I chose Beautiful Creatures as my easy holiday read for a recent trip to Hawaii. 'Yes', I thought at the airport, 'A Ya gothic paranormal-romance read, that does sound like perfect escapism for a twelve hour plane trip, no stops.'
Hmmmm.
Instead, I wanted to escape the book. I read it through to the end because I do not like letting books defeat me, and I didn't want to miss out on a big reveal or anything that would happen that was so amazing it would make reading this book worth it.
My main problem with Beautiful Creatures is that it kind of sits at one level for it's one trillion pages (exaggeration). Nothing really happens. At least, I can't remember anything happening. The idea is a good one but the execution was kind of boring. The characters didn't grab me, in fact the only one I think who makes any kind of bang is Ridley.
And our two love interests - well, they don't have the smultzy teeney love stuff that I find commonly infuriating in paranormal YA, but they don't really have any sparks either. I honestly just didn't care how their relationship would end up by the end of the book; the stakes weren't high enough, and trying to connect their love story with the historical love story as played out by the ghosts in the locket - well, sorry, but I don't think much depth was added there either.
The writing is decent, the ideas great, the gothic atmosphere has a definite allure - but the story is dull. I understand there is a lot to build on in the future books, but I found Beautiful Creatures to be written a little lazily, and I don't have much inclination to follow the series through.
Actually, I did like this one. I enjoyed the touches of humour, the small town where there was a generation which still referred to "the war of Northern aggression" and only one place for the teenagers to hang out and the rule of the DAR. It was interesting that a book so obviously for girls was seen from the viewpoint of a boy.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is, the kids at my school liked it, including, oddly, some of the boys. ;-)