Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Halfway through Beautiful Creatures, I remember thinking, “Hey, this is like The Witching Hour, but for teenagers!” The Witching Hour is probably my favorite Anne Rice book of all time, so this is high praise coming from me. It’s different, of course — Beautiful Creatures is much more PG-rated and unfolds at a faster pace — but both are big, meaty books featuring antebellum mansions, hidden witch families, curses generations in the making, and one pure love to stand against evil.

Ethan Wate seems like an ordinary teenage boy. Beneath the surface, though, he’s itching to escape his tiny hometown of Gatlin, with its closed minds and stagnation. (I loved the little detail about how... Read More

Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

(Note: The second half of this review contains spoilers for the plot of the previous book, Beautiful Creatures, so if you have not yet read this first book of the CASTER CHRONICLES, you may want to read it before reading further about Beautiful Darkness)

The latest adolescent fiction to become a popular film, Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, bears some resemblance to the TWILIGHT SAGA, but in some essential ways, it is a story with more depth and complexity. Kelly has already reviewed Beautiful Creatures, the first novel in the CASTER CHRONICLES series, so I will focus my reviews on the latter three books, after some brief comments about what sets this series, in my opinion, above the  Read More

Teen Titans: Raven by Kami Garcia & Gabriel Picolo

This recent line of graphic novels showcasing some of DC’s younger heroines seem designed to draw more girls into the world of comic books (not that there weren’t plenty before) with more emphasis not only on female characters, but their experiences as teenagers. Other additions to this series have focused on Mera, Selina Kyle and Harley Quinn, though each one is a standalone story.

As such, the writers assume that readers have no foreknowledge of DC comic books, and each one treats the characters as a “clean slate”, regardless of how well-known or popular they are.

In this case, Raven Roth is a seventeen-year old foster child about to be legally adopted when a car accident claims the life of her would-be mother. Suffering from memory loss, she is taken in by her deceased mother’s family in New Orleans.

Yes, it’s the tried-and-true cli... Read More