Yes, I realize that I'm pretty late to the party on this one but I was finally willing to give Beautiful Creatures a try. I think what made me hold off for so long was the fact that I had seen the movie version and wasn't all that terribly impressed with it. It seemed like your average, run of the mill, Twilight-esque, YA paranormal romance. In other words, it didn't seem like anything special to me. But, I found a copy at my local library book sale for $0.50 so for that price I figured it was worth it to give it a shot. I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I've got to say, I was pleasantly surprised by Beautiful Creatures. By no means was it the best piece of YA paranormal romance I've ever read but the writing style is pretty good and makes you want to keep reading it anyway. 
 I think I was just in the right mood for a Southern Gothic story at the moment and there were several things that really worked in its favor here. Beautiful Creatures had a wonderful atmospheric quality to it where you could feel the creeping darkness along with the decay of a small Southern town still obsessed with the Civil War. Also the POV was from Ethan, our romantic male lead who also happens to be the partner in the relationship without any powers to speak of. Most YA paranormal romances are always told from the powerless female's point of view and it was kind of refreshing to see the tables turned for once. I liked the Caster mythology that was created for the story. While it's not the most complex mythos I've ever read it felt fleshed out and the rules made logical sense in their universe. That alone was enough to sell me on the world the story was to take place in. 
 However, Beautiful Creatures also had its share of problems. I think the biggest problem overall was unoriginality. Yes, it has its own particular set of paranormal phenomena but it wasn't anything that would really set it apart from the sea of Twilight like stories that were coming out around the same time. Inevitably, Beautiful Creatures relies heavily on the usual YA paranormal romance cliches such as: insta-love, lack of parental supervision, a "chosen one", bullying, and magic. Besides the insta-love, I did think Ethan and Lena's relationship had that "desperately in love" quality that I look for in a book like this. If the story is going to be entirely melodramatic then the romance needs to be equally overwrought. I mean... at that point why not go for it and just embrace being over dramatic? Am I right? Also this intense love connection between them gave us this following quote which is actually pretty great: 
 "I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I'll never love you any less than I do, right this second." 
 Beautiful Creatures was at times incredibly long winded. This book is nearly 600 pages and could have benefitted from some editing. While the story wasn't all that original (and actually ended up being pretty cliche in the end) it was still strangely compelling. Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl are definitely good writers in that respect. The writing style was pretty great. In fact it was so good; I'm probably going to continue on with the series.