Alyson Noël – Blue Moon

I bought this one with the first book in the series, Evermore, which I read several years ago. I didn’t read this second one in the series straight away and after about three pages of Blue Moon, I remembered why.

Before I go on to that though, there is something very puzzling about the start of the book. There’s no catch up on what happened last time at the start of the book – very strange for a second book in a series. This is even more dumbfounding when the book isn’t written in a way that recaps as you go along. I had to spend the first 50 pages of the 362 page book trying to remember who the fuck everyone was. And then I remembered. Twilight.

I was also tempted just to cut and paste my review of Evermore as I really doubt there is anything majorly different to say, but I did find myself laughing at some points simply because of the ridiculous language choices.

The first one I came across was on page 14. I’m not really sure what happens in this universe but apparently a party on a Friday night means the entire weekend is taken over and no other plans can be made. I get that Ever is trying to get out of doing something but she’s supposed to be a teenager with more than one brain cell so making an excuse for one out of three days seems pretty fucking stupid. But also how stupid is her aunt for not questioning it?!

Now I’ll move on to language choice. ‘Telepathically IM’ is phrase I never want to see used in a book again. It’s not just the way it looks on a page that bugs me but it feels like a tact-in attempt at being modern and relevant, however it’s only used once so what’s the point?

Also the word, if you can call it that, ‘omigod’ appears a few times in many different guises throughout. I don’t think I need to say anything more about this. Other than it nearly made me throw up in my mouth when I read it.

There are also several narrative repetitions throughout the book. The most prevalent ones are referring to hairstyles as ‘bangs’ to the point where I wasn’t sure there was another hairstyle in the universe. The other is Ever constantly pressing her lips together. She does it so much, they are probably white from the pressure.

As a side note, Damen is a blatant rip-off of Edward from Twilight. I’m not saying that’s a good thing but what’s most certainly not a good thing is the copying of the exact way in which Edward drives - unnaturally fast with ridiculous reflexes. What I also don’t like about this is the fact that it’s driving. You are limited by the car, you can have all the reflexes in the world but you can’t be psychic and your physical abilities don’t really impact on car brakes, tyre grip and suspension impact so it’s pretty much a load of crap.

Also, by Chapter 19 it seemed pretty obvious what was going to happen and this is probably my biggest criticism of the story itself. The whole thing is driven by Ever’s terrible decisions which, based on what happens, are almost carried out for the sake of creating a story. It feels very forced a lot of time and the way the character has been developed, I don’t believe she would make some of the choices she makes.

There are two other things that pissed me off, the first being Ever’s teachers. There is no way in hell that if teachers caught wind of a student stalking another student to the point where they commit the crime of breaking and entering that they would not call the police or at least call their guardian. This conveniently doesn’t happen for no other reason than to allow the story to continue.

There is a time travel element which had me wetting myself down to the lack of thought that was put into it. In this world, you can travel back in time and change events that happened, as well as carrying notes (this is just fucking stupid because it’s a mental time travel rather than a physical one) and effecting a change in character in a past self for no reason that can be explained in a way that makes sense.

In summary, and this is quite harsh, it feels like the book has been written from a sixteen year old’s perspective almost because it’s the easy option and less thought needs to go in to the writing because a sixteen year old may not necessarily think of certain things. But that’s no excuse for lazy juxtaposition, poor character development and writing about things like time travel without understanding the art of the possible. This last one, I wouldn’t have a problem with if it was explainable in its own context but it isn’t.

Blue Moon by Alyson Noel was published by St Martin’s Press in 2009. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)