Evermore (The Immortals #1)

THE EVERMORE DRINKING GAME

THE EVERMORE DRINKING GAME

Her friends, and her love interest Damen for that matter, aren't that much better either. In fact, I don't remember liking any of them. Whenever I put the book down, I tried to remember any characters I liked. And it ended up being like this:



So, gentle readers... Are you ready to hear a story? In fact, it's a beautiful tale as old as time itself. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Ever Bloom. Quite why her parents named her this is a mystery that reminds me of my good friends Jack Ripper and Annette Curtain. Anyway, she was pretty, and popular, and your stereotypical ditzy cheerleader. One day, she was out for a drive with her family, and their car crashed into a tree. Her parents and little sister didn't survive, but Ever did. The resulting trauma gave her psychic powers, such as clairvoyance and aura reading. And also being able to stroke her fingers across questions on exam papers and get all the answers, as well as touching books and having the entire story appearing in her head.

Wow. If psychic powers are gained that easily, I think I'm going to crash my car into a tree. Wish me luck! (Disclaimer: V does not condone deliberately driving cars into trees and nor will she attempt this. She still eagerly waits to gain superpowers from the nearby nuclear power plant, though.)

Now, suddenly losing everything is a horrible thing to go through (not that I have personal experience), and Ever has every right to be sad about it. However, unlike most orphans, she actually has a relative who cares enough about Ever to rearrange her entire life around her next-of-kin, and doesn't just sign her over to a foster home. Yes, Ever has an aunt called Sabine who is an incredibly wealthy lawyer who is almost never at home. Yet for some reason, Ever whines that she feels Sabine doesn't give her enough freedom.

You know what else Sabine gives her?

Well, aside from buying a house in California ('exile' my arse) with a gorgeous beach view, Sabine gives Ever an entire annex of the house, with all the mod cons. A dishwasher, a kitchenette, a plasma TV, a new computer, pretty much everything. This apparently restricts her freedom. Even though Sabine is almost never home.

But of course, any time anyone does something nice for Ever, she whines about it.

So even though I'd be through the roof if I were an orphan and learned that a relative cared about me enough to move across the country and give me an extremely privileged lifestyle, Ever whinges about it ad nauseam. You know some orphans who actually deserve to be sad about the death of their parents? The Baudelaire siblings from A Series of Unfortunate Events. And the only relatives I remember who genuinely cared about their welfare were Uncle Monty and Aunt Josephine from the second and third books.

I know people going through bereavement have every right to be upset, but Ever is possibly the mopiest, most pessimistic characters I have ever seen in any book. She constantly wonders why people are horrible to her, and her mood swings are enough to cause the reader whiplash.

Apparently, her sister Riley hasn't yet passed over to the other side, so Ever occasionally has conversations with her fashionably-challenged (who the hell thinks wearing a bright pink Juicy Couture tracksuit is a good idea?) dead little sister. When fellow psychic Ava tries to help Ever with her condition by telling her it's okay, she doesn't have to feel like an outsider, etcetera, Ever throws the mother of all hissy fits and tells Riley that Ava is a charlatan. Even though later in the novel, Ava actually helps Ever to form a psychic shield and how to block out certain thoughts. Isn't Ever a wonderful character?

Anyway, let's go back to the story. Ever basically turns herself into a 'freak' by always dressing in a natty hoodie which is always pulled up. She accessories this with a pair of sunglasses and an mp3 player that's always cranked up to the loudest setting. It's quite the transformation. A transformation that isn't actually allowed in most educational institutions, since sunglasses and hoods are not allowed to be worn in most schools, and I would personally slap the shit out of Ever if she came to sit next to me with her music playing loud like that. Having it up so loud is just incredibly selfish to the other students, whether you're some walking ball of angst or not.

So, it's no wonder that nobody at her new school likes her except for her fellow 'outcasts'. And oh man, these Outcasts. They're called Haven and Miles, but I like to refer to them as Goth Stereotype and Gay Stereotype. Because that's exactly what they are.

Haven is described as a goth who is doing the 'immature' (in Ever's eyes) thing of suddenly dressing in black and listening to all the music her parents can't stand and covering her once-preppy bedroom with the posters of heavy metal bands. Yes, because it's totally immature to try and figure out what your image is at high school, be it goth or prep. And I wouldn't take any advice about maturity from a girl who acts the way Ever does.



Miles... holy shit, Miles. Miles is horribly written. He's always making sassy quips or doing theatre group or texting his new boyfriends. It just comes across as awfully stereotypical. I know several gay guys, and none of them come across the way Miles does. In fact, was Sassy Gay Friend (from Second City Network) around in 2009? Because that's what Miles comes across as. Oh, how I wish he'd called Ever a stupid bitch...

Anyway, since this novel is a massive rip-off of the Twilight series, we've got to have an Edward Cullen show up some time or another. Damen Auguste gets some kudos from me, because at least he doesn't reach the creepy heights that Edward scaled over like a mountaineer in a pair of rocket boots.

Damen and Ever meet in a biology lab an English class one day, and the school bullies who Ever now scorns wonder why the hell he'd choose her. Ever, however, is surprised to find that she cannot read Damen's aura at all. And in a shock revelation, she remembers that the only people whose auras she cannot read are... already dead. So, rather than just assume it's a fluke and that some people just don't have auras, she does nothing for ages, then when she gets serious with him, she breaks into his house and discovers that he has work from Shakespeare, and personal paintings from Picasso, among others. Le gasp. I wonder where those must have come from. So yes, Damen is an immortal with the ability to cross over into the plane where souls reside before being judged. No wonder she couldn't see his aura!

There's also some lame drama in this book with Damen's ex-wife Audrina which comes across just like drama for the sake of drama. Just like Katherine's story in The Vampire Diaries, am I right? Ugh. To hell with this book.

So, to conclude this (because I can't believe I've written nearly five pages about this dreck), it's a badly-written novel with some utter unlikeable characters, a main character who doesn't deserve even the minimum amount of coddling for her sad situation, and I'm shaking my head at how it became a bestseller so quickly. 1/5.

(This review is also available on my blog: http://book-wyrm.blogspot.co.uk/2012/...)