The setting for our main character Ethan Wate, is in Gatlin, a small southern town where change comes slowly and nothing interesting ever seems to happen . . . 
 The book opens up with Ethan, 16 years old, having a dream about a girl falling through his fingers while he's covered in water and mud and when he wakes up he takes the mud and water with him, drenching and dirtying his sheets. Ethan then calmly bundles up his sheets into the wash and goes to have a shower, preparing himself for school. He doesn't freak and call Amma, his grandma (I think she's his grandma, was never *really* sure on that one), for help nor he does he think he's going put-me-in-a-straight-jacket-before-I-hurt-people crazy either. 
 I don't know about you, but if I had a dream like that, I'd be freaked I was losing it. I would want some substantiation that I was really bringing the mud/water from the dream with me into the real world, and that I wasn't just imagining everything. I would call in my mom, my husband, my best friend and make them ALL watch me sleep until I had the dream again and it happened. Unfortunately, Ethan decides to hide his dreams from Amma and his father, who is MIA all the time in his study since his wife died, and is also bat-shit crazy. 
 The setting, the town of Gatlin, is chock-full of stereotypes and cliches, but I can overlook those things if the foundation of the story is good. In all honesty, that's the only thing that kept me reading the book, not the characters, but the promise that something interesting was going to happen to Lena, and we would get to see it. 
 Ethan as a main character and narrator is hardly a believable boy. He makes no current pop-culture references in his speech or thought patterns. Apparently he's hormone-less and neither does he watch TV or listen to the radio. Although, he has an iPod, the only song we 'see' him listen to on it is the stupid "Sixteen Moons" song that repeats itself throughout the book and is some kind of riddle, or foreshadowing technique, or whatever. He plays a video game once in the book, I think, though we don't know what it is. Other than that, Ethan's only other interest is supposedly, basketball. Oh, and Lena, of course. 
 Ultimately Beautiful Creatures has some really interesting ideas. The story could have been freakin fabulous. However, there were too many small town cliches, too many romance cliches, and too much glossed over for my taste. There was too much time spent in school not advancing the storyline and not enough time expanding what really goes on in the Caster world and how it functions within the regular 'mortal' society. 
 Considering that this book is about Lena and what she's going through, you'd think they'd write from her POV. Or at least 3rd person. I think it would have done a lot to improve the book and make it more interesting. Instead of hearing about the magic from Ethan's mortal mind, we could see/feel/know about it as Lena does it/sees it/feels it. Instead of seeing Lena throw tantrums about her lack of choice, we could feel her pain and be inside her head, and get to know her as a character and be invested in what happens to her and hope for the best outcome for her, but instead all we get is a flat rendition of her through Ethan's eyes. And then, for the last part of the book we see things through her eyes, sort of, for like a chapter. That was annoying. 
 The whole premise of this story was that Lena didn't have a choice about whether or not she could choose to be claimed as a Light or as a Dark Caster, but that it was inevitable on her 16th birthday she would be either one or the other. There is no gray area, no middle ground, and her fate would be chosen for her because of a curse set in motion a long time ago. The authors flub the ending, circumventing their previous statements about there being no middle ground and Lena is never claimed for either Light nor Dark, nor is it explained if she is both... or what. They totally set the reader up that it will be a final decision and then we never get the satisfaction of knowing what side she now bats for. If they were going to go with this type of (non)solution, they should have prepared the reader for it by having Lena ask Macon what would happen if a Caster doesn't choose light or dark or.. something. 
 I was interested to maybe see a sequel in this world, but not through the eyes of Lena or Ethan, who both fell flat for me, but maybe through another Caster family. I'd love to see the magic mechanics and see how that all works. The Caster library was an interesting thought, and I'd love to see what other interesting 'Caster only' places in the world there could be. 
 Ultimately I wanted an ending for this book. I wanted a resolution. I'm not sure I could stand another round in Gatlin through Ethan's eyes, or Lena's for that matter. I sure as hell don't want to see another interesting character (Macon) die without really understanding where he came from and what he was. That too was annoying.