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Beautiful Creatures: The next Twilight?
I was always quick to take book suggestions from my son’s 3rd grade reading teacher, Kami Garcia. A passionate reader and the perfect matchmaker of kid to book (“The Benedict Society is great, but Owen needs FUNNY like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid“) I never hesitated to heed her advice. But in our last meeting she really surprised me — I discovered she was not only an advocate for authors, in between teaching and raising her two kids, she’d managed to become one herself. Along with the Margaret Peterson (or as I knew her from our third grade class, Kate Peterson’s mom) she’d written a novel, Beautiful Creatures, and it just debuted at #3 on the New York Times Best Seller List, with film rights snapped up by Warner Bros.
Kami and Margaret became close friends when Kami taught Margie’s older girls, Emma and May, at Carlthorp Elementary school in Los Angeles. The girls encouraged these two closet writers (and die hard science fiction and fantasy fans) to collaborate when they dared them to actually write (and finish) a book together. The moms took the challenge, sat down at a local Mexican restaurant and Beautiful Creatures, the first of The Caster Chronicles series was conceived. Twelve weeks later the manuscript was written, and Kami and Margaret considered their task done. But Margie’s friend, only known as Pseudonymous Bosch, a well known author of The Secret series, snapped the manuscript up, delivered it to his agent and shortly thereafter a two book deal was made with Little Brown. The rest is best seller book history.
I just finished the book and all I can say is move over Edward, Jacob and Bella — Lena and Ethan are coming to town.
Like Twilight, Beautiful Creatures captures the essence and angst of high school life. But what this mother of two girls loves is that the new series is no ordinary girl-falls-and pines-relentlessly-for-supernatural-boy tale. In this book, it’s sixteen year-old Lena Duchannes who wields the supernatural power and is the object of mystery and affection of the bewitched mortal Ethan Wate. Hailing from a long line of super naturals called Casters, Lena bears the blessing and burden of her other-worldly abilities and must do battle against the family curse that might be her undoing — all the while enduring the standard struggles of first love, dating, conformity, friendships and family.
Ethan loves Lena for the same reasons I loved her; she’s a smart, quirky, viola playing, poetry composing deep thinker. But as anyone who’s navigated the treacherous hallways of high school knows, these are not easy traits to boast as a girl, or to admire as a boy in a world favoring perky cheerleaders.Not only did Kami and Margie want to create a character “worthy of the girls they were writing for,” says Kami, but also with six brothers between them, they wanted to create a realistic teenage boy.
“We wanted girls, especially those who didn’t grow up with brothers, to see that boys agonize as much as they do,” says Kami, age 37, still working as a teacher. “When they like a girl, they wait by the phone hoping it will ring too.”
If Kami and Margie ever doubted whether the voice of Ethan was authentic or if the machinations of high school politics rang true, they turned back to the instigators of the project, Emma and May, along with Kami’s sister, Hannah, and a small but devoted group of girls ranging from 12 to 25 who edited and critiqued the manuscript, then begged for more pages each week. The writing team knew they were onto something when they were getting texts in the middle of the night from girls asking probing questions about the characters, but also asking insistently for more. The girls – Kami and Margie’s Greek editorial chorus, remain an active part of the Beautiful Creatures world as the founders of their own website, (and now the book’s US fan site, thecastersgirls.com).
A word of warning: you will feel a sense of loss when you finish that last page of Beautiful Creatures. The final chapter is satisfying but leaves you longing for more. And there will be more: Part II (the title is top secret) was just finished. We just have to wait until this time next year to read it. — Romi Lassally
Romi Lassally is the founder of truuconfessions.com and the author of True Mom Confessions: Real Moms Get Real. She is also lucky enough to have Kami Garcia as her son’s reading teacher!
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4 Comments
Sara commented on Dec 21 09 at 2:26 pmI got a copy of that book to review and got about 200 pages into it before I quit. It needed pages removed and to be edited because it was too long (and not in a good way). It’s certainly not the next Twilight. There are a lot of books that are better than that one out there.
kathyv commented on Dec 21 09 at 3:03 pmComments
I lOVED this book! Finally a book with a good female role model!
Eric commented on Dec 22 09 at 11:46 amSo like an emo Sabrina the teenage witch? ps thecastergirls.com link is broken
Ann LaGravenese commented on May 07 10 at 7:22 pmSo funny Romi, because Richard is doing the adaptation of this book. Found this while looking for the article Rich spotted today in the LA Times about Kids and Mother’s Day…happy to see you thriving! Much love, Annie
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