Reading Response 1 for 2nd Semester: Beautiful Creatures

For second semester, I have decided to read a new book called Beautiful Creatures for my first blog of the semester. I have only started reading this book about a week ago and it is quite interesting. Beautiful Creatures is about a guy named Ethan Wate who lives in Gatlin, South Carolina. Ever since he can remember, Ethan has been counting the months and hours until he graduate and leave Gatlin. Gatlin is one of those small towns where no one would ever expect newcomers to move to. Lately, Ethan has been haunted in his dreams by a beautiful girl he has never met. In his dreams, he could not see the girl’s face or even know her name. However, when Lena Duchannes, a new girl, moves to Gatlin, Ethan is immediately drawn to her. She is unlike anyone in Gatlin; she is mysterious as if there is a secret. What it is about her that is so intriguing?

 Here is a passage from Beautiful Creatures:

“Lena Duchannes didn’t speak to me again, not that day, not that week. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about her, or seeing her practically everywhere I tried not to look. It wasn’t just her that was bothering me, not exactly. It wasn’t about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn’t about what she said in class-- usually something no one else would’ve thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn’t have dared to say. It wasn’t that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson High School. That was obvious. 

It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn’t.”

I chose this passage because this is when Ethan realizes his hypocrite self he did not know before he met Lena Duchannes. This passage is also important because it represent the importance of both characters within each other’s life and the difference it will soon to make. Beautiful Creatures has a similar text-to-text connection with Twilight, in my opinion. Both books have very dull and gloomy setting to begin with as well as mysterious characters that either enter the town or are already present within the town. In Twilight, the mortal is Bella where as in Beautiful Creatures, Ethan is the mortal. Both books also contain secrets from the main characters, which are an essential tool to make the book a page-turner.