Evermore by Alyson Noël

Evermore by Alyson Noël is the first book in the series about The Immortals. The main character is Ever. She is 17 years old, and her family has died in a tragic accident. An accident that Ever feels is her fault. After this accident, Ever moves from Oregon to live with her aunt Sabine in California. Sabine is her only living relative, and she makes sure that Ever has all she needs and more. This does not help Ever, though, since she is battling with guilt. Ever used to be the popular girl at school, but she is withdrawing from the world, hiding beneath large hoodies, always with her Ipod securely plugged into her ears.

By having an Ipod in her ears at all times, she cannot hear the ugly thoughts everyone seems to be thinking about her. The music helps drown out other people's thoughts (Ever has been able to hear other people's thoughts since she woke up from the accident). Ever has become an outcast. But she is not completely friendless. Goth girl Haven and homosexual Mike, who are both outcasts themselves has befriended her. None of them knows that Ever can read their minds though.

The three friend's lives are turned upside down when mysterious and seriously hunky Damen begins at school. The popular girls in school thinks that Damen should be theirs, and when Haven also declares that Damen is hers, Ever withdraws more into herself, even though she also feels an immense pull towards him. Damen shows an interest in Ever, though, and soon she is caught between her own guilt, her feelings, a lot of secrets and secrecy and her friend's feelings.

Who is Damen, and what exactly is he doing at their school? Who is the redheaded beauty following him everywhere and why is Damen so interested in boring and freakish Ever? And what is it about Ever's dead little sister who keeps visiting Ever even though she is dead?

Evermore is about love, its about finding love even though you are not like the others, its about being an outcast, its about mourning and living with tragic events. Its about coming of age and about those choices you make along the way, like sex, friendships and love.
No doubt in my mind that Alyson Noël is extremely inspired by the Stephenie Meyers Twilight-series (which I haven't read), although there are no vampires in Evermore. The main target group is girls between 10 and 15, and I am sure most girls in the target group will find Ever and the other characters mildly interesting.

But...its like this book really doesn't live up to all that it is promising. There are so many interesting topics to deal with, but they are never really followed through. It would've been nice with some indepth thoughts about for instance Ever's approach to sex, the bullying she has to take from her classmates, the whole issue about not being like the "normal kids" and so on.

The plot is too loose for my liking and Evermore is not the best book in the genre, but should I stumble upon the others in the series, I will probably read it, but there is a long way from Evermore to some of the other YA-book I've read lately.