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I'm reading through all the free book available on the Harper Teen website, partly because I have no objection to free books or YA paranormal books, and partly to give them a chance, because they may lead me to something. Kelley Armstrong's The Summoning (reviewed only a few days ago) was pretty good, and I've moved on to Claudia Gray's Evernight.
Which is so boring that it's only sheer force of will that's keeping me going.
Which is more than I could manage for Twilight, I'll say that much.
But Evernight is like Twilight at boarding school. Blurbs and reviews recommend it for fans of Meyer's books, and so far I can't say that's far off the mark. It's got the same kind of obsessive love thing going on, the same heroine that I can't bring myself to care about. It's marginally better than Twilight in that I don't want to smack the protagonist upside the head every chapter, or at least not as much. She's fallen head-over-heels in obsession with a guy who spoke to for ten minutes on the first day of school, and by chapter three is already thinking of all the places in her life that he can fit in.
There's a conversation in chapter four that can be summed up by the following:
Raquel: I had a nightmare about vampires and evil things in this school, and it scared me so badly that I'm hiding in the bathrooms to cry.
Bianca: I know how you feel. I had a nightmare about flowers dying. Totally the same thing, right?
I can't see this book picking up so much in the last half that it redeems itself for a terrible beginning. But we'll see. I'll give it a chance before I condemn it completely. But really, when I'm frequently reflecting on how little I've read but how long it seemed to have taken, I don't hold out much hope.
Which is so boring that it's only sheer force of will that's keeping me going.
Which is more than I could manage for Twilight, I'll say that much.
But Evernight is like Twilight at boarding school. Blurbs and reviews recommend it for fans of Meyer's books, and so far I can't say that's far off the mark. It's got the same kind of obsessive love thing going on, the same heroine that I can't bring myself to care about. It's marginally better than Twilight in that I don't want to smack the protagonist upside the head every chapter, or at least not as much. She's fallen head-over-heels in obsession with a guy who spoke to for ten minutes on the first day of school, and by chapter three is already thinking of all the places in her life that he can fit in.
There's a conversation in chapter four that can be summed up by the following:
Raquel: I had a nightmare about vampires and evil things in this school, and it scared me so badly that I'm hiding in the bathrooms to cry.
Bianca: I know how you feel. I had a nightmare about flowers dying. Totally the same thing, right?
I can't see this book picking up so much in the last half that it redeems itself for a terrible beginning. But we'll see. I'll give it a chance before I condemn it completely. But really, when I'm frequently reflecting on how little I've read but how long it seemed to have taken, I don't hold out much hope.
