Beautiful Creatures

Ethan Wate was born, raised and still lives in what he considers the backwater of Gatlin, South Carolina, where residents, as his mother, writer Lila Evans, used to say are too stupid to leave or too stuck to move. It is located next to an old Civil War battle site, Honey Hill, an annual reenactment of the battle which is organized by the Civil War Society at Christmas. He does expect to leave when he goes to college, those to which he is applying being as far away from Gatlin as possible. He is still mourning Lila's recent death in a car accident in the spring, Amma, a family friend and the town public librarian, acting as his caregiver in a promise to Lila. Many of who are considered the leading families of the town hide behind the church for their narrow-minded views, those families including that of Emily Asher, who Ethan dated up until the end of the last school year. They started growing apart as one of the things Ethan has started doing is reading books banned by the local church. In what is the start of his junior year, he has a new classmate in Lena Duchannes, shunned by Emily and her like in Lena being the niece of reclusive Macon Ravenwood, who the Christian fundamentalists in town believe is a Satanist. That feeling is despite the Ravenwoods having founded Gatlin. Ethan, however, is drawn to Lena, he believing she the girl in the recurring dream he has been having, they which started even before he and Lena met. Some close to Ethan know the secrets of the Ravenwoods, and that Ethan and Lena's meeting was destined as shown by his dreams. As Ethan begins to learn those secrets first hand in trying to get to know and falling for Lena, he may be tied to Lena's fate, for good or bad, the big day being Lena's sixteenth birthday on December 21st. Regardless of that fate, what happens with Lena and by association Ethan, which includes not only his ability to get out of Gatlin as he wants but his life or death, is affected by the arrival of two Ravenwoods that were explicitly not invited, namely Ridley Duchannes, one of Lena's cousins who recently went through the same thing on her sixteenth birthday, and Macon's sister Sarafine.