Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures

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.**


Watching T.V. one day I saw a preview for a movie, Beautiful Creatures. I was drawn to it and I knew that it sounded familiar so I looked it up and sure enough it was based on a book. I immediately started reading it and was so beyond charmed by the way I felt right at home in this book. The whole book is based in the south and it read so fluently southern for me that I felt like I needed to get a glass of sweet tea and set on the veranda with a fan.

Ethan Wate lives a normal teenage life. He's on the basket ball team, he makes good grades and is in general a good boy. His mama died last year and that caused his father to hide himself away in the study writing a book, and leaving the general care of Ethan to Amma, their housekeeper for lack of a better word. Amma was always there, she called Ethan her boy, so in reality she was much more than a house keeper. Right before school started Ethan having dreams, but they were so real that he woke up feeling like it was a memory rather than a dream and waking up with mud under your fingernails from clawing at the ground in the 'dream' only led him to believe he was living them, not just dreaming them. There was a girl in these dreams too but he could never quite see her, he just knew he had to save her.

Fast forward to a school day and there is a new girl at school. This is cause for national holiday cause people just don't move to Gatlin. He doesn't know who she is but he is drawn to her like a moth to a flame. The poor girl is weird, she drives hearse to school and to top it all of she's Macon Ravenwood's niece. That man has been around forever but he's a shut in so no one has ever actually seen him. That makes Lena Duchannes an outcast on site.


Soon, though Lena and Ethan are like peas and carrots. They together all the time, despite the fact that both Amma and Uncle Macon don't think its a good idea for them to let their young love grow.

Lena lets Ethan in on her secret, she's a caster and on her 16th birthday, she'll be claimed as light or dark. Uncle Macon is her protector, surprisingly though, Ethan can protect her too. In the end all Lena wants is to be a normal teenage girl that worries about going to dances and hanging out with her boyfriend. Sometimes though we don't get what we want.

I loved the southern charm that so many of the characters exuded. Uncle Macon was one of my favorite characters as was Amma. I fell in love with the way Ethan and Lena were just easy together when it was just them. The rush and excitement of the action scenes. This was a great book and I am certainly looking forward to what book two as well as what the movie have in store for us. Check it out and don't forget we have a link to the preview for the movie on our blog as well!

**Goodreads summary