Beautiful Creatures

Beautiful Creatures, Book 1

By: Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins

Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

The first book in the instant New York Times best-selling gothic fantasy series; a modern paranormal romance set against the gothic backdrop of an isolated southern town.

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she's struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever. Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met.

When Lena moves into the town's oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them. In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2009 Kami Garcia (P)2009 Hachette

Great listening

The narration was great, sounds, music - nicely done...Can't wait to start the next book, I definitely checked to make sure it was the same narrator for all the books..

Not bad, but not wonderful

Would you try another book from Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl and/or Kevin T. Collins?

Maybe. As long as it's not part of this series.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I would have made it much shorter. I didn't mind this book, but I felt that too many things were unnecessarily beaten into our heads, and I was really getting sick of Lena's whining after awhile. I enjoyed the story and liked the ending, but I just don't think I can stomach another two novels of this.

What does Kevin T. Collins bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I have no complaints about the performance at all. I probably wouldn't have imagined the southern accent while reading, even though it makes perfect sense that Ethan would have one.

Was Beautiful Creatures worth the listening time?

Yes and no. Certainly it was worth some of my time, but not really 17 hours worth.

Any additional comments?

Dear Kami Garcia: We get the point. Lena's eyes are GREEN. Seriously, I think this is mentioned almost 100 times, or at least it feels like it's that much.

If you're over 16 years old, skip this one.

While I really liked the music, sound effects and poetry worked into this audio performance, the book itself has so many huge fails that it flops.

The storyline is creative and pretty effectively creates a realistically teenage first-love obsessive romance. The setting in the the post civil war south is very good, one of the best elements of the story. The narrator does a passable job with a southern accent. Unfortunately, this is only part of a novel; I guess we are now so well conditioned to expect a sequel that authors not longer feel compelled to tell a complete story.

Aside from the general high school histrionics that the authors so expertly capture, the book fails because of their inability to create a story with any depth or value. All of the characters, whether evil or good, behave reprehensibly throughout the story (with the exception of the two main characters who are witless, lovesick teenagers).

There are two examples of side story-lines that the authors could have exploited to create a more engaging and valuable tale: in the first, the witch-hunting townsfolk have dragged our heroine into a administrative meeting to (gasp) kick her out of school. Of course, in reality, treating a 16 year old as they do in this story would get them all fired and the school district sued. Rather than calling for her guardian, our hapless and not-to-bright heroine submits to the juvenile abuse of the townspeople. When her guardian does show up, unexpectedly, I had high hopes that he would slap these people down. However, instead of responding logically to their accusations that he had no right to be there, he lowers himself to their level and "resolves" the situation by blackmailing all of them into letting Lena continue at school. This is after the authors have established that he owns most of the town, is incredibly wealthy and educated, and is a member of the oldest founding family. All of which, in addition to his legal guardianship of the 16 year old heroine, gave the authors numerous opportunities to create a mature resolution to the situation. They didn't.

The second major storyline fail occurs when they finally reveal that the hero's father is suffering from graphomania I thought, oh good they can develop that into an interesting life lesson for the boy. But no. Instead, the father goes undiagnosed, receives no psychiatric help from his caretaker, his son, or the community and the moment is lost. This led me to believe that the authors were not actually aware that they were describing a serious mental illness.

In any case, if you are looking for a book with substance, this is not it.

Weird musical additions to the narration

What did you like best about Beautiful Creatures? What did you like least?

Good story. Cute YA read.

Would you be willing to try another one of Kevin T. Collins’s performances?

Probably not

Do you think Beautiful Creatures needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No. But i know it has one so oh well.

More than I had expected

Where does Beautiful Creatures rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I haven't listened to an audiobook in years, but the music and sound effects were amazing, and added depth to the story!

Who was your favorite character and why?

Lena. She is an outcast, but find friendship anyway. She is special, and different, and just so relatable, even though I don't have special powers.

Which character – as performed by Kevin T. Collins – was your favorite?

Macon. He did an excellent job of helping me picture the character. I loved when he would come into the story.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The whole thing. I was drawn in the whole time. But when he realized his mom was helping him, that was awesome!

A childhood favorite

I recently bought the books and reread them and I love it! I admit it can be cheesy and such but this series does hold a special place in my heart

I am a bit torn on this...

So I listened to this book a while ago and waited on writing the review because I really didn't know what to say about it. The long and short about it is that I find myself very much torn regarding whether I like this book or not. The narration was actually good, the story however it brought memories of Twilight... FYI: I am not a fan of sparkling vampires.

So the great part about this book was that the narration was pretty good, quite great actually. The deep southern drawl was quite perfect and each and every character in the book was given life due to the pitch perfect narration by this author. There is little fault I can find with the narration itself.

The story itself though... My concern is that even though the main character of the story has these amazing powers, she comes off as surprisingly weak to me. Whilst the leading male character is the exact opposite, powerless (magically speaking) but strong in an emotional sense. He almost seems like he is carrying her throughout the book which is amazing seeing that she is the one with the 'I can change weather' abilities. The love story aspect of books are generally overplayed if you ask me and the whole fated-yet-doomed lovers have never been high on my 'things to read' list. That being said the book has a number of interesting characters that you will find yourself notably fascinated by and I must applaud the writers for introducing them. The book has a lot of potential but I fear to appease the 'teen scene' and to kinda make a knock off version of Twilight it won't live up to it's potential. Average book though, with the potential to be really great.

Almost great.

This book has several great qualities, but is hampered by the flawed characterization of the protagonist. Assuming that "Beautiful Creatures" is the first novel in a long series, it does a wonderful job of creating a solid foundation to build on. The book's pace is slowed slightly , by a tremendous amount of quality description. The authors did a brilliant job creating an authentic, complex southern setting, for their well developed characters to inhabit. The story line is fairly straight forward with few nice twists. The audio book uses several pieces of music and sound effects to enhance the listener's experience. The only real flaw in this book is Eathan Wate. Which wouldn't be to bad, except the entire book takes place from his point of view. He is simply not believable as modern, male, high school athlete, even if he's intellectual and well read. His characterization was just slightly off. His thoughts and actions don't seem to be those of teen-aged heterosexual male.

Pretty good!

This was a fairly long audio book, and it kept my interest throughout. The story did not go where I thought that it might, so there were a few surprises.

The narrator was good, but some of the "southern" accents wore on me after a while - I am from South Carolina, and not everyone talks like this. :) Without knowing this was set in SC, I would have thought they were in Louisiana! :)

All in all, very good first book, and if there is a sequel, I would listen!

Good Book

I think that I will order the next book in the series, I did enjoy the book, I'm just not in a huge hurry to download the next.