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

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe by Beth Revis ☆☆☆☆☆

Take young adult romance and coming of age, add a dystopian society and a murder mystery, and top it off with a little science fiction and you have this book. I don't usually read science fiction, it's just not my thing, but a few reviews of this book and some classic shelf placement at the book store made me pick it up. And I devoured it.

One of my favorite things about this book is its usage of social commentary. On the surface is a story about assuming responsibility and a budding romance. But below the surface is thinly veiled critique of society in the past, present, and possible future. Revis takes our world histories of violence and racism and shows the many different ways that it can be misconstrued. At the same time she plays off of the idea of the differences between crazy and normal and flips what/who can be filed into the categories created. I loved just how many levels this book worked on.

The other thing I really loved was how much emotion I had for the book. I felt angry when the characters were angry and angry when they couldn't see what was right in front of them while I could. I felt helpless with the conditions they were faced with and wanted so badly to take them and give them happy endings before I even reached the ending myself. I really felt for this book and the characters in it. And this is especially purposeful when a large portion of the book questions the lack of emotion in people and the desire to feel anything even if the feeling is rage.

Now while I wasn't entirely satisfied with the book, and while I wouldn't necessarily read it again, I still give it five stars instead of four because I like what it said underneath and not just on top. I liked how it had more layers than I could ever possibly explain. And it's because of those layers that I would recommend people I know to read it.

Night Star (The Immortals 5) by Alyson Noel

Night Star by Alyson Noel ☆☆☆☆

I gave this series another shot and for once wasn't disappointed. So here is a breakdown of what happened with my feelings toward The Immortals series:

Evermore -> couldn't put it down, loved how it was a different supernatural element than vampires or witches, etc

Blue Moon -> also couldn't put down and subsequently ignored the then bf in favor of immersing myself in the book

Shadowland -> (help me, oh please!) this book was filler than only served to frustrate me and make me sad

Dark Flame -> and then I was further saddened, every single time you thought a plot line was about to be tied up she added yet another plot line, if I remember right by the end there were about five different plots and only one had been tied up

And so we get to Night Star. I pre-ordered this book before it came out and it's been sitting on my shelf ever since. The last two books really changed my mind about the series and I was hesitant to go any further, however, I can never seem to put down a series until it's over so I bought the next book anyway. I still put it off obviously....until I saw at the bookstore that the final book just came out so I decided to just read it and get it over with. I had no hopes of this book being any better, but I was pleasantly surprised. Enough to give this one four stars. While it did have several running plot lines, they all seemed to run smoothly together in this book and at least attempt to tie themselves up if they didn't actually reach that point. In a six book series, books three and four apparently fell victim to the middle-filler-bridge of the story arc. I'm actually looking forward to the final book now.

If you're willing to read this series, the first two books are incredible and the fifth is too. Just try and hold out through three and four and know that it'll get you where you need to go eventually. At the very least, you'll be lucky enough that you don't have to live with that unresolved feeling while you wait a year for the next book to come out, you can just pick up the next one immediately and push through it.

Bumped by Megan McCafferty

Bumped by Megan McCafferty ☆☆☆

Not the best book I have read. I had a hard time getting into it and that feeling never really let up. I don't like books that have their own languages without explaining it and this was one of those books. While I was able to pick up on some of the meanings as I read, I still felt lost most of the way.

This book did elicit emotion from me though. I was angry at Harmony for most of the book. And I felt a helplessness for Melody. I was anxiously awaiting everything to turn around and go the way it was expected, but it didn't make it. Part of that doesn't make me want to read the sequel that I discovered is in the works, however, the ending did leave some interesting ideas open that I wouldn't mind exploring out of pure curiosity.

While I did score this book low it doesn't mean I hated it. It's between 3 and 4 stars for me. It's definitely a good book at looking at what a world would be like if teen pregnancies were profitable and overmarketed, and a jab at the overpopularization already present with shows like 16 and Pregnant or even the Octomom. The warring alternating POVs of Harmony and Melody show deep contradictions in not only how the girls were raised, but also contradictions within themselves against how they were raised. It's a working dystopian society novel, but it just didn't work on all levels for me.

Rules of Attraction (Perfect Chemistry 2) by Simone Elkeles

Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles ☆☆☆☆☆

I had to order this online because I was on a waitlist at the library and didn't want to wait! Luckily Amazon even had it on sale! Unluckily I waited longer to read it then I would have if I had just waited for the library to send it. Irony at its best.

I loved this book! Getting to that in a second, I'd like to add what I didn't like: the epilogue. This is the same problem I had with the first book. To me both felt like they had the perfect ending (which I don't say often) to where I wasn't anxious for anymore information and just felt satisfied with what I was given. And then you come to the unnecessary epilogue that felt like reading bad fan fiction. In Perfect Chemistry the epilogue was set 23 in the future and in this book it was 26 years. It's not necessarily tying up loose ends (especially since there aren't any); it's just, in both cases, showing history repeating itself in a humorous way. Without the epilogues they would be perfect books.

However, I do still love the book in so many ways. This book mimicked my own high school life (without the gangs): an arrogant Mexican boy that continues to get in trouble and a down-to-earth gringa that doesn't care about her appearance and is willing to give herself fully if it means getting love. Honestly, I wish I would have had this book to read a decade ago and maybe the choices I made would be very very different. That being said, if I identified with it that much then I'm sure there are many other girls (or guys) that would as well, and so I am very glad that this book is out there for them to read and look at the choices they're making in an entirely different way.

This book pulled me in so easily and so tightly that I didn't want to give it up. I was literally dreaming the book while I slept, just waiting until I could pick it up again. And I anxiously handed it off to my friend so that she could love it as much as I did.

Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler

Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler ☆☆☆☆

Box of tissues required!

I knew this book was about death and grieving, but as I began to read it I was holding up pretty well, it wasn't overly emotional, so I didn't think anything of it. Until they sat down on the beach and the weight of everything hit. I couldn't stop crying and I cried and cried for several chapters. Luckily I had tissues by my bed from the last time I my allergies acted up so I was good to go, just stuffy as I was falling asleep.

The reviews on the back of the book declare that Ockler will break you heart to pieces and put it back together again and she definitely delivered. While the book may not have ended the way I hoped for, it did end perfectly. She takes you complete through the grief of the protagonist who had finally begun to live her dream of being with her best friend's brother until he dies before they can label it, and without anyone knowing about it she is left to grieve on her own while she helps her friend grieve the death of her own brother. But more so, she takes you through the grief of the entire family as they try to piece their lives back together on a summer trip they had never made without him before.

I say it ends perfectly because in the aspect of the grief, they are forced to deal with their emotions and come full circle back through them until they reach something short of normal. So why did it not end how I hoped? Because in true "twenty boy summer" context I fall for a boy on the beach and hate that they had to leave. So now in my head I am recreating an epilogue ending in which they return to the beach the following summer and she moves out there for college the summer after that. There is my classic happy ending. But truthfully it was about the girls and the family and not about the boys so I can't ask for anything more.

There is only one thing I have a hard time believing (and this is where it loses a star) and that is the fact that this brother doesn't seem to have any friends of his own. While I admire his bond with his sister and her best friend that he falls for, he spends all his time with them and there is a two year age difference between them. I don't know many teenage boys that would fit that picture. Everything else is completely believable though and spot on.