Beautiful Creatures

Original Title: Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles #1)
Author: Margareth Stohl, Kami Garcia
Release Date: December 1st 2009
Publisher: Brown Books for Young Readers
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There were no suprises 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 overgwown 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 suprises, one secret could change everything.

I’ve heard about this series before and seen the cover about a thousand times, but never dared to pick it up. I just looked some webpages of Estonian publications to see what books are translated to my native language. I discovered that “Fallen“ has now been translated and to my suprise the first and the second book of the Caster Chronicles series have been translated into Estonian, too. So I borrowed them from a library and decided to give this series a try.

I thought that “Beautiful Creatures“ was translated pretty well. I even found new words I had to look up from an Estonian dictionary because I had never heard of them before. I liked the overall concept, however, I do believe that this book should have ended earlier because it got tiresome at the end.

The other thing that bothered me was that Ethan, the main character, was a bit naive and he got into trouble because he didn’t really take advice from Amma, his mother figure, or Macon, Lena’s (Ethans girlfriends’) uncle. It felt like Amma and Macon were keeping a secret, but you could easily see that they were doing this in order to keep their families safe. Ethan was just too reckles in my opinion. He put everone at risk and acted without thinking.

I think there wasn’t anything else I wasn’t that sattisfied with. I liked Link. A lot. He was hilarious and fun! I liked Amma and Macon. I think I even liked Riley – she caused a big havoc everytime she was in the picture. Heh, I got to say “I told you so! “ to myself (and to this book): I figured out what’s going on like 150 pages before Ethan. I did not predict the whole thing, but I predicted the outcome and the main idea. I found the ending very sad.

Do I recommend this book? Yes, I think you should read it if you’re into male POV, mystery (well, it’s definitely not anything like Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes or Mikael Blomkvist from the Millenium series, but it’s still mysterious.. At least some of it is..), fantasy, young adult literature and a bit of humour (there isn’t much of it, but it made me laugh a few times, yes). If you don’t like any of those things or you do not wish to read about a reckless teenage boy with paranormal romance problems or about a small town with narrow-minded people, it’s definitely not for you.

Rating: 3/5.

Excerpts:

“You're so full of crap, you could pass for a toilet.”

 “The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.”
 “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead”
 “So you are a vampire."

"I most certainly am not." He looked annoyed. "That's such a common phrase, such a cliche, and so unflattering. I suppose you believe in werewolves and aliens too. I blame television.”
 “Teenagers. Everything is so apocalyptic.”

Reading order:

1. "Beautiful Creatures"
2. "Beautiful Darkness"
3. "Dream Dark" (a novella)
4. "Beautiful Chaos"
5. "Beautiful Redemption"