What to read after “Beautiful Creatures” by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana, has given up on dating until a vampire named Bill Compton walks into the bar. As the town's first vampire resident, Bill draws suspicion, and when women close to Sookie are murdered, she must use her gift to find the killer.
With the witch hunts still burning, Lou and Reid flee and try to gather allies against the church. They bargain with people they do not trust and hide a bond more dangerous than any enemy. As the threat grows, Lou senses that the darkness inside her is not as harmless as she believed.
On a crowded New York day, Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican immigrant facing deportation, meets Daniel, a Korean-American student on his way to a college admissions interview. They spend the day together, falling for each other as their plans and families collide.
Witch sisters Emilia and Vittoria live secretly among humans, hiding from those who would kill them. When Vittoria is found murdered, Emilia swears to hunt down the killer, even using forbidden magic. Her search brings her to Wrath, a prince of Hell she cannot trust and cannot look away from.
Yadriel, a trans boy, wants his traditional family to accept him as a brujo. When his initiation goes wrong he raises the ghost of a murdered classmate, and together they search for answers while Yadriel hides the truth from everyone he loves.
A girl grows up in a sleepy Alabama town where her father, a lawyer, defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime. Through her eyes we watch the town's prejudice, the trial, and a reclusive neighbour's secret. A classic about childhood, race and courage.
Years after a boy was found hanged in the family garden, his younger sister sets out to learn who killed him. Her amateur sleuthing among the town's odd characters pulls her from her grieving family into a dangerous, half-understood world.
Neurosurgeon Rowan Mayfair rescues a drowned contractor, Michael Curry, and brings him back to life. The near-death experience leaves Michael with psychic powers that draw him to New Orleans and to Rowan, whose wealthy, secretive family is a dynasty of witches watched over by a seductive ghost named Lasher.
Lou is a witch hiding in a city where the church hunts her kind. Reid is a captain of the witch hunters and a devoted servant of that church. When a reckless act binds them in a union neither wanted, both must choose between faith, duty and a feeling they were raised to despise.
Sisters Sally and Gillian Owens grow up in a small Massachusetts town under a family curse that poisons love. Sally swears off magic while Gillian chases trouble, until a dead boyfriend on Gillian's doorstep drags them both back into the spells they tried to leave behind.
Rune is the last of her kind, hiding her magic while playing the flirtatious socialite. By day she courts the witch hunters; by night she works against them. Then she sets her sights on Gideon, a loyal hunter with a secret of his own, and the lies between them grow harder to keep.
A new house is built beside the Kennedys in their quiet Atlanta neighbourhood. Over two years the families who move in are destroyed by scandal and violence, and even visitors are touched. Colquitt begins to believe the house itself is malevolent, and decides to warn the world.
After a boy dies in a fire she cannot explain, Lucinda is sent to Sword & Cross, a bleak reform school in Savannah. There she is drawn to Daniel, a distant student she somehow knows. The shadows she has seen since childhood, and Daniel's secrets, point to a love older than her life.
Nora Grey keeps her head down until her biology partner, the aloof Patch, starts appearing wherever she goes. He knows too much, says too little, and seems to want her for reasons he will not name. Falling for him means choosing a side in a fallen angel's ancient struggle.
Patricia, a suburban housewife in 1990s Charleston, joins a true-crime book club that becomes the only excitement in her week. When a new neighbour is suspected of preying on local children, the women try to convince a town that would rather not listen, and then take matters into their own hands.
Fallon meets Ben at a restaurant on November 9, the day before she moves to New York. They spend the day together and agree to meet on the same date every year, building a connection through brief encounters while their separate lives keep pulling them apart.
On the day they both receive a call saying they will die within twenty-four hours, Mateo and Rufus meet through an app for people facing their last day. The two teenagers spend it together, trying to live a lifetime in the time they have left.
Diana Bishop, a historian and reluctant witch, calls up an enchanted manuscript that every creature in Oxford wants. When the vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont offers his help, their alliance defies the laws that keep witches, vampires, and daemons apart.
Isobel paints portraits for the fae, whose kind cannot create art themselves. When she paints mortal sorrow into the face of the autumn prince, she commits a crime that could cost her life. He carries her to his court for judgment, and their mutual distrust slowly turns into something forbidden.
Karou studies art in Prague and fills her sketchbooks with monsters, the same strange creatures who raised her. Running errands for her guardian, she does not know she stands between two warring peoples. When an angel named Akiva scorches the doors she travels through, her hidden life begins to fall apart.
In a world where love is treated as a disease, Lena counts down the days to the cure that will keep her safe. Weeks before her treatment she falls in love, and must choose between the orderly life promised to her and the risk of feeling.
Every ten years the wizard known as the Dragon takes one girl from Agnieszka's valley. When he chooses her instead of her best friend, she is carried to his tower, where she discovers a talent for magic, a growing bond with her cold teacher and the corrupted Wood that threatens them all.
Grace has watched a yellow-eyed wolf in the woods behind her house for years. When a wounded boy named Sam appears at her door, she learns that the wolves of Mercy Falls are people in winter and that Sam will soon lose his human form for good. Their romance grows as the cold closes in.
Reporter Camille Preaker returns to her small hometown to cover the murders of two girls. She must face her mother and half-sister, and her own memories, while the pressure of the assignment pushes her back toward the habits she has tried to leave behind.
Start with “Dead Until Dark”, “Blood & Honey”, “The Sun Is Also a Star”: they are the closest to “Beautiful Creatures” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Beautiful Creatures” these are Insta-Love, Forbidden Love, Star-Crossed Lovers), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Dead Until Dark”, “Blood & Honey”, “The Sun Is Also a Star”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
