Beautiful Creatures: Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

The first thing I noticed about Beautiful Creatures was how thick it was. In a world of edit, edit, edit, it was surprisingly fat. Instead of bogging down, I think the chunkiness gave the book some of its charm. It forced me to enjoy the story and not rush to the finish line to know “what happens.”

Apparently, I was not the only one and Beautiful Creatures was able to plop its beefy butt on the bestseller list.

Here was why:

Characters

This story was all about the characters… getting to know them, loving them, and rooting for them. It was a love story, in an old school kind of way, and its enchantment was not so much the magic, but the way the characters related to each other, their families, and their community.

Here’s how Garcia and Stohl did it:

1. Both love interests felt incomplete and lonely until they meet.
2. Numerous obstacles try to keep the lovers apart.
3. The lovers create obstacles by trying to stay together.
4. In the end, love conquers all with the promise that more obstacles are on the way.

Like I said, this is an “old school” love story where the characters have to sacrifice to be together. From a writers perspective, Beautiful Creatures is a good example that we can still break the rules, write like we want to write, tell the story in our own time and pace, and still be successful … just as long as we have the characters to sustain it.