This review was originally written and posted in July 2013.

The book opens with our narrator’s best friend doing the whole cover-your-eyes-and-say-guess-who thing.

Haven’s warm, clammy palms press hard against my cheeks as the tarnished edge of her silver skull ring leaves a smudge on my skin.

That’s our first sentence about Haven.  The very first.  Clammy palms and nuisance-causing rings are the images we have to form our first impressions with.  It’s like the book is trying to make us dislike Haven, even before we get to properly meet her!

The second paragraph is Ever recounting all the creepy-too-much stuff she knows about Haven, then lets us know she got that information via being psychic.  Which, to be honest, is a pretty good opening.  It grabs the attention and gives the reader necessary information and character information all in one go.  It leads us right into the mood of the scene by making this ordinary (to Ever) and doesn’t try and tease us then downgrade to high school.  It lets us shift smoothly into a-day-in-the-life.  I approve.

“Hurry! Guess! The bell’s gonna ring!” she says, her voice hoarse, raspy, like she smokes a pack a day, even though she only tried smoking once.

And now I disapprove again.  Book, why are you trying so hard to pile the negative descriptions on Haven?  We’re still on the first page!

Haven and Ever go to class, where we get our first brush of the book’s Mean Girl, who calls Ever a “Looo-ser” as she walks past.  I’m really sick of mean girls.  Just really, really sick.  Especially when they go out of their way to make fun of someone.  It’s been my experience that popular girls (and, really, everyone else) don’t notice the girls like Ever, the ones that sit in the back of the class with hoodies up, ignoring the world.  They get vicious when someone tries to intrude on their social circle.  Or maybe if the school is small enough that outliers are obvious.  In a large school population, though, there would have to be some sort of inciting incident for this to make sense, because someone with a large social circle is going to focus on those people, not random kids outside of it.  Especially if the person outside of their circle is being unobtrusive.  It’s not like Ever is coming to school in horrendous fashion or has some visible disability or something.  Not that those are good reasons to bully someone (there’s no good reason for that), but at least in that case it would draw attention.

And I’m just sick of mean girl characters in general.  They’re rarely done well, and by this point, I don’t think the authors are even drawing on their own misconceptions of reality.  I really don’t.  These characters are too uniform and too clichéd.  It’s like they’re all copying each other, not taking literary revenge on the popular girl from their memories.  The Mean Girl has become her own self-sustaining and self-replicating entity, existing entirely in the realm of YA fiction and high school movies.

Unless Tina Fey is involved, and then it’s okay.

Ever sits and listens to loud music on a hidden iPod and explains to use that she wasn’t always “a freak;” she used to be a normal cheerleader living a charmed high school life.  Then she was in a car-crash with her family and almost died.

Oh, wait, apparently that’s not right.

I had what they call an NDE, or “near death experience.” Only they happen to be wrong. Because believe me, there wasn’t anything “near” about it.

Except she’s not a zombie or a vampire right now, so she’s technically alive, so I have no idea what makes that ‘not near.’  Was she very far away from death, perhaps?  She’s not dead.

There was even a light she didn’t go towards.  She ended up in a ghostly form with the rest of her family as they went off into the distance, but she stayed behind because she was distracted for a moment and then someone woke her up. 

Sounds like a ‘near’ death experience to me.

Ever cares not and refuses to explain herself.

The teacher comes in an introduces a new kid named Damen, who is totally smoking hot.  Everyone in class thinks so, which Ever knows because she can hear their thoughts.  (Hence why she normally listens to melt-your-brain-loud music.  I actually really like that detail; it’s uncommon to see such pragmatic responses to paranormal elements.)

I’m sick of hot love interests, too.  Actually, I’m not.  I like hot boys.  What I’m sick of is the trope everyone has to find the LI hot.  Why can’t he just be good looking and leave it at that?  I mean, I have huge lady-boner for Taylor Kitsch, while several of my friends think he’s icky.  I have no attraction at all for Brad Pitt, and he’s been named Hottest Guy Of The Whatever a few times (right?  hasn’t he?  I don’t keep up) so there’s variances on what people will consider hot or not.  So why is it when these guys show up in books, every single person has to agree that he’s the hottest piece of man meat on the market?  We all know it’s just there to make him more of a prize for the heroine, since it’s not like having be a normal amount of hot would break the story any.

Damen sits next to Ever and shares her book, but she doesn’t look at him yet because she doesn’t want to have to hear his thoughts.

At lunch, Haven continues the “let’s talk about how Damen being hot” parade, and then we get a new character named Miles.  You can tell he’s gay because his first comment is about Damen’s boots, and his next is about wanting to date Damen.

From what I’ve heard, I’m not going to like Miles.  But I’ll reserve judgment for the moment, because this seems to stem more from Damen’s reality-breaking hotness than from anything else.

They keep talking about Damen.  And keep talking about Damen.  And omg they’re still talking about Damen.

Book.  Sweetie.  Honey.  I know the guy is hot and that’s a lot of fun for you, but his hotness is not a plot point.  Stop it.

“Omigod, there he is! Right directly next to us!” Miles squeals in the high-pitched, sing songy whisper he saves for life’s most exciting moments.

Moment of grace over, book.  You have officially taken your gay guy and turned him into a five year old girl.  If this is something normal for him, it can’t be blamed on Damen.

It’s after school, by the way, and we’re still talking about Damen.  Now Ever is looking at Damen, so we get a full paragraph describing his supposed earth-shattering hotness to us.

I’m really sick of hearing about Damen being hot. 

At least Ever has a secondary reason for staring at him: he’s got no aura.  We learn she can see mood-ring colors around everyone else, but not Damen.

Wait, this is Twilight from Edward’s POV, isn’t it?

Damen borrows one of her lit books, then drives away.  Ever and Miles carpool home together.

Miles continues like that, yammering on and on,

Seriously, book, do you like anyone besides our two main characters?  The word choice here is really uncomfortable.  Everyone is getting these really negative words applied to them, regardless of where they stand on the antagonist-protagonist scale.