Welcome to one woman's search through literature for the perfect young adult novel.
I'm addicted. There's something about the perfect YA novel. I'm in a never ending search for the correct balance of love story vs story line. A writing style that flows and a little bit of dystopia go a long way to making a novel a successful read for me.
I read on a Kindle Fire, on a brown leather couch in a room with a chevron rug and an antlered stag on the wall. At the moment it's raining and windy, so I'm rugged up in a hooded dressing gown and I'm drinking some Pinot Noir from the Yarra Valley (I only drink Aussie Pinot, anything outside Aus tends to have a woody taste that I'm not fond of).
Complete disclosure: Those are my glasses in the photo, but I don't wear them often and you'll never see a photo of me in them. They are purple like the colour of the book, so I cracked them out.
Do you like my photo backdrop? It's a wallpaper remnant my friend got me from Wall Candy.
Down to business: the book is Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.
Being made into a film doesn't give it any extra points, and I always prefer to read before watching. Despite the fact that the copy of Beautiful Creatures I have has the first 4 novels in it, I will only be reading and talking about the first.
What do I expect? Small town. Deep south. Magic. High school.
I want an evocative description of the setting. I want some evaluation of small town mentality and I want some spells that are a little less Harry Potter and a little more Charmed.
One of the reviews I read likened the voice of the main character Ethan to John Green, an author that I love because he's not scared to inject some intelligence into his characters. This bodes well, there's nothing worse than a flat character.
I'm intrigued that the main character is a teenaged boy voiced by a woman. Personally I'm not sure that a teenaged girl could be accurately voiced by a man, but I have faith that a woman can figure out what's going on in a teenaged boys mind!
Read along with me, and post your expectations for the book below, and we can discuss what you thought about it in the wrap up post at the end of next month!
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