Beautiful Creatures

I had a great time listening to this book. The reader was fantastic! He has the perfect southern accent (reminding me of home - VA), did a great job with the many voices - male, female, old and young. There were even some sound effects, which I've not had in previous audiobooks, initially it seemed odd, but ended up being a great addition and brought you even more into the story.

I loved that this story was told from the boy's POV. With books like "Twilight" and such typically being from the girl's POV, this was a treat.

There was so much of this story that I loved, too many things to name. Many of the characters had me laughing out loud, making my husband wonder if the move (prep) had finally made me lose my mind ... until he spotted the earbuds in my ears.

Ethan and Lena's story draws you into the deep south with good home cookin', Civil War reenactments, polite boys and their family quirks, small towns with nosey postmen, the one girl by which all other girls are judged, tempts you with mystery surrounding her upcoming 16th birthday and strange family, softens you and takes you back to the day when you met that one person that you knew you never wanted to be without, no matter what being together meant.

Will there be another book or is it a stand alone??? I want to find out about Lena's

"seventeenth moon".

Let's face it. This particular plotline had jumped the shark. In recent months, I've read books dealing with vampires, angels, werewolves and now casters (which I take to be the equivalent of witches).

Here's how the majority of these stories go (give or take): Coolish human meets awkward - yet inexplicably hot - supernatural creature. After much chaste flirting, the duo gets together. Something dangerous happens. Then they begin the "It's too dangerous for us to be together" - "But I can't live without you" dance. Eventually it gets dangerous, they can't live without each other and everyone lives happily ever after, albeit dangerously. One of these days, I'd like it to actually be too dangerous, which leads to the werewolf chewing off the human's arm. (Maybe I've read too many of these books!)

For all the great buzz about this book, it was extremely lame. The teenager girl was bland and insipid. If I were in high school, I'd want to beat her up and I was in the band. The hero was equally bland. In fact, all of the characters were lifeless caricatures. The only one I liked was Marian the librarian.

The story starts slow, but it gets better as it goes along. There were some loose ends - what was the tie between Lena and Ethan's mother? I may even have liked the ending, although I'm not sure. I may have simply liked the fact that the book was over. It was so long and dreary, I found myself wishing a werewolf would chew my arm off - preferably the one holding the book.

Will I read Book 2? Of course, I'm a glutton.

I started this book some years ago and completely got stuck at about 20%.

Now I have decided to give it another chance. Since I don't remember a thing from the previous reading, I started it from the beginning. Unfortunately, I got stuck again, this time a little bit further, at about 33%. I just wasn't interested in the story, and I didn't really care about the characters.

The good thing is that the characters are not as annoying as I expected, especially since I usually don't like young adult stories.

I'm giving this book 1.5 stars because I could manage to read the whole book, but I just wasn't interested.

No H. E. A.