I couldn't see why Ethan liked her so much.
Link was another character I adored. How he can manage to be so laid back and funny with a mother like his I'll never know. And he really was funny; I would have loved for there to be more of him in the book; with quotes like:
"Shut up. You're so whipped I should buy you a saddle."
I found the plot to be unique and the writing engaging. I loved the To Kill A Mockingbird (by Harper Lee) references and found the similarities between Gatlin and Maycomb astounding. Beautiful Creatures is almost a modern-day fantasy version of TKAM.
Having said all of that, I will definitely re-read this book and I'm eagerly anticipating the sequel!
Overall, I'm giving this book 4 and a 1/2 stars out of 5. It misses out on that half a star for me just because I could connect with Lena, but that doesn't mean anyone else will have the same problem. Therefore, I recommend this book to everyone who loves fantasy, To Kill A Mockingbird and YA literature in general. by Amy Mansell
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