|
Loading... Beautiful Creatures (edition 2009)by Kami Garcia (Author), David Caplan (Designer), Margaret Stohl (Author)
Work detailsBeautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia
 kalafudra | Jun 13, 2013 |  im confused of the last part, starting from the party (  ) Diavoletto | Jun 12, 2013 | When I picked up Beautiful Creatures from my bookshelf, I just wanted to feel it out to see if it was what I wanted to read next, to see if I was in the mood for it. Next thing I knew, I blinked and suddenly I was on page 73. This is the type of book that just sucks you right in, right into the page. There's a lot of buzz surrounding this book and I can clearly see why. (read more) (  ) thebookvixen | Jun 8, 2013 | Our narrator Ethan has lived in Georgia all his life for the most part his life was pretty typical until his Mom died. As he and his family regroup after their loss a new girl pops into town, Lena. The attraction is immediate and uniquely mystical. Lena is from a long line of Casters. She has secret that may turn her dark/evil. Ethan and Lena fight to find a way defeat the darkness in her. I have a soft spots for witchy fantasies. Jumping into this book was like lounging into a warm bath. I loved the characters, the magic, and romance. I am not one that likes gooey romances. This wasn’t one of those thank goodness. Ethan and Lena carry their own as well a carry each other. As for anything that i did not like, I would have to say the flashbacks were not my favorite. I think there is a lot that was still unanswered but maybe that is why there is 3 more books. I really enjoyed reading this start to the Caster series and I look forward to reading more. I was happy with the length of the book. I did not feel it ended too soon or drag on too long. (  ) lavenderagate | May 24, 2013 | Beautiful Creatures is a book for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider. The heroine of the story, Lena, has powers she doesn't understand and often cannot control. She's very beautiful, but doesn't fit in anywhere. Her presence is especially suspicious in a town where nothing ever changes and anyone different is immediately suspect. There were elements of the storytelling that I enjoyed very much, although I can't say that anything really took me by surprise. The authors borrowed from the formula that is selling many a YA paranormal love story these days. Boy meets girl. Girl or boy is very different. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl must fight against evil powers and find a way to be together despite the fact that one is a normal human and one is not. Sound familiar? Also, one scene in the book could have been taken right out of Stephen King's Carrie. Even so, the formula works, the writing was good though it dragged in some places, and the main characters were well-drawn. The secondary characters were stereotypical and underdeveloped, but such was the case in the Twilight series and look how well it did. There are four books in the Caster Chronicles, and I plan to read them all. Mostly I'm interested in following the relationship of Lena and Ethan to its conclusion. What can I say? The story may be formulaic, but it's still enjoyable. ( ) TheLoopyLibrarian | May 15, 2013 |
 The intensity of Ethan and Lena's need to be together is palpable, the detailed descriptions create a vivid, authentic world, and the allure of this story is the power of love. The satisfying conclusion is sure to lead directly into a sequel. Give this to fans of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" (Little, Brown, 2005) or HBO's "True Blood" series and they will devour all 600-plus pages of this teen Gothic romance.  The 600-plus pages could have been cut to make a tighter, better story. Despite the bulk, there’s plenty teens will like: romance, magic, hauntings, and the promise of more to come. Is contained in
References to this work on external resources.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Book description |
|
| Haiku summary |
|
Amazon Exclusive Interview with Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Authors of Beautiful Creatures
Margie: The best way to describe our writing process is like a running stitch. We don't write separate chapters, or characters. We pass the draft back and forth constantly, and we actually write over each other's work, until we get to the point where we truly don't know who has written what.
Kami: By the end of the book, we don't even know. The classic example is when I said, "Marg, I really hate that line. It has to go." And she said, "Cut it. You wrote it."
Margie: I think we were friends for so long before we were writing partners that there was an unusual amount of trust from the start.
Kami: It's about respect. And it helps that we can't remember when who wrote the bad line.
Margie: We save our big fights for the important things, like the lack of ice in my house or how cold our office is. And why none of my YouTube videos are as popular as the one of Kami's three-fingered typing…okay, that one is understandable, given the page count for "Beautiful Creatures."
Kami: What can I say? I was saving the other seven fingers for the sequel.
What kinds of books do you like to read?Kami: I read almost exclusively Young Adult fiction, with some Middle Grade fiction thrown in for good measure. As a Reading Specialist, I work with children and teens in grades K-12, so basically I read what they read.
Margie: When I write it comes from the same place as when I read: wanting to hang out with fictional characters in fictional worlds. I identify more as a reader than a writer; I just have to write it first so I can read it.
What books/authors have inspired you?Kami: "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "A Good Man is Hard to Find & Other Stories" by Flannery O'Connor, "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury and "The Witching Hour" by Anne Rice. I also love Pablo Neruda.
Margie: I think Harper Lee is the greatest writer alive today. Eudora Welty is my other Southern writer kindred; I was obsessed with her in grad school. Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones made me love fantasy, and my favorite poets are Emily Dickinson (at Amherst College, I even lived on her street) and Stevie Smith.
Did you set out to write fiction for young adults? Why?Kami: We actually wrote "Beautiful Creatures" on a dare from some of the teen readers in our lives.
Margie: Not so much readers as bosses.
Kami: Looking back, we wrote it sort of like the serialized fiction of Charles Dickens, turning in pages to our teen readers every week.
Margie: And by week she means day.
Kami: When we were getting texts in the middle of the night from teens demanding more pages, we knew we had to finish.
Margie: As it says in our acknowledgements, their asking what happened next changed what happened next. Teens are so authentic. That's probably why we love YA. Even when it's fantasy, it's the emotional truth.
A lot of us voracious readers like to cast a book after reading it. Did you guys have a shared view of who your characters are? Did each of you take a different character to develop, or did you share every aspect?Kami: We've never cast our characters, but we definitely know what they look like. Sometimes we see actors in magazines and say, "Lena just wore that!"
Margie: We create all our characters together, but after a point they became as real as any of the other people we know. We forget they're not.
Kami: I never thought of it like that. I guess we do spend all our time talking about imaginary people. Margie: So long as it's not to them…
Did you always plan to start the book with Ethan's story? Why?Kami: We knew before we started that we wanted to write from a boy's point of view. Margie and I both have brothers—-six, between us-—so it wasn't a stretch. It's an interesting experience to fall in love with the guy telling the story rather than the guy the story is about.
Margie: We do kind of love Ethan, so we wanted there to be more to him than just the boy from boy meets girl.
Kami: He's the guy who stands by you at all costs and accepts you for who you are, even if you aren't quite sure who that is.
What is on your nightstand now?Kami: I have a huge stack, but here are ones at the top: "Mama Dip's Kitchen," a cookbook by Mildred Council, "The Demon's Lexicon" by Sarah Rees Brennan, "Shadowed Summer" by Saundra Mitchell, "Rampant" by Diana Peterfreund, and an Advanced Reader Copy of "Sisters Red" by Jackson Pearce.
Margie: I have Robin McKinley's "Beauty," Maggie Stiefvater's "Ballad," Kristen Cashore's "Fire," Libba Bray's "Going Bovine," and "Everything Is Fine" by AnnDee Ellis. And now I'm mad because I know a) Kami stole my "Rampant" and b) didn't tell me she has "Sisters Red"!
What is your idea of comfort reading?Kami: If given the choice, I'll always reach for a paranormal romance or an urban fantasy. I also re-read my favorite books over and over.
Margie: It's all comfort reading to me. I sleep with books in my bed. Like a dog, only without the shedding and the smelling.
Have you written the next book already? What's next for Lena and Ethan?Margie: We are revising the next book now. I don't want to give too much away, but summer in Gatlin isn't always a vacation.
Kami: I would describe book two as intense and emotional. For Ethan and Lena, the stakes are even higher.
Margie: That's true. Book two involves true love, broken hearts, the Seventeenth Moon, and cream-of-grief casseroles…
Kami: Gatlin at it's finest!
(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:56:20 -0500)
In a small South Carolina town, where it seems little has changed since the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.… (more)
Kami Garcia is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.
Quick Links |
Google Books — Loading...| Swap | Ebooks | Audio |
| 26 avail. 1010 wanted |
(3.75)| 0.5 |  3 |
| 1 | 14 |
| 1.5 | 4 |
| 2 | 76 |
| 2.5 | 22 |
| 3 | 190 |
| 3.5 | 64 |
| 4 | 297 |
| 4.5 | 45 |
| 5 | 215 |
Two editions of this book were published by Audible.com.
Penguin AustraliaTwo editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.
Editions: 0141326085, 0141346140
2
1
Wikipedia in English (2)
Plot:
Ethan Wate lives in the small South Carolina town of Gatlin. Ever since his mother’s death, his father pretty much hasn’t left his room and Ethan depends on their housekeeper Amma. He dreams of college and leaving. But recently he’s been having strange dreams of a girl. And then Lena shows up at his school. She’s the niece of the town’s supposed madman Macon Ravenwood. Ethan feels an instant connection with Lena, even recognizes her as the girl he dreamt about. But even more crazy things happen around and to Lena, and time is running out for her.
Beautiful Creatures is nice. It’s not a must read and I’m not itching to continue the series, but maybe I will. We’ll see.
Read more on my blog: http://kalafudra.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/beautiful-creatures-kami-garcia-and-ma... (