Book Review: Evernight (Claudia Gray)

When the story begins in Evernight, Bianca has just left the small town where she's spent her whole life. She's a new student at Evernight Academy, a creepily Gothic boarding school where her classmates are somehow too perfect: smart, sleek and almost predatory. Bianca knows she doesn't fit in.

Then she meets Lucas, another loner, who seems fiercely determined not to be the "Evernight type." There's a connection between Bianca and Lucas that can't be denied. She would risk anything to be with him—but dark secrets are fated to tear them apart... and to make Bianca question everything she's ever believed to be true.

When I saw Evernight on the library shelf I literarally pounced on it - the blurb was so promising! Maybe I'm just a sucker for mysterious, loner maybe-bad-boy type love interests but put that in a creepy boarding school setting that just reeks mystery?

 

I'm all in!

 

That was me, before I finished the book. Frankly, I'm slightly disappointed about Evernight. I thought the romance, which I would have wanted to gush about, was too fast, too intense. Bianca seemed to have fallen in love at first sight with Lucas - although sometimes this work, it just didn't work this time.

 

Althuogh I must say that the twists really surprised me. I couldn't have guessed - it has a very good role reversal and it ties elements mentioned on previous occassions to the twists and turns towards the end of the novel, the Oh-my-God-so-that's-why moment that I always look forward to in a mystery novel. What I didn't like was how the true nature of a character was unveiled in the middle of the book and then it carries on as if it was blatantly obvious. It wasn't, and it's not very enlightening. It confused me.

 

I would have wanted more humour in this novel, but it was an okay read anyhow. I'm going to read the sequel and the forthcoming Hourglass, but it's not in my priority lists.

 

Three stars.