Review: Evernight by Claudia Gray

Are you distracted by the
basic-cable level style of this cover?
Me too.

Bianca wants to escape.  She's been uprooted from her small hometown and enrolled at Evernight Academy, an eerie Gothic boarding school where the students are somehow too perfect: smart, sleek, and almost predatory. Bianca knows she doesn't fit in. 

Then she meets Lucas. He's not the "Evernight type" either, and he likes it that way. Lucas ignores the rules, stands up to the snobs, and warns Bianca to be careful—even when it comes to caring about him. 

"I couldn't stand it if they took it out on you," he tells Bianca, "and eventually they would." 

But the connection between Bianca and Lucas can't be denied. Bianca will risk anything to be with Lucas, but dark secrets are fated to tear them apart . . . and to make Bianca question everything she's ever believed (GoodReads).

Get ready to revisit the YA of 2009, aka Evernight by Claudia Gray. I read this to prep myself for the new book by Gray Spellcasters, which got a good review at Forever YA, a blog I trust. They are hilarious! And sassy! And like a good hunky lead, just like me! We are tots almost friends. Anywho....on to the book review for Evernight

• Absurdity: 6, only because the boarding school that is really home to supernaturals (or even just vampires) is easy to come across these days in YA books.
• Originality: 5. Middle of the road vampire stuff, but I did like that the main character "outsider" girl at least because part of the center of things, rather than being "special" and "different" and "misunderstood."
• Level of Paranormal Romance: 8. Hitting puberty means wanting to suck your boyfriend's blood, in a pseudo sexual way (since its YA, obvi, its mostly pseudo. Only Gossip Girl characters get it on). Can we also tell all teenagers in books everywhere that "risking it all" for a high school crush will most only make you mortified when you look back in ten years.....?
• Level of Harry-Potter-ness: 2. I gave up on the series after this book and the first half of the second. I like Balthazar because he is a dreamboat, but otherwise I couldn't get behind the series. I think it is because I reached my saturation point for vampire boarding schools somewhere around book two of Vampire Academy, but if I had read this in 2009 when it came out I probably would have felt differently and kept at it.