Everlasting (The Immortals 6) by Alyson Noel

Everlasting by Alyson Noel ☆☆☆☆

The finale is here.

I'm glad this series is over. The first and second books were amazing and un-put-down-able, the third and fourth were filler I trudged through, and the fifth and sixth finally started wrapping everything up nicely.

For me, the ending was completely unexpected. There were so many plots and side plots within this series that I was never entirely sure were it might go or end up. And where it did end up was interesting and uniquely Ever.

Ever and Damen's romance is definitely an eternal love fit for any YA fiction series. The fact that they were immortals and not an expected supernatural being like vampires was its own original twist. And I have to say that I learned a lot from this series. I learned there are different mystical properties to stones. I learned how to center myself (whether it works or not I'm still unsure). And I learned to trust myself.

In this book specifically it becomes really apparent how this series stemmed from her own personal loss and her attempts at accepting it and moving on. The journey and experiences that Ever deal with in the final installment mirror the lesson that Alyson Noel learned in her own journey. While I would have preferred it be a less obvious moral it did work for the purposes of the series.

I recently heard it was in the process of selling movie rights. I would like to see how this series would be interpreted as a movie and I'd probably be one of the first in line to see it.

I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies 1) by Pittacus Lore

I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore ☆☆☆☆☆

I must confess that in this instance I saw the movie before I read the book. I saw the movie as soon as it came out in theaters, only finding out a week before that it was even based on a series, and with that in mind I didn't have time to read the book before the movie. So, of course, this review ends up addressing both.

I do love the book and the movie equally. On the movie side, it had an amazing scene where they have an image recognition software program that searches the internet for their pictures and instantly deletes their existence. This is Hollywood magic and not in the book sadly. The movie also had a side plot involving why they were in Paradise, OH, how Sam is involved as more than a friend, and how it all ties their pasts and futures together. This was vaguely mentioned at the end of the book, obviously to become a key point of the sequel, and I like that the movie addressed it sooner.

Now the book was just plain awesome in its own right. Rather than a whirlwind Hollywood romance, John and Sarah get to know each other for months rather than days, and their relationship is natural and real. My favorite part of the book is all his flashbacks of Lorien so that as readers we can see the planet in all its glory (and subsequent destruction) which isn't available in the movie. These scenes not only explain where he came from, but who he is, and it shows his family on the planet. This also allows for information on how he gets his Legacy powers, who they come from, etc. And as for his Legacies, there are more of them and they are more interesting than the movie could even handle.

I highly recommend this book and I can't wait for the sequel to it that comes out at the end of the month!

Book: 5 stars
Movie: 4.5 stars