Blue Moon is the second book in Noël’s The Immortals series. I really enjoyed the first book, Evermore, and thought it was a different kind of paranormal YA romance than the tortured good-boy vampire stories so popular right now–it wasn’t about vampires and had no werewolves or other creatures of the night, it dealt with reincarnation in addition to immortality, and one of its major plot points was how entirely creepy and isolating suddenly having brushes with the other side/strange powers would most likely really be for a young girl. I picked up this sequel and the next (Shadowland, which just came out) with enthusiasm, and so I’m sad to say that Blue Moon was one of the most disappointing and frustrating books I’ve ever read.
The back of the book suggested the story was about Ever delving into her new powers and her and Damen investigating her past lives by regressing her into them. I wish that was what had happened. The parts where Ever looks into the past were ruined by her inexplicable impatience and disinterest in learning anything about Damen’s past, even things that might upset her to watch but that could save him from the strange malady that has made him human again…and entirely uninterested in her.
The entire book was ruined by Ever’s inexplicable behavior, actually. I really feel like this was a case of the author being a puppetmaster; Noël had a very specific story she wanted to tell, and so she told it and just sort of shoved Ever into attitudes and actions without regard to whether they fit the character or even made sense. I had serious logical problems with so many things Ever thinks and does, mostly because she is inconsistent. She can forgive her friends for ignoring her and scorning her because they’re under a spell, but she can’t extend the same to Damen, who is under the same spell? She spends the whole book being creeped out by the new boy in town, only to trust him at the critical moment after he’s admitted everything is his fault? Really? She suddenly trusts the psychic she hated and feared in the first book, because it’s the only link she now has to her magical side-life that has disappeared with Damen’s immortality? She remembers her little sister’s ghost talking about having “guides” in Summerland but doesn’t trust them when those same guides show up to interact with her? Maybe all of these contradictions fit Ever, but if that was the case then Noël failed to convey Ever’s character well enough to make the inconsistencies seem natural.
Two slightly more general life things I want to bring up. First, Ever’s reluctance to finally (gasp) go all the way with her boyfriend/love of every one of her lives/soul mate is a bit ridiculous. They spend so much time making out she hasn’t learned anything about being an immortal or how to use her powers, but yet they’ve managed not to cross that line where hormones take over and there’s no more going back? I don’t buy it. I remember being a teenager. It goes like this–you make out and after enough times you cross that line; ”You wanna do it?” “Okay,” and that’s it. Either you then call it an “accident” and stop or you don’t, but it’s not something that gets dwelled on the way it’s presented here. Also. Can I just say how freaking sick I am of these little YA romance heroines who have overdeveloped guilt complexes and basically would rather die than have to actually make a mistake or have to feel guilty for something? There’s an English thesis in here somewhere (no problem, grad student, thank me by emailing over the article you write) about what this says about our current national psyche, that the worst thing you can possibly do is offend someone else or hurt someone else or do something with yourself in mind and not everyone else but you. Grow the hell up. That’s what I wanted to say to this girl the whole time. Ironically, the one behavior I agreed with (the point in time she chooses to go back to when she learns how to go back to try and undo what was done) was for different reasons; she did it out of guilt, whereas I liked it because it made actual emotional sense.
My bottom line is this: if you liked the first one, just skip straight to the third. All you need to know that came out of this story is that Ever is now a physical anathema to Damen as a result of her trusting the bad guy. It’s so very Buffy/Angel and Twilight-esque celibacy tract–so much for originality. I give this book a D, for Don’t Bother.
