5. Beautiful Creatures

By Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (563 pp)

This book just came out as a movie. I saw a movie trailer and a couple of references to the book online and thought: this looks just the kind of cheesy teen romance book that I love. It was not. I really wanted to like the book and it started out pretty good. Small town in the South. New girl moves in with relatives in the creepy rundown mansion. She doesn't fit in. Strange powers.

But the longer it goes on the more it goes off the rails. The story execution is criminally terrible. Every stereotype of the South you've ever seen. Pedestrian, on-the-nose dialogue. Random potentially interesting story elements that come up and then disappear. In the acknowledgements the authors say it took 3 months to write and it shows. Do not recommend.

4. Beautiful Ruins

By Jess Walker (337 pp.)

This fabulous book was a gift from Hannah. There is no way to sum it up briefly without criminally short-changing it. It starts in Italy with a pitiful young man whose family owns a pitiful inn called Hotel Adequate View. A dying starlet shows up and changes everything. It's funny and sad and really wonderful. RECOMMEND.