Annalisa's Reviews > Beautiful Creatures

From some of the reviews I've read, I was sure the writing was going to be atrocious. It's not. Sure there are times when it's repetitive and there's quite a few inconsistencies (where someone would say or do something and then contradict it a few pages later) and there were times when I had no idea what was going on (like where Ethan maybe almost had a heartache I guess and I thought it was some psychedelic love scene until it was explained at the end), but there are also moments of brilliance, in writing. The description was often vivid and I appreciate that it isn't uber-cheesy. I liked the Southern goth thing, especially Uncle Macon and Boo Radley and the changing house. In the beginning, I loved the setting of a Southern town and some of the quirky humor with which it was described. By halfway through though, I was sick of the over-stereotypical Southern town and over Garcia's and Stohl's mockery of it. I wish they hadn't wasted so much of the book making fun of the South.

Some issues I had with the book:
1. I didn't believe, not for one second, that Ethan was a guy. Forget a teenager (which I didn't see either), there was nothing masculine about him. I can appreciate the lack of male protagonists in YA fiction, but if you're female writing a guy, you better make him more male than a guy would. You can't make him distinguish the smell of rosemary and then go on for a page an a half about the dresses girls wear to dances and then all the decorations to the dance and make him overanalyze the behavior of the girl he likes. And you absolutely cannot make your protagonist disgusted that other guys appreciate a girl's body and want to distance yourself from such crude behavior. Whether you want to believe it or not, all guys notice those things, even the goody-goodies. Guys have this thing about being one of the guys and blending in. They don't like to stand out. And if they do (and if they're as well read as a college graduate who hangs out with his great aunts on the weekends), there is no way they would be popular. Even the way they described the way he packed away food sounded like the way girls are appalled that guys eat so much. The only way I could read Ethan was as a personification of the authors as a teenage boy with all their girliness. I know that doesn't make sense either, but it worked for me, except for those moments when I was surprised to remember Ethan was a guy. Sometimes he couldn't be anything but a girl.

A few technicalities about guy things: Basketball. Centers aren't the stars of a basketball team. They don't get fouled every few second and they aren't the ones making the bulk of the shots. Garcia and Stohl could have meant regular baskets instead of fouls and mis-worded, but even then a center wouldn't be shooting from the free throw line. They're the big guys in the center who get shots off rebounds, not the ones dribbling up and down the court and making shots from the outside. And a guy who is on a sports team is ultra-dedicated to his team and the game and the season, especially if he's the star of the team. Guys don't let girls get between them and their game or their friends like girls do. Bands. This was worded vaguely, but I got the impression that Link, who is a drummer, was the main vocals in his band. Never going to happen. Lead singers are guitarist, bass players if you want, or just vocals, but not the guy in the back on the noisy drums setting the rhythm for the whole band. Like I said, it was vague and Link could have just been introducing the band, but I always wondered where the vocals were coming from when Ethan heard Sixteen Moons play on Lena's viola or anywhere that wasn't his iPod. Mysterious, supernatural vocals.

2. I had trouble suspending my disbelief in this one. When it opens with Ethan waking from a recurring nightmare and his reaction is "oh, there's mud on my bed again from my dream," it was a little jarring. I wanted him to freak out that his dreams were something more than dreams. I wanted him to freak out that someone could talk in his head. I wanted him to freak out that all these weird supernatural stuff was going on around him. (Not girl freak out, guy freak out.) And if he's getting mud and water in his bed, why isn't snoopy Amma, queen of the superstitious, who is up in the night way too often realizing something is going on while he sleeps? Nobody really noticed how crazy their small town got. I wanted a reason to belief that all this crazy supernatural phenomena had been going on in the world and nobody noticed before. It was too much. But my biggest issue with the supernatural elements is that I'm not a fan of black magic, not a fan of people with too much invincible power (especially power that is hidden but obvious), and more than anything, I'm not a fan of stories where people don't have a choice whether they're good or evil (our ability to chose is about the only thing we can control in our lives, without it, what are we but robotic extensions of someone else?). This book had all three, so while the suspense ended up being decent by the end (after a lot of dragging), I wasn't crazy about where it was going.

Speaking of freedom of choice, I never felt that Ethan and Lena fell in love. It was this sense of "oh, you're the girl from my dreams that I'm supposed to be madly in love with. You're hot; that's cool, let's be intensely, maddeningly in love beyond what mere mortals experience." Garcia and Stohl tried to backtrack with this sense that they were taking it slow and just being friends, but the damage had already been done. They had already fallen irrevocably and eternally in love solely because they were destined to without ever getting to know each other. And from then on, Ethan automatically understood everything Lena was thinking and feeling, which had nothing to do with the supernatural element. He just described her facial expressions or body language and told us exactly what was going on in her head. She may as well have been a secondary POV.

3. Which brings me to my next issue, writing issues. There were several instances where the authors tried to take something back or add something that should have been happening as an afterthought or most annoying made Ethan play the stupid girl to keep the suspense going. This is most frustrating in the climax scene where it takes four pages after Ethan realizes something is off to figure out what the rest of us already have. I think we were supposed to be surprised by the revelation of who is waiting for them in the garden, but I don't see how you couldn't get it. And then Ethan makes this statement: "She had the power to destroy. I had only seen the power to love." Really? Really? All those broken windows and storms and pandemonium and he hadn't noticed the power to destroy? What story was he in?

Going into the climax, I was annoyed with the book and the characters who were just sitting around waiting for the climax. Before that, I kind of liked the book, but I got so frustrated with the stilting of Ethan and Lena's characters that I almost closed the book. If they don't care about their destiny, why should I? Time is running out and they have the book that maybe has the answers they're looking for and what do they do? They go to a dance (where Ethan describes the dresses and decorations). Pages and pages of a high school dance with doom waiting at the door. And then, they go to school and do homework and make out and take on the town and ignore the big clue given to them a hundred pages before the climax. We're later told that they spent so much time pouring over the book that they're sick of it, but other than the one scene, I didn't see it. Even if they didn't get any answers, I wanted to see Ethan and Lena in a panic trying to stop the inevitable, not waiting around for it to show up. And I'm not even going to go into the tantrum Lena pulls on the big day. The authors wanted certain scenes in so they forced them on the characters and the story when they didn't fit.

I think the book was too long and the details focused on the wrong things. If it were an intense page-turner or the sexual tension powerful, then the 563 pages would have flown by. But it read like a book that was 563 pages. I can see why girls like the book, but not why anyone would give it 5 stars.