Rowena’s review of Evermore (Book 1 of the Immortal Series) by Alyson Noel.
Grade: 2.75 out of 5
After a horrible accident claims the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever Bloom can see people’s auras, hear their thoughts, and know someone’s entire life story by touching them. Going out of her way to avoid human contact and suppress her abilities, she has been branded a freak at her new high school–but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste. Damen is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy. He’s the only one who can silence the noise and random energy in her head-0wielding a magic so intense, it’s as though he can peer straight into her soul. As Ever is drawn deeper into his enticing world of secrets and mystery, she’s left with more questions than answers. And she has no idea just who he really is –or what he is. The only she knows to be true is that she’s falling deeply and helplessly in love with him.
I’ve read lots of good reviews on this book around the YA blogosphere and was really interested in reading this book so when I started a book club with one of my close friends, I thought that since the both of us wanted to read it, it would make a great first book.
I finished the book and I don’t think it’s the worst book in the entire world but I didn’t exactly fall in love with it the way that I thought I was going to. There were too many hot damn things that got on my nerves and too many instances where I wanted to kick the ever living shit out of both Ever and Damen. I understand that they’re teenagers, well Ever is and I understand that Damen was trying to what? I don’t know, protect Ever or ease her into the truth but goodness that boy for as old as he was, he sure was a little shit.
Usually, watching two people growing closer together or falling in love with each other is a journey that I happily enjoy. Drama and all but it was different in this book. In this book, I kept going back and forth. Do I really want them together? What the hell is Damen’s problem? Does he like Ever or not? What’s with all of this bullshit flower crap that he keeps pulling on both Ever and then the girl that makes Ever’s life shitty? Stacia? I mean seriously? I know he knows what the hell is going on, I know he knows the kind of bitchy person Stacia is so if he liked Ever so much, why did he do shitty things like that? He doesn’t have the excuse that he didn’t know, he could read her damn mind for shit’s sake! Why would he think that it was okay to treat Ever like that? Have these intense moments and then the very next day, dash all of Ever’s hopes by cuddling up to Stacia of all frickin’ people. It was hard for me to like him after that because he kept fucking up.
He knows about Ever’s psychic abilities but he doesn’t tell her, oh no, he waits until the shit hits the fan and then he takes her memory away and then confronts her at school about it as soon as she remembers everything and is so flippin’ pissed at him. She doesn’t know what he is and instead of easing her into it, he just jumps right in and is doing all of these damn tricks that would freak any normal person out. I was pissed!
But he wasn’t the only person I was pissed off at, I was pissed at Ever too. She knows that something is different about Damen. She knows that he has the magical ability to walk faster than a moving freight train, he’s richer than Donald Trump and Bill Gates but he’s emancipated and jobless. How is that possible? How did you not ask questions, Ever? Seriously! Nothing added up with him but you just kept brushing them aside until it was too late and the truth was staring you in the face and you were shitting in your pants.
I was telling Holly while I was reading this book that I’m weird because even though this book got on my nerves, I still want to read the next book, Blue Moon. This book had all of the makings of those angsty teen books, female lead character is in a new school, dubbed a freak by everyone around and falls in love with the dark, gorgeous immortal. It had its good moments and a fair share of its bad moments but overall, I didn’t hate it. I’ll read New Moon and find out if I’ll continue the series or not. I’m curious but not OMGOSH I must read the next book or I’m gonna die or anything like that.
This book is available from St. Martin’s Griffin. You can buy it here or here.
HAHAHAH Freudian slip in your last paragraph?! “New Moon” instead of “Blue Moon”.
Bummer to see this wasn’t up to par. I’d been thinking about picking up this series.
i’ve been eyeing this book in costco for a while. i was gonna buy it for my sister (and maybe read it myself later) but it also drives me crazy when books main characters do unexplainable/stupid things like what you just described… maybe i’ll just borrow it in the library instead. thanks for the review 🙂
LOL, oops. You know what I meant! =) It drove me up the wall but it sure did give me much to discuss (whine about) at my book club meet up in a couple of weeks. I took notes. Hehe.