Sunday, June 27, 2010

Review: Evermore by Alyson Noel

Evermore (The Immortals, Book 1)
by Alyson Noel
Release Date: February 3, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-53275-8
ISBN-10: 0-312-53275-X
Softcover Edition; 306 Pages
Genre: Young Adult
Source: Local Library

3.5 / 5 Stars

Summary
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 - wielding 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 jsut who he really is - or what he is.  The only thing she knows is that she's falling deeply and helplessly in love with him.

My Thoughts
I thought Evermore was an engaging novel full of romance, quirky characters, and some interesting plot developments.  I was certainly engaged right from the beginning and had difficulty putting it down.  That being said however, I did feel like I had read this book before as there was nothing new or really original about the storyline. 

Ever is an interesting character who suffers from a great amount of guilt from the car accident in which her family was killed.  This same car accident also developed in her the psychic abilities she so despises which makes her an outcast at school as she forces herself to wear hoodies, an ipod, and other assorted dress to drown out other students and their auras which often overpower her.   She is full of anger, guilt, torment, happiness when she sees the ghost of her sister Riley, and empathy for others.  But at times she drove me crazy with her teenage angst and her avoidance and meanness towards others.  Although I understood her pain, I couldn't understand how she treated other people at times and I did find it somewhat annoying.  I really liked her friends Miles and Haven though, as I found them quirky and interesting and real.  Although Haven could be mean sometimes to Ever, I understood where she was coming from as Ever wasn't always very forthcoming or open in her explanations or in her feelings.  It made me want to shake her at times.  Miles just made me laugh; he is just such an interesting character.

Damen, although he was supposed to be mysterious and sexy, was too mysterious for my liking.  There was something off about him in this novel.  Maybe it was because the information about him seemed too vague and whatever explanations we did get seemed kind of unbelievable and not fully explained, at least from my point of view.  I found him to be too hot and cold, and the way he was flirting with other women would have made me angry as well, especially if he kept telling me he liked me and kept looking at other women the way he did.  We did get the explanation for the flower symbolism towards the end, and maybe I would have researched it a lot sooner than Ever did on the internet, but the whole thing would have annoyed me too. The one thing I was thankful for is that this was not a vampire novel; don't get me wrong, I love vampire novels, but I just wanted to read something different and this part at least met my expectations.

Although I found the plot to be cliched at times, I still enjoyed myself while reading it and it was certainly engaging.  Yes, I found it predictable, but that didn't matter too much to me as I was engaged right from the beginning.  It was not the sole reason why I gave this novel three and a half stars. 

Verdict
I found Evermore to be an interesting and enjoyable, although predictable read.  What I did find lacking in this novel was the character development, not so much in Ever, but more in Damen, whom I didn't really like and didn't understand at all.  I had issues with the ending as I felt there were too many unanswered questions, but I will probably read the next book in the series just to see if it gets better and to see if any of my questions get answered.  I would also like to see if Damen and Ever develop more depth to their characters as there is a lot of potential to this storyline.

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