Today’s chapter opens with a menstruation joke.  Stay classy, book.

Creepiest friendship ever, Ever! Hal Get it?“ He loves making pun of my name.

That’s not actually a pun.

It’s the next day, and Ever and Miles are talking on the phone about how lame the party was last night.  The pacing in this book is so weird.  The last two chapters felt like they were taking a stab at being a climax.  First we had the fake-out with Drina, then everything being laid out with Damen.  They both failed miserably at being climactic, but each had the feel of trying.  Now…now we’re back to the same tone that the rest of the book had.  So instead last chapter was not what the whole book was leading up to, it was just…what, a really awkward pitstop?  Did the author just suddenly realize, right before her climax, that she’d been holding everything back the whole book so she had to dump it all at once to get ready for the end?

Sabine comes in, and she’s all out of sorts because she discovered the ‘mountain of lies’ that her boyfriend had kept from her.  On the one hand, even benign things can still be hurtful if your partner isn’t upfront about them, so Sabine could be upset about the lying and not just the ‘live at home’ness.  On the other hand, I will never forget that the book has only given me one example of his looserhood and didn’t even properly explain it.  The book has a very narrow view of what’s acceptable and what’s not, and anything that falls outside that view gets mocked, regardless of circumstances.  Live at home?  Well it must be because you utterly fail as a human being, there’s no other explanation.  Like goth stuff?  Well it must be because you are obsessed with vampires and death, and also are a looser.  Gay?  Oh, let’s not even go there.

Sabine is there to explain that Ever is no longer grownded, because Sabine wants to treat her like an adult.  The only problem with this line of thinking is that EVER IS NOT AN ADULT, NO, SHE SHOULD BE TREATED LIKE A TEENAGER BECAUSE SHE FUCKING IS A TEENAGER, DID YOU MISS THAT WHOLE DRUNK AT SCHOOL BUSINESS? CLEARLY SHE CAN’T BE TRUSTED TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS.

Then Riley pops up, because sure why not.  She’s had no impact on the plot this whole time and has been utterly and completely useless, to the point that she can enter and leave the book without making so much as a blip.  We haven’t seen her in ages, but no one noticed, because she’s just that useless.

Riley once again suggests that Ever go to see Ava, and Ever once again says that Ava can’t help without giving us one single reason why she thinks that.  Not even a bad reason.  Then Riley fades out and disappears, so Ever goes to see Ava anyway.  Good thing she conveniently got un-grounded five seconds ago.

Ava acts perfectly kind and welcoming, while Ever screams at her for ‘brainwashing’ Riley and keeping the two separate.

Ava’s a nut bag, a phony, and she talks with such authority about the most outrageous things.

Seriously, Ever, on the same page you are both accusing Ava of talking to a ghost and accusing Ava of being a phony.  You can’t keep claiming both, so make up your fucking mind already. 

Ava has the patience of a saint and explains that Riley did not actually cross over to the other side like her parents, instead she turned back at the last minute and came looking for Ever.  She’s stuck on earth and can’t get to the afterlife, even though Riley had previously said that she can travel back and forth and is only visiting with Ever.  Ava says that Ever has to convince Riley to ‘move on,’ because she’s too stubborn to do it on her own.

Ever refuses because she’s a selfish twit, then wants Ava’s help controlling her powers anyway.  Ava helps teach her some stuff, because Ava is a good person.  Far too good a person to be in this book.  Honestly, how did she even make it in here?  Every other character is a disgusting level of despicable, but Ava is just unrelentingly nice.  But the book still dumps on her as much as it does everyone else.  I guess on some level it’s interesting, because I think it is supposed to be showing Ever as judgmental and stubborn and wrong.  But she acts the exact same to everyone else in her life and is right about her snap judgments, so…so this big is just strange.   Is the book admitting that Ever is a bad person or just saying that Ava is so special?

So Ever learns how to put a cap on her abilities and breezes through the next few days with barely a paragraph of summary.  Jeeze, she was so eager for this ‘normalcy’ that she took up drinking heavily, but now that she has it, that’s all we get?

And hey, yeah, she quit drinking pretty easy, didn’t she?  This book never met a tangent it wasn’t willing to drop like a hot potato.

“Jeff bought Sabine a ring! Can you believe it? He moved out of his mom’s house, got his own place, and is begging her to come back and start over!”

…So he was financially stable enough to be able to live on his own and had other reasons for staying at his mom’s house?

Fuck you, book.

Ever can still see Riley, so they’re sitting around chatting, and Ever makes tepid attempts to bring up the whole ‘moving on’ subject.  Of course, for all the book was willing to summarize before, it spends pages on smalltalk about the fascinating business of Riley spying on celebrities.  Which, frankly, becomes even more insipid when there’s no actual names or gossip being dropped.

Sabine returned the ring, I had a new iPhone, Riley was back to visiting every day, sometimes even accompanying me to school, Miles started dating one of the Hairspray backup dancers, Haven dyed her hair dark brown, swore off everything Goth, began the painful process of lasering off her tattoo, burned all of her Drina-dresses, and replaced them with emo. New Year’s came and went, marked by a small gathering at my house that included sparkling cider for me (I was officially off the sauce), contraband champagne for my friends, and a midnight dip in the Jacuzzi, which was pretty tame as far as New Year’s parties go, but not at all boring. Stacia and Honor still glared at me, pretty much the same as before, even worse on the days when I wore something cute, Mr. Robins got a life (one without his daughter or his wife), Ms. Machado still cringed when she looked at my art, and between it all was Damen.

Holy fucking shit, really, book?  Did you just get bored?  Wow.  I can’t imagine any way you could possibly get lazier than that.

The summarizing goes all the way to Valentine’s Day, where Ever whines about how she misses Damen and all that.  Which…is really weird, because I don’t remember any reason for why they had to separate?  I guess he’s waiting for her to come back to him, but she just came back from Magic Land and…went straight into summarizing everything, so…yeah, I’m confused.  Did she give up on being immortal?  And slide straight into complaining about how no boy can measure up to Damen?

Damen sends her a Valentine’s card.  I can’t tell you how little I care.

So Ever goes home after school and suddenly realizes that Riley is just sitting at the house all day watching TV and…I guess this prompts a spontaneous change of heart?  Now she’s encouraging Riley to move on, which is a complete 180 from the rest of the book, and for no reason.

Really.  We’ve been putting up with this ridiculous plot line for the whole book.  Not consistently, it just pops up at random, but still.  It’s been unchanged for the whole book.  Ever wants her sister around because reasons.  And now the payoff from all that is just Ever changing her mind spontaneously?  What a fucking let-down!  Although I guess it fits; the whole plot line has been useless and forgettable so far, so it makes sense that the conclusion to it would every bit as thoughtless.

Riley goes on about how she’s spent time in Summerland talking to the other uncrossed spirits there, and how she can actually still see their parents when she’s there, and fuck book, why are you teasing me with things that would be infinitely more interesting than the daily life of Ever The Brat?

Riley tells Ever to stop blaming herself for the accident, Ever tells her to go on to the other side, and Riley promises to send her a sign from the other side.  Not sure why, but fuck it, I don’t care.  I’m just glad to be done with that stupid subplot.  Bye, Riley!