Bark at the Ghouls

GR Cleanup Read March 2011

Sixteen year old Ever (yes, so sorry that’s not a typo) lost her family, her dog, her home and her popularity in a tragic accident. When she awakens she has the ability to read thoughts and see auras. This is not a good thing for Ever and it turns her into a “freak”. Now living with her wealthy, absent aunt, she shuns people and hides her beauty behind ugly hoodies and big sunglasses.

One gloomy day a new boy arrives at the school where she is now one of the misfit freaky kids. For some reason she’s chosen to befriend a gothy bitch and a disinterested in anything but himself boy named Miles instead of the bitchy, self-involved popular kids she used to consider her BFF’s. This new kid, Damen, is all smoldering good looks and is interested in MissHoodie and she can’t read his thoughts! Ahhh, blessed silence replaces the voices in her head whenever he is near.

Here I stop to let the feelings of Deja freaking Vu wash over me and lament the loss of originality in the YA world.

The rest of the book follows Ever and Damen around as he keeps her in the dark about his dark and mysterious past and generally acts all dark and mysterious but because he’s sexysuperhot they fall into an obsessive dysfunctional crazy sort of love. He must really know how to work the smolder because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out when or why they were in love or how he jumped straight from wooing to almost getting her out of her panties in a blink. He was a BORING character and no amount of movie star looks is fixing that when I can’t see him! She ain’t no prize either, for that matter. She’s moody and spoiled and acts like a real nut when he finally tells her the truth about himself. I could forgive the moody, hell her family was dead, but the author didn’t work that angle to any real emotional effect. The deaths were used as a means to get her to where she is, living with an aunt who conveniently works 168 hours a week so she can hook up with Damen. I should know, I lost a parent at thirteen and life was an emotional hell for a very long time. In this book, I felt none of the pain and torment that invades every pore of your being when something so earth shattering happens. Thus, many of Ever’s thoughts were distasteful and shallow to me. All she did was whine about unimportant shit and fret about Damen. Sure she could still talk to her little ghostie sister so I guess that made all the pain go away? To me it was all a bit lazy and not at all clever.

So yeah I freely admit I’m biased but I did finish the book and it didn’t get better for me. I don’t care how much woo-woo or adventure or paranormal twisties an author throws in, if I find the characters tedious and completely lacking in emotion it’s a fail. Ever is a fail.