Evernight

After a 4 day hiatus I am back. Thought I left you for parts unknown, didn't you?!! Nah. I've just been acclimating myself to having my offspring (and Brad) home for the past week. After 10 months of having the house to myself during the week it's a little odd having little humans running around again 24/7! After numerous afternoons swimmin' in my parents pool, a game of mini golf, trip to the beach and a lovely dinner out in Toronto with my old high school friends I'm back people!

Due to the sudden increase in family time I've been stockpiling my book reviews. "Evernight" is a book that I finished reading about a week ago.

Author: Claudia Gray
Genre: Young Adult / Supernatural
Pages: 329
First Published: 2008
First Line: "It was the first day of school, which meant it was my last chance to escape."

Synopsis: Sixteen year old Bianca is not happy when her parents suddenly decide to uproot her and send her to an elite boarding school where they have accepted positions as professors. Right from the start Bianca feels like an outcast and set apart from the other students who appear to be ultra rich and gorgeous.

Soon after arriving Bianca meets Lucas Ross. They have an instant connection and a mutual feeling of being outcasts at this strange school. Bianca and Lucas' bond intensifies quickly but will Bianca risk everything and tell Lucas Evernight's secret? Does Lucas have a secret of his own?

My Thoughts: Let me start by saying that in reading the back cover of this book I got the feeling that the author was a big fan of P.C and Kristin Cast's "House of Night" series, the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series (series that I liked, ADORED and really liked - in that order) and she decided to write a book joining all of the themes together. Good premise but sadly, for me, it just didn't work.

First of all, I want to mention that I don't have a heart of stone and that I do enjoy a nice believable romance between characters. But I didn't buy the 'instant connection' between Bianca and Lucas at all. Their relationship felt unbelievable and forced from the beginning like the author was desperately trying to show the reader that Bianca and Lucas were in love. As a reader I don't want to be told, I want to be shown through actions and language. That just didn't happen here. I think the main problem is that I honestly didn't see what Bianca found attractive about him. He was ... a wanker. Yup. Broody, complained and was trying too hard to be the rebel.

I also thought the way Lucas and Bianca meet is extremely odd and in no way (to my thinking) romantic. Bianca runs away from Evernight into the misty and creepy forest (isn't that always the way?) where she sees a guy (Lucas) who creeps her out (ahhh, l'amour). She takes off running to get away from Creepy Guy Lucas. Lucas runs after her and tackles her to the ground. When she asks why he's chasing her he replies that he started running after her because he thought someone else was chasing her and wanted to protect her. What?!? And this is the basis for their undying love? I ... don't ... think so. If some guy tackles me in a misty, uber creepy woods I'm not going to get up and think "Well, hello there handsome!". It would be more like "Get OFF me!" with a knee to the groin. Apparently love hits people different ways.

After their *sigh and blush* romantic meeting, Bianca goes all 'desperate and needy' searching around for Lucas the next day (and several days after) at school. Women's movement please take two steps back. What is with tween authors and their need to make teen girls all needy, clingy and stalkerish!?!? The guy tackled you Bianca!! Perhaps if another guy pile drived her she'd be his forever? Who knows.

The funny thing is, it was Lucas' romantic competition for Bianca's affections that I was more drawn to. Not only does Balthazar have a really cool name but he was tall, dark and handsome!! I kept hoping that she'd get some sense knocked into her and go for Balthazar instead. How bad is that for a romantic novel??

Note: At this point in the book I was highly doubting that this book was for me but I persevered! I'm nothing if not too lazy to pick up another book dedicated to reading.

There are a couple of twists in the book. The first left me feeling confused (see my comments below) but the second was pretty good. Unfortunately the second twist didn't happen until nearly the end of the book. When I got to that twist I thought "OK, now the book's going to take off" ... but it didn't. I don't think the author used it to its full extent.

Now for my comments on that confusing first twist. At the beginning of the book Bianca is shown to be clueless and naive ... then all of a sudden the author does a HUGE reveal and suddenly the reader realizes that Bianca has been 'in the know' about Evernight and what happens there the whole time. What?!? I literally thought I had dozed off and skipped a big chunk of the book. How could I miss that?? All this time she complained about feeling like an outsider ... it was utter bologna!! She totally knew! The bigger issue is that the book is written in the first person which felt like I, the reader, was misled the first third of the book. If it's written in Bianca's voice how could she not know what was going on ... then suddenly know? Confused? Join the club. We've got shirts made up and everything.

Another issue that I had with this book is that the author focused too much on just Bianca and Lucas. In my humble opinion, secondary characters were needed to develop the story. Unfortunately, Bianca's friend Raquel, studly Balthazar or the humourous Vic weren't used to the storyline's advantage and were pretty much ignored by the end of the book. I was hoping for some big, gothic intense mystery (along with a bit of romance perhaps) but with the story focusing pretty much on the not-so-believable relationship between the two teens the story fell flat quickly.

On a positive note I'm very thankful that this was a book that I picked up at the library and that I didn't buy it on my Kindle or in paper form. There are future books in the series but, quite frankly, I don't want to know what happens to Bianca and Lucas. I'm giving the rest of this series a pass.

My Rating: 1.5/5 stars