Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia

Is falling in love the beginning . . . Or the end? In Ethan Wate's hometown there lies the darkest of secrets. There is a girl. Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head. Green eyes, black hair. Lena Duchannes. There is a curse. On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it's been promised. And no one can stop it. In the end, there is a grave. Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided. Ethan never even saw it coming. 

This audiobook is unlike any audiobook I've ever heard before. Not only does it feature a brilliant narrator and a whole lot of Southern accidents - it also features music, singing, sound effects like rain and thunder as well as singing and even a female narrator for a specific chapter. It's in short; awesome.

I went into this book, having watched the film a couple of times, which I really enjoyed. I had been warned by a friend that the book is quite different, and how right she was. The film is still good, but the book is far better and is just something much much more. It's also narrated by Ethan. That's right, a YA book, NOT narrated by a girl. Ethan is such a sweetheart and through his eyes we get to know the town and people of Gatlin, South Carolina as well as the Casters; good and bad. I learned a fair bit about the American Revolution too.

It's a long book (the audiobook takes more than 17 hours!) and there are definitely a lot of parts that felt really drawn out. I was never bored, but I did at times feel like things were being a bit droll. The books spans over somewhere around October/November to February and not everything is equally exiting. I forgive it though, for ultimately just being a really good book that had me well and truly engrossed to which I look forward to also reading the many sequels.

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES Caster Chronicles #1 by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl Narrator: Kevin T. Collins with Eve Bianco. Featuring original music by Michele McGonigle. ISBN13: 9780141349664 Audiobook, 17h 10m / Published in 2009

Review by Iben Jakobsen, Borough of Books, 2015