Beautiful Creatures

Ethan Wate has spent his whole life trying to escape the small Southern town of Gatlin, South Carolina — a place where nothing ever changes and everyone knows everyone's business. Then Lena Duchannes arrives, the mysterious niece of the town recluse, and Ethan recognises her: she has been haunting his dreams for months. Drawn together by a connection neither can explain, the two fall hard and fast.

But Lena is a Caster, born into a family of people with supernatural powers, and she is approaching a terrifying deadline. On her sixteenth birthday, she will be Claimed for either the Light or the Dark — and unlike others of her kind, she may not get to choose which. As the day nears, buried family secrets, an old curse, and forces far beyond Gatlin threaten to tear Ethan and Lena apart.

The first book in Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's Caster Chronicles, Beautiful Creatures is atmospheric Southern-gothic young-adult fantasy — a moody, romantic tale of forbidden love, magic, and destiny told, unusually, from the boy's point of view.