Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
And here we have it: another contrite, cliché paranormal romance wherein the mysterious new student is a supernatural creature (in this case a witch-no, I’m sorry, a Caster) and the protagonist falls head over heels in love with them because their blandness is so irresistibly irresistible and they want to be together but oh no they can’t, it’s too dangerous, but it’s true love in its purest form and love conquers all, right?
I actually did not know that Beautiful Creatures followed this formula to the letter (about the only fresh thing it brings to the table is the fact that the protagonist is male and the supernatural love interest is female). In fact, I didn’t know a single damn thing about Beautiful Creatures when I bought it other than the fact that it was paranormal YA and it was getting rave reviews from book sources that I trusted. (Sources that have honestly escaped me upon writing this.)
Let’s start with the characters. Ethan, the protagonist, is about as distinguishable as a filler character in a sitcom only without any shtick to make him somewhat amusing. He’s mostly there to describe things as they happen and to have very little impact on the story itself thusly keeping whatever personality he is hiding from projecting onto his surroundings. The two things I remember about him from the 560 page of text: he eats a lot and he enjoys reading but keeps it a secret due to the fact that his fellow basketball teammates-if not the entire high school-would look down on him for his literacy. Unfortunate southern implications, they will make an appearance later in the review.
Lena was just as bland. Did I mention this trend of two-dimensional love interests? It’s all a part of the formula since good-looking but otherwise vapid people have some sort of universal appeal. Regarding Lena, however, I’m able to forgive a bit since she provided the only interesting crux of the story-I enjoyed reading about the different Caster powers and I wish they would have been expanded upon more. In fact, I wish the authors would ditch the stilted love story and write an explosive tell-all about Lena’s family and their comings-of-age. I liked the idea of Ryan and Reece and even Ridley-up until the end, which I will discuss later.
I liked Macon and I liked Amma-and I have to congratulate the authors for actually giving Ethan some sort of parental supervision and have his actions, you know, have some consequences instead of just writing out parental guidance completely. Oh-and I just want to briefly mention the librarian whose name I’ve already forgotten. Okay, yes, she’s well-read. You don’t need to prove this by having her quote Shakespeare or Sophocles every time she speaks. No, really, we get it. Once or twice in the course of the novel is enough.
Now let’s talk about the southern setting that was capitalized upon in the blurb and throughout the novel. You know, I’ve only lived in one place in my life so maybe these kinds of small southern towns do exist. However, when I first started reading I felt a huge time displacement-Ethan had just mentioned owning an iPod so I felt safe assuming that the story was set within the past few years. And then he described how everyone in town still felt bitter about the civil war and refused to acknowledge that the south had actually, you know, lost. Forgive my ignorance if this is actually a commonplace thing but students in my high school came to class wearing Confederate flags on their shirts and on the bumpers of their camouflage pick up trucks (this is along with their “God has a place for every creature-right next to the taters and gravy” bumper stickers). None of them-at least to my knowledge-were in any sort of weird denial about the civil war. It felt like an anachronism the whole way through.
As a side note to that, the book leads up to a town-wide reenactment of the civil war and I was jarred when I read that the soldiers were using live ammunition. I’m hoping that the authors are getting their facts disturbingly wrong, otherwise my faith in humanity just went down a notch.
Anyway, let’s talk about what I’m really writing this review to complain about: the high school. If this wasn’t the epitome of cliché then I will eat my show. Let’s review: we have Emily and Savannah, both blonde cheerleaders with the same little metallic purses and who are described as essentially looking and acting exactly alike. With me so far? Of course you are, this is the most famous high school archetype. Turns out the entire school is a hivemind led by these two girls. “Led” as in you act like Emily and Savannah and you won’t be brutally ostracized not only be the whole of the student population but by the town itself.
I hate this more than anything. Not only is it just plain stupid, it’s a sign that the authors were either too lazy or too ignorant to breathe personality into a high school-and high school is brimming with personality. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that high school can, in a lot of ways, be a hierarchy but it is not a hivemind and it is not a personal army. In a real high school Lena would not be the only unusual person. Most teenagers appreciate freedom of expression and there would not be a concentrated effort to collectively lick the asses of the quote-unquote cool girls. Not all people want to follow a status quo-quite a few want to just be themselves even if it means being a social pariah.
My favorite part was when our heroic protagonists were going to the winter formal and Ethan so cattily placed all of the high school females into two categories-the sluts and the vapid, bitchy southern belles. Only Lena got to look beautiful in her gown. This book was projecting in a weird way. All of the human women were vapid and evil and jealous and bigoted and there was no room for free thought. All of the guys had no thoughts beyond getting into the pants of said females (save for our saintly protagonist who was above such matters).
And now to the meat of the matter-the story itself. As mentioned earlier, I could almost offer a little forgiveness for an interesting mythology but the entire concept is explained in one chapter and left unexplored so my interest fell by the wayside. At some point Lena starts talking inside of Ethan’s head and he calmly accepts this new development with all the surprise of a person getting a new text message.
I’m not going to discuss most of the first 500 pages since it mostly consists of everyone in town being assholes, Ethan figuring Lena out, some flashbacks involving a locket, a lot “I-love-you-even-though-I-don’t-want-to-say-it”, and about 200 pages that could be trimmed without much impact to the story.
What I want to talk about is the ending. Okay, we’ve arrived at Lena’s sixteenth birthday where she will be Claimed by either the dark side or the light side-it’s the point of the story that readers have endured all aforementioned padding to reach. Also, there are people apparently shooting each in some other part of town since I guess that’s what a war reenactment entails. Inevitably, crazy plot twists are about to go down.
One of the villains, Ridley, who was claimed by the dark side, has influenced the entire town to have a party at Ravenwood for Lena’s birthday. Even though Ridley is no doubt up to something dastardly and even though Lena hates her and even though she knows she had to be careful on her birthday and even though a thousand other damn things, Lena begs her uncle if she can go out and join the puppet party. Understandably, he says no. And then she gets upset.
But wait-Ridley has to outdo Lena’s sudden leapfrog in logic by-wait for it-leaving in the middle of her villainous scheme right when she has to the protagonists right where she wants them. I don’t know about you, but for me nothing spells good story like a conflict being resolved by the villain leaving on a whim.
And then there’s Sarafina-at least I think her name was Sarafina, I’m forgetting quite a few names at this point-who for some reason has been disguised as Link’s mother throughout the entire book. Link, who has absolutely no bearing on the plot and whose mother would be completely ineffectual at getting to Lena. Of course she does go on a huge campaign to get Lena expelled but what in the world would having Lena getting to spend all the more time at Ravenwood under the protection of Macon possibly accomplish? It was a plot twist for the sake of a plot twist.
Now for the final question that the readers have been anticipating-is Lena a good witch or a bad witch? Well, you see, the authors get to opt out of answering this question by having the clouds cover the moon. A hundred years of a powerful family curse negated because the clouds cover the moon. But it’s all good because the end of the book implies that Lena will have to be Claimed on her seventeenth birthday. Aren’t recycled plot points fun? I know I’m looking forward to reading another 600-pager just to find out the answer that was promised in the first novel.
Except I won’t be. That’s the thing about this book. I’ve picked up books in series that I didn’t like simply because they are train wrecks. A sequel to Beautiful Creatures wouldn’t be worth reading to find out if the story gets better, it wouldn’t be worth reading to find out Lena’s fate, and it wouldn’t even be worth reading for the lulz. It didn’t even have the advantage of being amusingly bad. It was just boring the whole way through.
This, fellow readers, has been another installment in why I need to stop picking up YA fantasy novels. Maybe someday I’ll learn my lesson. I know, I know-bitter, party of me.