Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

The little Southern town of Gatlin has never seen much change. Every year the town holds a Civil War reenactment, someone in the Snow family is made Queen of the winter formal, and being in the D.A.R (Daughters of the American Revolution) is akin to being royalty. Sixteen year old Ethan Wate dreams of getting out of Gatlin. He hates everything about his small town and it's social hierarchy. That is, until outsider Lena Duchannes moves into Ravenwood, the oldest, and supposedly most haunted, place in Gatlin, to live with her uncle Macon. As their friendship grows, Ethan discovers a side of Gatlin no one would suspect exists, and learns of certain forces and predetermined fates not of this world.

Beautiful Creatures is a fantastic debut novel. Though a little over 500 pages in length, once I got into the story, I was completely submerged and finished it in an, almost too short, amount of time. I'd recommend this book to all fans of the Twilight Saga, although I must say I enjoyed this story a bit more.

-Sam.