Blue Moon by Alyson Noel

Book Review #10: Blue Moon by Alyson Noel (book #2 in The Immortals series)

Overall Rating: 6.75/10
Plot: 4/10
Characters: 8/10
Writing: 8/10
Originality: 7/10

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t read the first book of this series, Evermore, you might want to think about not reading this review. However, this has not been a very good series so far, so you’re welcome to ruin it yourself, I won’t get mad. 

Sample Passage: I’m as anxious as [Damen].  But I’m also concerned.  Concerned about his inability to manifest, concerned about the fleeting cold look in his eyes—holding my breath as he takes a swig from his bottle, reminding myself of how quickly his wound healed, convincing myself it’s a good sign.  And knowing my concern will only make him feel worse, I clear my throat and say “Fine. You go get the car.  And I’ll meet you inside.” Unable to ignore the startling coolness of his cheek when I lean in to kiss it.

Genre: Teenage Paranormal Romance
Ages: 13 and up 

Number of Pages: 284
Published: 2009 by St. Martin’s Press 

Summary: Drina was finally killed, Ever became immortal, and now she and her soul mate, Damen, have forever to spend with each other. Or so Ever thinks, until a new guy shows up at school named Roman, where it seems like he has everyone under his spell. Once Roman makes his appearance, Damen also starts to fall ill, and for some reason starts to hate Ever.  When a once every 3-5 year opportunity comes along where Ever can go back in time and save her family, Ever realizes she has to take it and save her family from the car accident that wasn’t supposed to happen that took their lives, in order to save Damen.  Ever realizes however, she might be too late to save Damen and her family anyway.

Review: If you guys have read my review of the first book in the series, Evermore, you’ll know that I definitely wasn’t a fan of it.  I also predicted that I wouldn’t be a fan of Blue Moon. I was right.  This book was only a little bit of a step up from the trainwreck that was Evermore. 

In this book, the plot was a complete disaster.  I found it confusing, boring, and rushed.  I wasn’t captivated by it at all, there was barely any suspense in it, and I had little to no incentive to keep reading it.  It’s mostly about how Ever is trying to save Damen from this new guy Roman who just randomly shows up, which I thought was not explained very well.  Even at the end when you have his big monologue which explains his so brilliant-evil plan, it seemed very confusing, and just slapped together. You really don’t see much of Damen in this book, even in the scenes where he is really sick, he doesn’t say much at all.

There is a lot of backstory in this book, especially through the many visits Ever has to Summerland.  However, the backstory explains the things that I actually didn’t think much about.  There were also some obvious holes in Ever’s plan to save Damen, which wasn’t a very good plan after all, and you knew something was going to go wrong, which actually made it quite frustrating for the reader. The plot of this book was just extremely flat (there it is: The Plateau Effect) and focused on only one thing: saving Damen.  It lacked the intriguing mystery in Evermore.  

The only reason that this plot got the same rating as Evermore was because there was less of the Damen-Ever romance that I didn’t really like in the first place.  If you liked that romance, basically the plot should be a 2 or 3/10, because there really was none.  You also get to find more about Ever’s past life and what her character was like in the past before the accident, which I found to be the most interesting part of the whole book.  Luckily, what might have been the worst plot-line I’ve ever seen in a book was saved by an ending that actually kept me somewhat on the edge of my seat. 

Ever bugged me a little less in this book, and so did Damen.  First of all, it was nice to see Damen in a weak setting where Ever is actually the strong one, I could finally look back and see Damen as somewhat of a relatable person…you know, minus the immortality and that stuff.  Ever didn’t even really let herself go when Damen was sick and didn’t pay much attention to her anymore.  I felt that she was a lot stronger in this book than in Evermore, and she didn’t freak out about every little thing.

One thing that still bugs me about Ever is how she treats Sabine.  Ever will always say how guilty she is for how she treats Sabine, but she never really seems to do anything about it.  For example, Sabine gets on Ever in this book because she doesn’t really eat.  I thought immortals could eat, they just didn’t have to.  That part confused me.  Haven and Miles weren’t in this book very much! I was disappointed.  I like those two characters, they sort of add normality to the book.

SPOILER ALERT!

There’s only one thing that really got to me as far as the characters go.  Was Ava REALLY a traitor?  That didn’t make sense to me.  She was so genuine!  Was Roman just lying to Ever or is Ava really that bad of a person? If any of you followers can explain that to me, that would be very much appreciated.

UNSPOILER ALERT!

The originality of this book was just okay.  I mean, not a whole lot of teen paranormal romance novels are original.  Noel’s writing isn’t too bad, I can follow what little plot there is in this book well enough.  Her description is really good too, and I admire authors who can describe things well.

Overall: If you’ve read Evermore and are expecting something even better and so amazing that you’ll have to stay up all night reading this book, you are going to be sadly disappointed.

Coming up Next: Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen and Legend by Marie Lu