Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Review: Evernight (Evernight #1) by Claudia Gray

Synopsis (via Goodreads):
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.
My Thoughts: Okay.  I had some issues with this book.  It had nothing to do with the writing or the overall storyline but there was one plot point that bugged the ever-lovin' crap out of me and made me so mad that I actually had to step away from my computer for a while.  A long while.  And this wasn't the good type of mad, either.  It wasn't a fangirl's bitching and moaning over a cliffhanger or that person X didn't get together with person Y.  No, it was nothing like that.

I guess I should pause here and tell you that this could be considered a spoiler.  I mean, maybe everyone else in the entire world is smarter than me and they figured all this out in the first few pages or something.  I don't know.  I'm just putting it out there that I'm going to be bitchy and talk about the thing that bugged me.  And I don't know if it's a spoiler.  Get it?  It took me so much by surprise that I don't even know.  So, yeah.  Potential spoiler ahead.

I figured out that Evernight was a school for vampires.  I'm not completely lame.  The thing that bugged me is that we spent the first 120 pages or so being told how different Bianca is and how she doesn't feel like she fits in and how she's (basically) just a normal girl.  Then she goes and bites Lucas and ... WHOA!  She's a vampire.  Okay.  I kinda saw that coming.  I mean, she's at a school for vampires and everything.  She probably just didn't know that she was predisposed toward vampirism.  You now, like, I'm sure her parents just neglected to mention it when they were giving her the birds and bees speech.  WHOA!  WAIT!  WHAT?  She's always been a vampire and she's always known it?  Since she was a baby?  Drinking blood out of a bottle?  And for whatever reason she never considered that she might have the urge to drink blood from the source one day?

I feel like during the first third of the book I was reading a story about a normal girl who was thrown into a crappy situation and was trying to find her place in the world.  Then that entire worldview I had was tossed aside and it turns out that she's not only one of the Evernight crowd by birth but as a born vampire she's super rare.  So, basically, that whole thing about trying to fit in was a bunch of crap.  She was already one of them.  She knew it.  Her parents knew it.  I'd assume that with the scarcity of born vampires, most of her classmates knew it.  For argument's sake I'll concede that the human students didn't know (because they didn't know about vampires at all) but the other students?  Yeah.

Now, other than that huge plot point I liked the book.  I liked how it ended.  I liked the set up.  I liked most of the characters.  But that one thing ruined the book for me.  I've been mentally composing this post since yesterday because I can't get the feeling that I, as a reader, was intentionally duped by the author out of my head.  Maybe there are clues in the first 100+ pages that I should have picked up on.  Frankly, I have no urge to go back and re-read it to check.

As much as I liked how the story ultimately played out, I have no deep, dark yearning to read the rest of the series at this point.  Maybe in a few months (or years) after the sting of literary betrayal has faded I'll reconsider.  But not today.  And not tomorrow.

If the reviews I'm seeing are any indication, plenty of people liked this book and don't feel the way I feel about it.  That's cool.  I respect that people like different things than I do.  Heck, most people don't read the smutty-smut that I'm into.  It's no big deal.

I guess in the end I'm just not the "Evernight type".

More books by Claudia Gray

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1 comment:

  1. Haha, this is very true, because there are things she says and does that are inconsistent with what she knows to be true. It really bothered me too. I did kind of see it coming, but only because I knew ahead of time there was a twist. I've read the next books in the series, and they're good, but not great. I have the last one on my shelf right now, waiting for me to pick up someday....

    I like your honesty!!

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