Tuesday 26 July 2011

book Review (Evernight series)

I wrote this review sometime in April 2011
  Evernight series by Claudia Gray                                   
                                              Evernight
Dets: series, book one
Pub: 2008 by HarperCollins USA.
Cat: fiction (paranormal)
Format: paperback; has 327 pages with 20 chapters.
Age range: young adults
Summary:  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 to 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 both apart... and to make Bianca question everything she’s ever believed.
Review: this book was odd at first, in a good way, though it’s clearly a vampire book and she tells us that her parents are, I think, but it’s like we don’t get to know anything different with Bianca until she bits Lucas. It’s odd in that way. But the book is like all the others.
  She doesn’t fit in; she falls in love with someone she shouldn’t. A vamp goes on the hunt, she has to stop him. Lucas finds out and even though he’s clearly seems to be hiding something it’s a surprise when it comes out, even though he tells her at the beginning. They have to run, only for her to go back to a school that’s hiding even more.
  Like I said, it’s good, in that way. But then I found this series a little bit boring on the book to book read of things, but the whole pick. Excellent read. 
  Next...           Stargazer
Dets: series, book two
Pub: 2008, HarperCollins teen USA
Format: paperback; has 332 pages with 23 chapters.
Summary: I kissed Lucas again, more slowly this time. We held each other tighter, and I started to wonder how much closer we could get – and then I remembered what it had felt like when I drank his blood.
  Evernight Academy: an exclusive boarding school for the most beautiful, dangerous students of all – vampires. Bianca, born to two vampires, has always been told her destiny is to become one of them. But Bianca fell in love with Lucas – a vampire hunter sworn to destroy her kind. They were torn apart when his true identity was revealed, forcing him to flee the school.
  Although they may be separated, Bianca and Lucas will not give each other up. She will risk anything for the chance to see him again, even if it means coming face-to-face with the vampire hunters Black Cross – or deceiving the powerful vampires of Evernight. Bianca’s secrets will force her to live a life of lies.
  Yet Bianca isn’t the only one keeping secrets. When Evernight is attacked by an evil force that seems to target her, she discovers the truth she thought she knew is only the beginning...
Review: my fav! this one is about Bianca getting attacked by ghosts, only to discover that what she thought she knew about her birth wasn’t even the beginning of it, and a hole nothing chapter of what her future really holds is opened up.
  But more so it’s about a relationship that her and Lucas are trying to keep though when Balthazar needs help from Lucas in finding his sister whom Lucas is hunting, things get complicated, fast.
  The end has Bianca running away with Lucas and housing themselves with the Black Cross that don’t know, or would like the fact that Bianca is a vampire (or at least half).
  I love Balthazar as a character; especially opposite Lucas they both seem perfect for Bianca.
  Next...           Hourglass
Dets: series, book three
Pub: 2010, HarperCollins teens USA
Format: paperback; has 359 pages with 22 chapters.
Summary: Bianca has found refuge again with Black Cross, and she and Lucas work desperately to keep her secret. In this company, being a vampire is a death sentence, and the two of them live and train alongside the hunters without anyone noticing her increasing need for blood.
  Even though she’s with the boy she loves more than anyone else in the world, Bianca can’t help worrying about the family and friends she left behind. Caught between three feuding worlds, it’s starting to feel as though she’ll never be entirely at peace again.
  When another betrayal puts the lovers in mortal danger once more, they realise that all they have is each other. But with the secret of Bianca’s birth taking hold, not even Lucas can help her win her toughest fight.
Review: this book was the simplest, I thought, it’s all about them hunting vampires, though Bianca doesn’t really want to and make Lucas try to help her help them. But when one of Bianca’s old school friends catches her drinking blood Lucas and Bianca are in trouble, all they have is each other and friends are willing to help them out.
  But there’s something else going wrong with the happy couple, one that finds this book with a cliff hanger that gets you buzzing for the next book.
  And so it was okay to read, I didn’t really mind it, though it seemed a little repetitive at times, or at least until they go on the run, and then... yeah, even though the next book might actually explain things I don’t want to ruin this book for you.
  Last....                       Afterlife
Dets: series, book four, and final
Pub: 2011, Harper Collins teen USA
Format: paperback; has 360 pages with 22 chapters.
Summaryit’s going to be okay, Lucas, I thought, willing him to hear me past the divide between this world and the next. Wasn’t he about to cross that divide to return to me? S maybe we were close enough for him to listen. We’re dead, but we can still be together. Nothing matters more than that. We’re stronger than death. Now nothing else ever has to come between us, you and I never have to be apart again.
  Bianca and Lucas face a terrifying new reality: they have become what they most feared. Lucas is a vampire, and Bianca is a wrath. Together, they’ve overcome every obstacle life
Has thrown at them and fought pitched battles against enemies – mortal and otherwise. Now they must face their biggest challenge so far. They must discover if their love is strong enough to survive what comes after life...
Review: okay so the problem is that it seems I haven’t actually read this book yet, though it’s been sitting on my shelf like I have. But hay, that’s what happens when you get to many books at once.
  I do know that it’s about Lucas turning into a vampire, and his struggles, and I’m thinking about Charity who turned him; since she’s been in the books since the second one, so to end the series she’s have to have been dealt with. But anyway, I added the book to my list of ‘must read’ and well review it when I have finished it.
Overall view: My opinion, these books are slowish, or more so (and I take it as I’m old, that’s why I didn’t really like them that much) that they are better as a hole, rather than individual books. But they were good, I read one and needed the next, wanted to know what happened, it was a shame, in my eyes, that the last book too so long to get out, I just gave up and couldn’t be bothered by the time it ran around. They are defiantly one’s to be read.
Parental note: it’s clean and when they do have sex, it’s in a blank spot, though it’s spoken about before and afterwards and it’s only in the last books.
Other stuff: like you should know, there are a few short stories about Patrice out there and that’s about this series, and a story coming about Balthazar. 

Point I have now: this was meant to be a four book series, and that was it. am I wrong? seriously, the only reason I bough - and since I haven't finished it, it's saying something - was because I thought that was it, and now, another books come out. so is this the start of another part in the series? or was the demand for Balthazar story  so strong that she felt the need to write it? 
  don't get me wrong, out of all the characters she could have chosen he is the only one I would care to read about, but has she now decided that four books weren't enough she had to put on another? 
  it's annoying and yet not that unexpected especially if the book selling of the last one was good. but really it was the last one. still I'm not into writing another book where one really didn't need to be, but then who says there isn't a need for it. she could have this need to write his story, and if it's all her doing it, than codices, because writing should be what you feel needs to be there, not what other want. and like, Claudia, couldn't you have just started a new YA serious, I really like her writing, but the series...
  but that's my opinion as someone who hasn't had enough sleep to not put this in there. sorry to all out there that I need to say sorry to.

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