GoodRead - Beautiful Creatures

I have been aware of Beautiful Creatures since it came out in 2010 (or was it 2009?). I heard the hype and seen the cover (pretty, isn't it?). So why have I not picked it up then? The size. Have you not seen it? It's 563 pages long! And it has TINY writing! It's a scary beast of a book! But I always kinda wanted to read it. So when the trailer for the movie version of Beautiful Creatures was revealed a few months ago (it's at the bottom of this review, FYI), and I thought "This movie looks awesome! I need to get my hands on this series and play catch up!". And when I told people I could find a copy of Beautiful Creatures in my local bookshops, the lovely Sya from Mountains of Instead got me a secondhand copy and sent it to me...

Again, I love being part of the YA book blogging community! Just saying!

So, in the small Southern US town of Gatlin, everyone seems to know everyone's business. They enjoy the reenactments of the American Civil War (or, it's in known in Gatlin, The War Between the States or The War of Northern Aggression). They enjoy going to church every Sunday and have an Us Vs Them to outsiders. And Ethan Wate wants out. Once he's finished school, he's gone. But when a mysterious newcomer, niece of the mysterious Macon Ravenwood, Ethan is instantly attached to Lena Duchannes. He's been seeing her in his dreams for months. But as the pair slowly fall in love, Ethan enters Lena's world. The world of Casters. The world where that sits under the town of Gatlin. The world where, on her sixteenth birthday, Lena's fate is decided. She will go either Light or Dark...

And in the end, there will be grave... The question is whose?

Right, let's get started on how I feel about this. And am going to be honest. I'm not sure. On very much on the fence. I do see the book's pros, but I do see its cons as well.

Ok, let's did with the cons as I think I might rant over these. I think they come down to two points. The length and Lena herself. With the length (563 pages, as I said before), there is so much in this book and yet, there were times the book dragged. I get from most people that this was a problem with them, so I'm not alone, and I completely get other people saying "this is world building" (and I can't fault that! The world building in this book was good and clever). But when the book did drag, I did wonder if these chapters were needed or if the book could have been tightened up a bit...

The second fault I had with Lena "You Don't Understand" Duchannnes. Out of all the female characters in the book, she was kinda weak (though she is fifteen). And if she used the phase (her catchphrase, really) "You don't understand" one more time...

However, this book does have good points! The character development and the world building within this book was really good. And the gothic, Southern feel to the book was wonderful! I loved that! It feel like how I felt a southern town in the United State would feel like. And the writing style - you would never know two people wrote this! Also, the characters. Most of the characters (even Lena up to a point...) were good characters and surprised me. And they have stand-out scene that make me very happy!

One of my fave scenes was when Mrs Lincoln (Ethan's best friend's mother) went toe-to-toe with Lena's uncle, Macon in a Law & Order courtroom-style. That made me so happy as the chapter was built on all the tensions that had affected the book from the very start and hinted dangerously to the end. And then, we have Ridley's scenes... she was always a fun character to read about, as is Link, Ethan's best friend.

I am going to finish the series. Of course I am! I already have Beautiful Darkness and Beautiful Chaos and, at the time of writing this, I have preordered Beautiful Redemption. But as the books are so thick (all are around 500 pages), I'm going to take my time over reading them. So, the course of next year and maybe early 2014, you will probably get the rest of the Caster Chronicles. But yeah, I will be very intriguied to see how the movie turns out...