Bark at the Ghouls

Beautiful Creatures is a young adult fantasy novel about a sweet boy named Ethan who wants nothing more than to graduate high school and leave his small town life far behind.

But then a new girl named Lena moves to town and life gets much more interesting for Ethan.

They are drawn together despite their differences. Lena lives with her uncle who is the creepiest man in town and she drives his hearse. She is an immediate outcast despite her beauty. Her family is full of secrets. Ethan loves to read but is also very much a jock and does what he must to fit in. He cannot resist Lena and she cannot resist him. They can read each other’s thoughts and soon they are in deeply in love and enmeshed in a battle to save Lena from turning “dark” on her 16th birthday.

So there’s the gist. It’s not bad and it’s not horrible but it sure is far too long. At least 100 pages too long. I mostly enjoyed it but I have to admit that I absolutely did not find the psychic link between them romantic in any way. But I’m not 16 either. Honestly, though, would you want a love interest in your head, privy to your every thought? What if he wears some doofy hat to school and you don’t know how to tell him? Damn, guess you just did! What if he’s a bad kisser and you couldn’t shield your thoughts in time? Maybe I’m just an awful person but I think I’d spend most of my day wanting to do this:



So, if you have many hours to spare while you’re doing dishes, supposed to be working or stuck in the car and you want to read about a boy who may or may not be too good to be true (Ethan takes his three aging aunties to church EVERY Saturday - he is such a good boy) you may want to check this out in audio. The production, eerie music and the narration are fabulous, even if the story may not have been.