Title: Evermore
Author: Alyson Noel
Publisher: St Martin’s Griffin
ISBN: 9780312532758
May Contain Spoilers
Ever is struggling after the sudden death of her family, and nothing can make her guilt go away. After her near death experience in a car accident, life has changed dramatically, and she doesn’t know how to cope. First, she can read people’s auras, and worse, she can read their minds. Next, her can see ghosts, including the spirit of her younger sister, who drops in for visits and gives her a hard time about her new, frumpy look. When Damen Auguste transfers to her high school, Ever is entranced – he is the only person whose aura she can’t see, and when he’s around, the world falls blissfully silent. Even as she is drawn to him, he remains elusive and dangerous, full of secrets and mystery. While her mind tells her to run, her heart is helplessly in love with him. What is Damen, and why does he seem to know so much about her?
When I realized that Evermore was written in first person, present tense, I groaned. Not my favorite style of writing. After about two pages, though, that didn’t make a difference, because Ever has such a powerful voice. She is a girl full of guilt and sorrow, who feels that she has no one to confide in. Feeling responsible for the deaths of her parents, sister, and the family dog, she has been thrown into a bleak void of mourning and depression. The fact that she can now read other people’s thoughts and see the entire tapestry of their lives merely by touching them makes her life almost unbearable. Rejecting her previous cheerleader life-style of trendy clothes, make-up, and striving to be one of the popular kids at school, now all she wants is to be left in peace. Dressing in hoodies and cranking up her iPod to blot out the hurtful thoughts directed towards her, she strives for some kind of normalcy in a life that’s been shattered into a million pieces.
When handsome Damen transfers into her high school, her life gets turned upside. Again. Damen is magical and mysterious, and whenever he’s around, the thoughts that assault her are quieted. He brings peace to her confused world, and makes her feel special. Until he turns he attention to the most popular girl in her class, which hurts Ever far more than it should. With Damen’s arrival, her friendship with Haven and Miles, two other misfits at school, is threatened by jealousy and misunderstandings. Why has Damen’s appearance at school caused so much grief and drama when she already has enough of that to last a lifetime?
I liked Ever, a lot, and when the story focused on her and her struggles to be a normal kid, I couldn’t put the book down. Visits from her dead sister are about the only bright spot in her life. Ever spends a lot of time trying to punish herself for causing the deaths of her parents, and as long as she feels responsible for their loss, you know that she is never going to be happy. It’s not even a possibility in her mind, until Damen shows up. Then she thinks things might be ok, because he seems so strong and supportive. Then he abruptly turns away from her, shattering her world again.
I have to admit that I didn’t like Damen, and after finishing the book, I still don’t. He exposed Ever to danger, heedlessly putting her life on the line. He isn’t my ideal boyfriend, because he excelled at not being there when she needed him the most. He played with her feelings, set her up for a painful fall, and it was really Ever’s tenacity that allowed her to survive. If there is one quibble I have with Evermore, it is with Damen. To me, he was not worthy of Ever or her loyalty, because he was never straight with her. He always seemed evasive, and he was rarely truthful. His was a cycle of deception, and it made him seem self-centered, especially near the end of the book. Maybe he can win me over in the sequel?
Ever is a unique character, one that I wanted to get to know better. Her misery forces her to make some big mistakes, which she learns from and grows from. After blaming herself for so long for something that couldn’t possibly have been her fault, she even learns to forgive herself and finds the strength to move on with her life. It’s Ever’s journey to forgiveness that is so compelling, and it’s her struggle to like herself again that made it hard to stop turning the pages. The romance with Damen is window dressing next to Ever’s battle with herself.
Grade: B+
Review copy provided by publisher
