Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Gatlin, South Carolina, the setting of Beautiful Creatures, is never changing. The women gossip, the people go to the only grocery store in town, and they live in houses that are over one hundred years old. The town is very knowledgeable on the history of the Civil War, or as they call it in Gatlin, The War of Northern Aggression. The people are very proud of their history in the South.

However, for Ethan Wate, this is all about to change. Ethan is having dreams so real, that they leave mud in his sheets and the smell of rosemary and lemons. Ethan has been having the dreams for months. In them there is a girl who he desperately tries to save every time he has this dream. In the end, this girl ends up slipping through his fingers. Ethan wakes from one of his dreams, dirt in his sheets, to find a strange song on his iPod. This song is called Sixteen Moons.

At first, life goes on as normally as it can for Ethan when he is having weird dreams, having strange songs appear on his iPod, and when he has a best friend like Link. Link is a fun and optimistic character who is the lead singer in a terrible-sounding band. Link picks Ethan up for the first day of school. A day that would change Ethan's life forever.

There is a new girl at school. The basketball team, which Ethan is on, says she is hot. There is one problem with her, however. She is the niece Old Man Ravenwood, the town shut in who has not been seen for many years. She is different, and Ethan immediately is attracted to her. This girl's name is Lena Duchannes, and there is something strange about her.

When driving home, Ethan almost hits Lena with Link's ancient car, the Beater. He then gives her a ride home to Ravenwood. Ethan realizes then that Lena is the girl from his dreams. He tries to grow close to her, but Lena won't allow it. Eventually, Ethan follows Lena home after she explodes a window in English class because the popular girls of the school make fun of her.

Ethan follows Lena to Greenbrier, a nearby garden, where she opens herself up for just a moment, but that was enough for Ethan. He grows closer and closer to her, until they get into a fight. After the fight, Lena realizes that Ethan is her only friend, and that they have a connection. So she tells him that she is a Caster. A Caster is a special person, sort of like a witch, with supernatural powers. Lena is no ordinary Caster, she is a natural. A natural is a type of Caster that can control the weather, explaining why the weather has been bad since Lena arrived in town. Lena's uncle Macon is not a Caster at all, he is an Incubus. Sort of like a vampire, but he feeds off of dreams because he is a light (good) Incubus. Ethan and Lena grow closer and closer, including in a little too much romance for me. They eventually become a couple and Ethan loses his social status because he is with Old Man Ravenwood's niece.

They find a locket that shows them visions of a man called Ethan Carter Wate. Ethan's exact name, but these are two different people . In these visions they discover why the Duchannes family can't claim themselves to be a dark (evil) or a light (good) caster. For the rest of the book there is more romance, mystery, and adventure. In which Lena's mother, a dark Caster, attacks Lena.

This is a pretty good book. There is a bit too much romance in it for me, so don't read this if you can't stand romance. This book would probably be a PG- 13 on the rating scale due to some violence at the very end and the relationship between Lena and Ethan. I found that some of this book was confusing, and didn't make sense, and the story took a while to get going. However, once the story got going, it started to make more sense, and become interesting. I would give this book the grade of a B-. I would recommend this book to most people.