Beautiful Creatures

“Some loves are meant to be…others are cursed.

There were no surprises in Gatlin County. 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.”

I love big epic love stories, especially ones where the author(s) creates an intricate world with an elaborate history I can yearn to know more about. And that's exactly what Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl did with their debut novel 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.

To me, what makes Beautiful Creatures stand out is the Southern Gothic elements in the story, the fact that the setting of Gatlin - the town, it's history and culture - plays such a huge role in the characters and their personalities and the actual plot of the story. Because of the incredible world building and the unique aspects of southern culture which are so important in Beautiful Creatures, each of the characters, even minor ones, quickly come alive and stand out against other characters within the paranormal YA genre.

And no punches are pulled. It was easy to get sucked into Ethan's voice and his world, and the suspense and the twists just keep coming for all 600 pages.

Make sure you check out Little Brown's Beautiful Creatures Website, which includes a map of Gatlin!