Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Lexie

To be fair I thought this was another teen vampire romance. I have
heard about this book for a number of months (since October at least)
from other bloggers, though I've avoided reviews so that I didn't have
any preconceptions, and I can understand why. Even though this is aimed
for a teen market, the author doesn't dumb down the concepts or
'reality' of anyone's situation. Damen is far from perfect (despite how
he presents himself) and Ever is clearly damaged more then she wishes
to acknowledge.

But then so is everyone else around them. From
Ever's best friends Haven (who attends anonymous addict meetings of all
sorts to get the attention and love she can't from her self-absorbed
family) and Miles (Mr. Gay and Proud of it theater man) to the social
bullies (Stacia Miller, the leader, Miss Teen Perfection with more
dirty laundry then a laundry mat), no one is perfect. And for Ever that
is less of a reassuring concept and more of a distress because she
can't even pretend that they might be.

I was relieved to see
that Ever wasn't the sort to just be a push over when it came to Damen
either. He messes up, a lot, and makes a scramble of things, a lot, and
Ever calls him on it. Unfortunately for him he suffers the
misconception of thinking that Ever is perfect--he acknowledges the
trauma of the past and her inability to move on from it, but he holds
this static image of her in his head that doesn't evolve until closer
to the end when things become apparent that he overlooked.

The
only complaint I have is with Haven. From an outsider's perspective she
doesn't seem like a good friend at all. Or rather she's fine as long as
Ever remains an anti-social misfit hiding inside an oversized hoodie,
but when Ever makes strides towards coming out of the bubble she
becomes catty, jealous and angry. As if its a betrayal of some sort. I
felt bad for Ever because it was obvious she wanted to make Haven
happy, but by being herself it just made Haven angry.

((reprinted with author's permission))