The next morning, Ever is back to her moping about Damen as if the whole date day didn’t happen, because progress is for other books, of course.  Riley teases her about it but Ever won’t talk.

But what she doesn’t know is that there’s more to the story than I’m willing to share.

Like Drina trailing us to Disneyland.

And how Damen always disappears whenever she’s near.

First, this has only happened twice.  First time, Drina left first and then you sulked until Damen left, and according to Haven, he didn’t meet up with them again after.  This time, he didn’t disappear at all at Disney, which is the only place you know Drina was at.  No, he disappeared while you were both driving in separate cars on a highway in the dark.  Not exactly suspicious, there, dear.  

Second, why are you presenting this to us as if it’s so dramatic?  So the guy might-but-probably-doesn’t have a thing going with an old friend.  So what?  That might – MIGHT – count as so tension if we had reason to care about the romance in this book, but not only are there ghosts and powers around begging to be a plot, I also just don’t care about the romance.  I can’t care, because the only reason there’s even a semblance of a plot regarding that is Ever’s stupidity.  He likes ever, he’s obvious about it, Ever finds some ridiculous thing to misunderstand and acts surly.  That’s this whole book so far.  The closest thing with have to an actual problem in this book could be fixed by Ever jest growing a brain cell. 

Can we leave Ever to her sulking and have Riley and Ava hook up to do ghost stuff instead?  Please?  

Oh, look at that.  Riley gets fed up with Ever’s sulking and mentions that she’s been off talking to Ava, and now she doubts whether or not she’s doing the right thing by hanging around on earth.  

“I hate to break it to you, but Ava’s a quack. A phony. A charlatan. A con artist! You shouldn’t listen to a word she says. She’s crazy!”

Yes, she’s a con artist who can…hold a conversation with an actual ghost?  Wow, that’s some really good pretending.  

After fighting with Riley about whether her ghost therapist is really a hack or not, Ever goes to school and runs into Damen, who is all “hey, lost you on the highway and then you didn’t answer my calls, sup?”  He reiterates that he likes Ever and not Drina, but ever is still sulking so I guess that whole thing is still stalled.  Oh, joy.  He uses maybe-magic to get her into school after the tardy bell rings, then runs off because apparently being “emancipated” means he doesn’t have to be in school?  What?  Even if you’re over 18 and live alone, you still don’t get to graduate if you miss X number of days. 

Ever has a really bad mood hit her and is about to have a break down in the middle of the school day, so she’s running around to hide when she accidentally knocks over the mean girl and rips her dress.  As mean girl goes into mean girl mode, Ever counters by airing all her dirty laundry that she psychically knows, like framing another girl to get her expelled, cheating in her classes, kleptomania, trying to seduce/frame teachers, and obsessively collecting information on her ‘best friend’ in case said friend ‘turns’ on her. 

Stacia is rightly freaked out by all this threatening that ever is doing (she starts getting in Stacia’s personal space and her whole demeanor is, yea, pretty creepy) so she tells Ever to stay away.  Also, I think we’re supposed to see this laundry list of random bad traits as being indicative of Stacia’s horrible character, but it paints the picture of a broken and really sad and desperate girl more than anything else.  I feel sorry for her.  This isn’t someone with a sour personality and poor grasp of consequences ; this is indicative of some real issues.  And it’s being used as a cheap ploy to make me hate the antagonist.  That’s pretty sick. 

All because the book doesn’t understand nuance, so it thought piling on every bad trait it could think of was best course of action. 

At lunch, she meets up with Haven who is still going on about how awesome Drina is.  She shows Ever the start of a tattoo she got, and it starts to move for a moment, so I guess that’s going to be something super natural.  Then Haven is all “Oops, I promised to keep that is secret, never mind.”  

After school that day, she gets home and Damen is there waiting for her.  They go upstairs, and Riley is there enjoying the fact that she’s invisible and can act goofy and teasing around Damen without him seeing.  It upsets Ever, though, and she tries to get Damen to leave so she can talk to her sister without looking, well, like she’s talking to an invisible person.  Only when Damen leaves, he intentionally walks around Riley as if he can see her. 

You know what?  If Ever had passed on her whole surly act and this had been in chapter three or so, I would’ve been perfectly happy.  That’s a good bit to build some mystery around, much better than the easily explainable stuff we’ve been getting, and it happens without neon signs pointing to it.  Plus, it’s something you might actually be able to make a plot around.  Too bad we’re more than half way through the book by now, not at the start of it.  

After Riley leaves, Ever and Damen hang out and Ever asks if there’s anything he’s bad at.  We get to find out more stuff he’s good at instead.  Stuff I’m sure will have no bearing on the plot.  How can it when there is no plot to begin with?  He says the only thing he’s bad it is “love.”  Gag. 

They go swimming, Damen is perfect some more, they flirt some more.  I still don’t care.  What happened to that good seeing-Riley bit?  She calls him out on the whole “you say you like me and then flirt with Stacia” thing and he says “Oops, I didn’t know that was flirting, I was just being charming to everyone.”  You know, the more we go through this book, the more it seems like Ever just has some serious projection issues.