oyceter. Gray, Claudia

First off, it would be nice if publishers made it explicit when a book is the first of a series, not a stand alone!

Bianca Olivier's parents have decided to enroll her in prestigious Evernight Academy, an elite boarding school that naturally hides dark secrets among its Gothic arches and gargoyles. She feels dowdy and lacking compared to the "Evernight types," who seem to vacation in the Swiss Alps or the Bermudas and have their uniforms tailored by fashion designers, and she's irresistably drawn toward troublemaker Lucas, who warns her to stay away from him, as he'll only cause trouble for her.

So far, switch out some names, and this could be just about any YA vampire novel out there (I say, probably having read 75% of them as a teen). Then things don't quite go as expected. And then they sort of do. It feels a lot like Gray wanted to subvert all sorts of YA vampire tropes but stay within the tropes to get the same payoff, and it just doesn't work for me.

Oh, and skip the prologue, which adds nothing.

Spoilers

I was laughing in the beginning because I could tick off all the tropes: 1) I have red hair and pale skin and am ugly!, 2) the in crowd, 3) The Boy, 4) the boy who's perfect on the outside but maybe not on the inside, 5) the outcasts who become the heroine's friends, and 6) The Ball!

And then it turns out the Bianca's the vampire and Lucas is her prey, which I had not expected at all, even though people told me the book was going to do something different. I love how the middle section fliips the standard coding of the YA vampire novel: Lucas is the one who's vulnerable to Bianca, she's the one who must control herself for fear of hurting him, for all that he tries to protect her, she's the one he needs protection from. It's great. And I love the way her family unit works and everything.

Plus, the idea behind Evernight is brilliant; every time I read a YA vampire book, I wonder why a 200-year-old vampire would ever want to go through high school again. And it makes sense here! It's because they're so out of touch with technology and the modern world that they have to go back to school!

On a side note, I had a moment of "bzuh?" when Bianca's 900+ year old father said the ages 12-18 were sucky no matter what time you were in, since I am fairly sure teenager-ness was a recently invented concept and that a 16-year-old in Europe in the 1100s probably would be pretty past teen angst, since a) no concept of teen and b) he or she would probably be treated as adult by then.

Unfortunately, some of this was undercut by my feeling that Gray had cheated. It's hard pulling this kind of reveal with first-person POV, and I don't think it works here. I can for some other books I've read, largely because the protagonist is in an unfamiliar setting, but things like Bianca glossing over the glasses of blood at the breakfast table just didn't work for me. Still, it was an interesting enough twist to keep reading.

But then, Lucas turns out to be a vampire hunter, and he's pretty powerful now too, thanks to Bianca's bites, and the book goes straight back into standard YA vampire fare, complete with star-crossed, forbidden romance and all. Maybe that wouldn't have annoyed me so much had Lucas-as-vampire-hunter not completely undercut a lot of the prior undercutting. Once again, he's the bad boy, he's dangerous to her, he's powerful and has scary secrets and knows about a world that threatens her. So yeah, not sure if I'll keep reading the series if it sticks with the Bianca-Lucas thing, just because I am rather bored by them.

Balthazar and Raquel, on the other hand, I like a whole lot.

A very interesting premise, but I think the execution falls down.

Links:
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madeleinmae's review (non-spoilery)
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sarahtales' review (non-spoilery)

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Threaded. Top-Level Comments Only

Posted by

deepad

Yeah, I was disappointed too, especially since her fanfic is so good. I spotted the main plot twist pretty early on, so it wasn't a surprise for me, and all the angst in the end just seemed hokey and overdrawn.

Posted by

quadrifons.livejournal.com

I wonder why a 200-year-old vampire would ever want to go through high school again.

Immortal beings perpetually repeating high school for no reason other than eventually meeting their twu wuv is one of my biggest peeves in supernatural fiction!

...And the thought of technologically-impaired vampires amuses me more than it probably should.

Posted by

ionescribens.livejournal.com

I liked the dad's comment about teens, as given teen actions through history, if you survived your teens (and disease didn't get you) you usually had an okay life. But there is a reason Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet and Mercutio, etc, teens. The father, keeping up with the times, would know both modern psych and history.

The end stuff (to avoid spoilers) didn't bother me once I shifted myself into my fourteen/fifteen year old headspace. Then of course the dynamics just had to be that way. Some of the YAs out there are clever but I don't know that teens are their real audience. (I'd love to find out if teens, and not college girls, are reading Wilce, for example.) But this one seems genuinely teen.

Posted by

penmage.livejournal.com

I was pleased as punch about the twist, and I almost feel like that clouded me. I was reading happily along, going "cliche! cliche! cliche!" and then she turned it all on its head, so I think I was more impressed by it than I should have been on writing alone.

Where does she write fanfic?

Posted by

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

It's funny, but Flora Segunda strikes me as something that might appeal a lot to advanced pre-teen readers. But maybe a little twee for older teens. It was a little twee for me, though like most adult readers, I liked the worldbuilding and the non-twee aspects of the voice.

Posted by

deepad

Um... I'm not sure she wants to publically link her fic identity with her pro one, so you could comment on her claudiagrey LJ and ask her?

Posted by

Gray, Claudia - Evernight

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