Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

A few weeks ago I read the Secret Circle, a paranormal, young adult romance centering on witches.  I was underwhelmed by that series and felt like I needed to try another representative of the genre, hopefully a better one, and so I turned to Beautiful Creatures.  Beautiful Creatures tells the story of Ethan and Lena.  Their love story is the kind where everyone in the town is against them being together for reasons no one will clearly articulate.  Of course at the end a little more justification is provided for keeping them apart but until then it is simply that he/she is "not one of us".  

When I was in the sixth grade I had to write a book reports for English class.  One of the requirements of said assignment was to explain why I did or did not like a book.  The worse was when I read a book that I didn’t feel strongly about one way or the other because the assignment required picking a side – either you liked the book or you didn’t and you had to justify your opinion either way.  This is a book I would have a hard time writing a book report (or even a blog post) about because I did not love it or hate it.  I enjoyed it well enough while I was reading it but as soon as I finished the last page, it immediately left my mind.  To be blunt, it was not very memorable. In fact, the most memorable parts of the book for me where when libraries were involved (there is a public library and a supernatural library!), but then I am a librarian who loves books and libraries. I especially loved this passage when Ethan talked about his mother and her feelings about books and libraries,

“The library was home away from home to my mom, and my family...My mom used to say, ‘This is church, Ethan. This is how we keep the Sabbath holy in our family.’”

Despite not finding the book particularly memorable, there is a part of me that wants to read the next book in the series.  There are a few holes in the story that I can only hope will be filled in later in books of the series.

As many will already know a movie based on this book recently came out.  The copy of the book I read was the movie-tie version with a movie poster type cover.  I have not yet seen the movie but do really like the cover art, especially the font and how the title intertwines with the gate and tree vines at the top.