Beautiful Creatures, Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Beautiful Creatures is a marvelous, challenging book, completely outside my regular taste–and I love it.
Generally speaking, I don’t read romance. I’m not against the idea of it, but I prefer stories where love isn’t the driving force solely for love’s sake. But every now and then, a book hits me–really hits me–and I find myself questioning everything.
Beautiful Creatures is one of those books.
Written by duo Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Creatures is paranormal romance with a gothic, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre feel. Here’s the jacket blurb:
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.
Actually, it’s more than a feel. Here are just some of the ways Beautiful Creatures strikes gothic chords:
- Exploring entrapment – Lena isn’t a woman trapped in a domestic setting (a la Jane or Cathy) but she is trapped between her power and the curse. And in this world, the curse setting is almost domestic.
- Forbidding mansion and gloomy villain. I can’t reveal more without significant spoilerage, but you’ll see what I mean if you grab the book (which you should!).
- The madwoman in the attic trope – Lena definitely isn’t Bertha, but there are clear elements of Bertha (Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre) in the story.
- Questioning social structures – this may be a reach, but the exploration of the town of Gatlin and the theme of belonging vs. other fit the bill to me. It also has a bit of a Frankenstein vibe, which I love. (If you haven’t read Shelley’s Frankenstein, grab it from Project Gutenberg now!)
Right now, Beautiful Creatures is fresh in my mind–I finished it this morning, in public, and did the staring at something trick Ethan mentions in later chapters to keep myself from blubbering like an idiot in a room full of old ladies drinking coffee, eating doughnuts, and gossiping louder than crows. (It may sound bad, but it’s actually a really fun place to read, with lots of setting and character swirling around.) But here are my briefest, most important thoughts about the book, mostly from a craft perspective; a proper review will follow next Tuesday, when I’ve had time to process.
- Beautiful Creatures is a duet, something I rarely see done well (Warriors series, I’m looking at you).
- The missing people–Ethan’s mom is dead, Lena’s parents are dead–hang over the text, giving poignancy to the story without crossing into the melodramatic.
- The dialogue of the South is readable, understandable. I can’t testify to how people in the South actually speak, as I’ve only met one person, and not been farther from the Northeast than California, Utah, Arizona, and Florida. But there are distinct speech patterns in this book, with unique voices, that make sense and are easy to hear. Most attempts at regional dialect (including my own) fall flat. These do not.
- Geekiness. Before I knew @MargaretStohl wrote video games, I’d spotted the Zelda reference, and giggled. That sort of call back always draws me in.
- Trope tipping – having read a fair few classics and yet more fairy tales, I’m pretty attuned to tropes. And while Beautiful Creatures does have quite a few, and I did half-predict the ending, the tropes weren’t bland stereotypes, but rather explorations. Nothing, truly, is as it seems in this book, and that’s a good chunk of what makes it beautiful.
- Research – again, I can’t speak to knowledge of the South, but there are parts of this book that reek of research. Not in an onion breath way, but rather in a well-rounded, knowledgeable way that gives the story more depth.
- Prose. There are many things to love about this book, but I wouldn’t have continued reading if the prose hadn’t grabbed me.
- Book-love. It’s clear throughout this book that the characters and the authors value books, and that makes me happy. (Read @KamiGarcia’s list of favorite classic science fiction & fantasy novels – we have pretty much all the YA & kidlit books in common! (I’m not really a fan of The Giver.))
Next week, a real review, with all the stops, commas, semi-colons, and apostrophes this book deserves. ‘Til then, Happy Friday, Folks!
Have you read Beautiful Creatures? What did you think? Who was your favorite character? Will you read the next book, Beautiful Darkness?
Update: this post was meant to publish at 2pm EST on Friday, but I forgot my WP settings are on 24 hour time, so it pre-pubbed for 2am Friday. I’ve corrected it now to reflect the real time it was supposed to drop.
