Review #14 Evernight-Claudia Grey

Published: 2009
Pages:
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Long Story Short: Not really my cup of tea...
Goodreads synopsis:

Bianca wants to escape. 
She's been uprooted from her small hometown and enrolled at Evernight Academy, an eerie Gothic boarding school where the students are somehow too perfect: smart, sleek, and almost predatory. Bianca knows she doesn't fit in. 
Then she meets Lucas. He's not the "Evernight type" either, and he likes it that way. Lucas ignores the rules, stands up to the snobs, and warns Bianca to be careful—even when it comes to caring about him. 
"I couldn't stand it if they took it out on you," he tells Bianca, "and eventually they would." 
But the connection between Bianca and Lucas can't be denied. Bianca will risk anything to be with Lucas, but dark secrets are fated to tear them apart . . . and to make Bianca question everything she's ever believed.


I got Evernight for free on Amazon.com but the cover drew me in immediately. I started reading it and actually really liked the main character and the author's writing style. In the end, the plot and Lucas didn't make it for me.

I did enjoy this book for like...the first half of it. I could identify with the main character, Bianca, really well. Whatever she was feeling, her character traits and her relationship with her parents were so familiar! I loved that there was a child-parents-relationship that wasn't troubled throughout puberty.

As the story unfolded, the plot started really bothering me, though. What I expected was a nice, dangerous fantasy novel with a cute romantic love story thrown in. What I got were two hundred pages describing two teenagers falling in love who have some telling-the-truth struggles along the way in a fantasy environment that doesn't actually matter much for the development of the story.

I figured by now that I shouldn't have been disappointed. I tried Twilight, I tried Hush Hush, now I tried Evernight. I should know by now that books that only deal with the relationship problems paranormal elements can cause and not the dangerous life and humanity threatening issues Fantasy and High Fantasy novels offer just won't do it for me. Ever. I'm not that interested in relationship issues that I'd read a whole book in order to figure out if they stand through the suffering or if they die out of love sickness.

The other major thing I didn't like was Lucas, one of the love interests in this book. Although in the end it was explained why he acted the way he did, I just couldn't feel okay about it. Not only that he was very mean in the beginning. What annoyed me was how boldly mean he was. As if the author wanted to scream in my face: "Look! He's hiding something! Look! See? See?" It was way too obvious and ruined my sympathy for that character pretty early.

Okay, I understand that I haven't said a lot about Evernight until now. And I won't. I think that a lot of people liked it and it is likable. As I said, most of the characters (apart from super-rude Lucas) were very nice and the overall story idea and especially the easy writing and the fast flow of the story really drew me in. The story itself, though, just wasn't for me.


RATING: 1 out of 3 Smarties