A review by ravensandlace
Beautiful Creatures by Margaret Stohl, Kami Garcia

medium-paced
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Title: Beautiful Creatures
Author: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Genre: Paranormal Young Adult
Format: library book. 
Series: Caster Chronicles (#10
Star Rating: 5 Stars

First read: 3/14/2016 to 3/15/2016
Second read: 5/19/2016 to 5/29/2016

Please note that this is a review from 2016. At that time, I did not keep track of trigger warnings so apologies. Young Lacy did not know what she was doing back then. 

This book was even better the second time around. I have no idea how I managed to confuse Beastly with this book. Like no idea at all. I was looking for the book Beastly and I couldn’t remember what it was called. I knew the cover was black but that was about it. So I grabbed this book, thinking it was it, but it wasn’t. But I’m glad I grabbed this book anyway. It was incredible! 

I like this book because it introduced me to such a cool magical system. Ever since Harry Potter, I've been looking for another book with magic to take me away and this book does it. The entire magic system is cool, even though it's not fleshed out being the first book and all. But if memory serves me well (which it often doesn't), the system gets more and more fleshed out.

The magic system is called being a Caster. Each Caster can be Light or Dark. Light Casters have magic that helps, like healing or seeing if someone is lying. Dark Casters have not so nice Dark powers like being a Siren or a Shapeshifter. In all honesty, those two types of powers can be considered good as well. But in Lena’s family, they are considered Dark. Which I think is a little biased to be honest but that’s just me.

Lena is one of my favorite characters in this book. Her power is the power of being a Naturalist. She can control the weather and the elements. She is on the verge of turning 16, which means in her family, that she will either be Light or Dark. She doesn't get a choice for reasons explained in the book. It's not like that in all Caster families, just this one. She is terrified of becoming Dark because when you go Dark, you turn into a shell of your former self.

Ethan was such a cool guy character. It isn't often you find books where the male MC is all about reading. The cool thing about Ethan is that yes, he is highly intelligent and loves to read but he also is into sports and "typical guy things". Too often, there are books where characters have to sacrifice. Like yes, you can love to read but heaven forbid you to like to watch football as well.

Even the multitude of side characters was good. Even though there were a lot, because of how well they were written, I remembered each of them and what they were all about. Link is Ethan's best friend and he is basically there for comedy relief but he is also a really good friend. Ridley is Lena's cousin and she went Dark. There is Reece, Ryan, Aunt Del, Uncle Macon, Amma and so much more. Each had their personality and contributed to the story in some way.

I'm excited to continue this series even though I know what is going to happen. Vaguely. I'm not looking forward to the third (?) book because of reasons. But regardless, this is an incredible series and I'm so grateful I found the entire series. On to the next one!