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279 of 335 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
I've already read this book!, March 22, 2009
This review is from: Evermore: The Immortals (Paperback)
A young girl moves halfway across the country to live with a well-meaning but somewhat distant relative. She's forced to go to school (even though she already knows everything) and to sit next to a mysterious, physically perfect boy who is the object of everyone's attention. Of course, he has eyes only for her. The girl eventually learns that this boy is more than what he seems: he's incredibly fast, he can read minds, and he's lived for a long, long time. This boy is not like other boys, and the girl knows it. She doesn't think she's worthy of his perfection, even though he doesn't seem to be bothered by her normalness. Eventually, one of the boy's own kind shows up to threaten the heroine, who somehow manages to survive, even though, logically, she shouldn't.
Sound familiar? It should. Evermore is basically Twilight, only much more poorly written, with a dash of "quantum physics", a pinch of a glossed-over theory of reincarnation, and a dollop of The Secret for good measure. When I saw that this book was recommended for fans of Stephenie Meyer, I assumed that it would be similar to Twilight. But I didn't think it would be an outright rip-off.
The stories are structured the same, so you can pretty much guess what's around every turn. There are no surprises. And the only time when some real suspense was attempted, it quickly became tiresome. Ever blames herself for the accident. Then she blames herself again... and again... and again. And we don't find out why until almost the very end. I found this tedious and frustrating. It really only needed to be mentioned once, especially if it was going to be dragged out for so long. Show, don't tell... Isn't that the rule?
The writing was also atrocious. The author actually used "envelopes" when she meant "envelops". Once again, we have a young adult novel without an editor. There were run-on sentences galore. Then there was the annoying first-person, present-tense point of view that occasionally lapsed into a first-person, past-tense point of view... when it really shouldn't have. Evermore was difficult to read, and it didn't need to be.
If you know how Twilight ends, you can guess how Evermore ends. Instead of a ballet studio, it's a kitchen. Instead of people getting thrown against mirrors, they're thrown through French doors. And there's a wonderful failure of logic when Ever defeats the villain by throwing a fatal, revenge-fuelled punch at her heart chakra, only to be told moments later by Damen that revenge makes you weaker while love makes you stronger. Wait... what?
When I saw the last couple of pages and took note of the title of the sequel to Evermore, I became further convinced that this series is some sort of satire intended to mock the awfulness of the Twilight "saga". Twilight's sequel was New Moon. Evermore's sequel is... Blue Moon.
The pattern is clear. I'll save you some time and fill you in on the rest of the series:
Blue Moon: Damen decides he's ruined Ever's life enough for one lifetime, so he disappears into Summerland on an extended vacation. Meanwhile, Ever discovers that her friend Miles is also an immortal, who has just landed his dream gig starring in an all-gay revue sponsored by VitaminWater.
Ellipse: An evil immortal from Damen's past comes out of the woodwork and creates a whole bunch of new immortals who do nothing but drive around in Ferraris and act like spoiled brats. But they're a threat, you know? Ever must use her newly acquired skills in "quantum physics" and Transcendental Meditation to make the immortals not so immortal, thus saving Orange County from vapid materialism on a grand scale.
Breaking Wind: Ever finally has sex with Damen, which results in a baby. Unbeknownst to Ever, this baby houses the reincarnated soul of Drina, who wants nothing more than to kill Ever and to marry Damen... who's now her father.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
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38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Will Meyer sue for copyright infringement?, November 13, 2010
This review is from: Evermore: The Immortals (Paperback)
Sometimes I wish I hadn't decided to become a teacher. I'm very glad to be the mother of two daughters, but the double-whammy of teacher/mother means that I feel like I need to read the books the kids are reading so that I'll be able to offer considered opinions.
With the Harry Potter series, it was all a delight. The Series of Unfortunate Events was clever satire and fun to read. Thankfully my students and my daughters were too old for Percy Jackson and the Olympians, but then I got stuck with the Twilight books and spent a lot of time wanting to eat my own head, they were so incredibly fundamentally awful.
And now I get to read them again! With different character names, to be sure. And in these Immortals books, we are now dealing with, well, immortal beings rather than vampires. But honestly? Everything else is exactly the same. Even the cover of the book is a blatant rip-off -- there's even a similar FONT STYLE.
In Evermore, we have a girl with an evocative name (I still haven't stopped rolling my eyes over "Bella Swan," and now I have to deal with "Ever" and I may never get my eyeballs back to where they should be and that was only, like, the FIRST PAGE.) The girl with the evocative name has to move across the country to live with an adult who is completely incompetent in the care of a teenager, but that's okay because the girl has no need of supervision. She is a woman of the world. Luckily for Ever, her weird lawyer auntie is rich, so Ever gets to drive a speedy little Miata instead of a rusty old truck AND she gets to live in a cool mansion in a gated Orange Beach community instead of in Charlie Swan's dumpy house in damp Forks, Washington. You should note that both vehicles are red, though.
Ever is also more fortunate in that she does have a couple of friends, but they're losers in the out crowd (we take a brief foray here into ripping off The Princess Diaries) and she feels as much veiled contempt for them as Bella feels for the young folk of Forks.
And then a NEW BOY shows up at school. Everyone is just flat-out crazy about him. He's obviously wealthy, has looks that could shame Adonis, is brilliant at all subjects without the apparent need to study, is mysterious, is hot and cool by turns (which drives Ever nuts - too bad she wasn't able to read the Twilight series in her world; she could have dealt with Damen's nonsense with a snap of her fingers.) And strangely enough, despite the fact that there is nothing special about Ever, he is immediately and irrevocably attracted to her.
We have to hear a lot about how awesomely awesome-tastic Damen looks. A LOT. Not quite as much as we had to hear about flipping Edward. Alyson Noel managed to restrain herself from telling us about the sweet fabulousness of Damen's breath, a small mercy for which I was very thankful.
A bunch of stuff happens, but if you've read Twilight, you already know the plot. There are parts that make sense and parts that make no sense at all and the message of the book really sucks -- lots of underage drinking and drunkenness, lots of lying to authority figures, lots of cutting school; like Twilight, it's a list of Things Teenagers Can Do to Eff Up Their Lives, only of course there are never, ever, ever any consequences. Noel threw in some reincarnation and some chakras and some transcendental meditation and....a psychic? Hmm. Okay, whatever. Anyway, she tried to throw us off the Twilight scent, but we all have that stench coating the inside of our noses and we can recognize it from miles away, as far from Washington state to southern California, I'd say. Wouldn't you?
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184 of 243 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Brainless Protagonists Are Rolemodels, Too, You Know, February 10, 2009
This review is from: Evermore: The Immortals (Paperback)
If you are a fan of vapid love stories with impossible standards, or a fan of Twilight, you'll probably squeal after reading Evermore. I am a fan of neither, and I"m finding this sudden glut of empty-headed, powerless female protagonists in YA pretty disturbing.
While Noel's writing style flows, it's about the only thing to be commended. One would think the death of an entire family would make a teenager prioritize beyond the shallow culture of high school, but I sure as heck can't name a single hobby or aspiration in Ever's head. She never asks where any of the tulips come from, and while she doesn't like Damen's behavior, she never once reacts to him in a strong, assertive way. Apparently being immortal means you can be a larger jerk than usual. I was utterly miffed as to how Damen's yanking of Ever's emotional chains, "just to make sure she really cared" can be construed as anything but annoying at best and abusive at worst.
Damen commits numerous sins of omission, and Ever somehow never decides she needs to pin him down. It's enough that he's mysterious, gorgeous, and into her. Except when he's not, and Ever BECOMES AN ALCOHOLIC. Don't worry though; it's just for over-the-top dramatic effect. She's promptly able to drop the bottle and leap back into his arms when he returns, without a backward glance at her addiction. Because real teenagers getting smashed on a regular basis are able to do that, right? Right.
The explanations of the fantastical elements veer into the bizarre-leaps-of-logic territory pretty quick. I personally would have had more questions about the afterlife, but Ever simply nods her head like a good little girl. It would also be too much to ask that a devestating loss (such as that suffered by Ever) would make one more spiritual, or even more humanitarian. Heck, I would have even settled for a ethical dilemma on the nature of immortality, which this sort of series would lend itself to nicely. But instead, we're somehow supposed to believe that a 17-year-old making this badly informed of a decision is going to be happy with it at 30. (Or 300.) Good thing she didn't decide to get pregnant.
This kind of reading, in which a female defers to the inordinately immature wisdom of a supernatural male, really shouldn't be so popular. I hope I'm the only one treating this kind of stuff with any seriousness, because I'd hate to think of anyone else taking relationship cues from voyueristic candy.
That the author thinks this is how teenage girls behave in relationships, and that any of this is desirable: it gives the underlying message as You Suck. Because if you're relating to Ever, and cheering her on, you must be just like her. Vapid, shallow, and waiting to be told what to do by the nearest hot guy.
It's a real shame that this is the next YA cash cow.
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