Shadowland is the 3rd book in Alyson Noel’s Immortal series. So I am going to start this summary and review by talking about the first two books as well.
Evermore (book 1)
We meet Ever Bloom who is a sixteen year old girl whose life was recently changed when her family’s car swerved to miss a deer coming home from a camping trip. The accident killed her parents, her sister Riley, her dog, even Ever died for a little while. When she wakes up in the hospital she finds that she can now hear people’s thoughts and see their auras. She moves to a new school with her aunt Sabine now her legal guardian. She becomes friends with Haven and Miles and struggles to deal with her new abilities. However her world is turned upside down again when the mysterious new Damen shows an interest in Ever.
SPOILER INFORMATION!!! (Highlight to read if you want)
We find out that Damen is an immortal and he is the reason that Ever did not die with her family in the car accident. Damen has lived for over 600 years and he has a history of falling in love with Ever in her past lives only to lose her when she is killed early in life before they can be together so when she was going to die Damen gave ever some immortal elixir to save her. The elixir began to make her immortal and caused her onset of powers. The two fall in love but trouble comes in the form for Damen’s long separated Immortal wife Drina who still pines for Damen so she has been killing Ever’s reincarnations for hundreds of years hoping that Damen will finally forget Ever and come back to her. She was the one who caused the car accident to kill Ever and her family but Damen’s interference messed up her plan so she continues to try and hurt Ever using her friends and family. Drina nearly kills Haven but with Damen’s help they are able to save her. But when Drina then resorts to kidnapping Ever only one of them can walk away from the final battle and that one ends up being Ever. So with Ever now an immortal and her friends safe again Damen and Ever start an eternity together.
Blue Moon (book 2)
Ever and Damen are together and happy and Immortal. They are also practicing using their immortal powers, while mixing in some make out sessions. One of the things they are practicing is how to get to Summerland. But when a new boy named Roman shows up at school Ever gets a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. It doesn’t help that he is showing interest in Ever despite Damen. But everyone at school thinks she is over reacting to his attention. But when Damen starts to lose his immortal power and begins to show an aura Ever gets worried. But she ignores it, that is until he ditches her at the opening night of Miles role in “hairspray”. Then when he shows up at school ignoring Ever and starts a relationship with Stacia she knows that her instinct was right and that Roman is up to something but can she figure it out before it’s too late because along with his change in personality Damen Grows weaker every day. But where do you look for a cure when your teacher is the one in trouble and the whole school is against you?
SPOILER INFORMATION!!! (Highlight to read if you want)
Desperate to find a way to save Damen, Ever turns Ava, a psychic. Ava has been attempting to get to Summerland for years. Together they are able to get to Summerland and search for answers to her quest in the Great Halls of Learning. However the hall doesn’t give you an answer that easily and it shows Ever all the Damen’s past. His father was an alchemist who was attempting to create an elixir for everlasting life. But Damen’s family was killed by a group of men in an attempt to steal the elixir. Damen was able to use his knowledge to complete the elixir but couldn’t bring his parents back so he was sent to an orphanage where he met and fell in love with Drina. But when the Bubonic plague spreads through Europe she and other children from the orphanage catch it and begin to fall ill. So to save Drina he makes the Elixir and they, along with the other orphans drink it and become immortal. Damen and Drina stay together for a century but they become greedy due to their immortality and seek wealth and power destroying lives in the process. While working with Ava ever is taught how to shield herself from people’s memories. The next day at school ever places Roman’s face and finds out that he is a rogue immortal and he is one if the orphans that Damen saves from the Bubonic plague. But he was in love with Drina so he is getting revenge and Damen and Ever for taking her attention from him and then for killing her. He swapped Damen’s Elixir with a poisoned form. Roman believes that immortals are better than humans and that they should be able to make any one immortal they want to. Ever returns to Summerland in search for an antidote while searching she discovers a way to reset time and make it so the accident never happened and her family never died. So she has to choose her family or Damen. She gives the antidote for Damen to Ava who promises to help Damen. Then Ever goes back and chooses her family. However she soon finds out that she doesn’t like life without Damen and going back to her small town life with her old friends isn’t good enough. So she returns to the present and she finds that Damen is still sick and Ava has fled with the antidote. So she is forced to listen to Roman to save his life but Roman’s antidote makes it so that if Ever’s DNA ever touches Damen then he will die.
Shadowland (Book 3) Summary is from Alyson Noel's Website
"Ever and Damen have traveled through countless past lives—and fought off the world's darkest enemies—so they could be together forever. But just as their long-awaited destiny is finally within reach, a powerful curse falls upon Damen...one that could destroy everything. Now a single touch of their hands or a soft brush of their lips could mean sudden death—plunging Damen into a bleak afterlife in the Shadowland, an eternal abyss for lost souls. Desperate to break the curse and save Damen, Ever immerses herself in magick—and gets help from an unexpected source...Jude Knight.
Although she and Jude have only just met, he feels startlingly familiar. Despite her fierce loyalty to Damen, Ever is drawn to Jude, a green-eyed golden boy with magical talents and a mysterious past. She's always believed Damen to be her soul mate and one true love—and she still believes it to be true. But as Damen pulls away to save them from the darkness inhabiting his soul, Ever's connection with Jude grows stronger—and tests her love for Damen like never before..."
SPOILER INFORMATION!!! (Highlight to read if you want)
The whole problem in this book is mainly that Ever and Damen can’t physically touch so in theory they cannot hold hands, kiss, or “be together”. Ever is bothered by this because she is jealous and hurt due to the way that he acted when he was under Romans control and what he may have done with Stacia. Haven becomes suspicious of Ever’s constant communications with Damen using mind reading. We find out that Roman is still in town and planning a test for Ever to see if she can “give the people what they want” and only if she passes his test the right way will he give Ever the antidote to Damen’s bad antidote. To Ever’s dismay she learns that Romy and Rayne have lost their powers and are stuck outside of Summerland. So they move in with Damen who is going through a change of his own because the few seconds that he was dead before Ever brought him back in Blue Moon he went to the Shadowland instead of Summerland. He thinks that this is a product of him being an immortal and that any and every immortal that dies will be stuck in the Shadowland forever. This makes him feel guilty for all the things he has done in his life, including making Drina, the Orphans, and Ever immortal. Because of his guilt and life altering vision he begins to give all his stuff away and change his attitude. It doesn’t help when Ever gets a Job and Damen realizes that her boss Jude is the reincarnation of loves from her past lives. Ever doesn’t remember them but Damen does and he decides that he is going to step out of her life and let her live the life she was supposed to have without him even though he already made her immortal. At the end of the book Ever throws a going away party for her friend Miles who is going to Europe for the summer. Before the party she casts a dark magic spell without her protective amulet and it turns out wrong. At the party Roman and Haven show up with 3 other immortals, and Jude shows up and is a huge help to her during the party. After the party they are in the hot tub bonding and about to kiss when Ava calls. She is at Romans house with Haven and Haven is dying. Ever notices an Ouroboros tattoo on Jude’s back and she thinks that he is a rouge immortal so she yells at him to leave and not be there when she gets home. Ever gets to Romans house at the same time as Damen does and Roman explains that the test is that she must pick between her friend and her love because the only way Roman will give her the antidote for being with Damen is if she lets Haven die. Ever can’t stand to lose her friend even if it means sentencing her to the Shadowland so she feeds Haven the Elixir. The book ends with her back with Damen but still unable to physically touch. They wonder what to tell Haven how to deal with Roman, How to help the twins and what the Ouroboros tattoo on Jude’s back meant.
Review
I read this book because I really enjoyed the first two. The characters seemed believable and the concept was a new version of old stories. It was closely related to Vampires without being a Vampire story like all the others. The addition of new characters both human and immortal is fun and captivating. At the same time the story is told in a way that is believable because she still has to deal with school and adults and jobs. So good job Alyson Noel with Evermore and with Blue Moon!
That said, I didn’t enjoy this book as much. I had a hard time connecting with Ever in this book because her thoughts were always so limited with Petty things. She was full of unbelievable angst and it made me dislike her which made it hard to stay into the story. The Story itself flowed and was easy to read but since the whole book was from Ever’s perspective her irritating attitude made it hard to connect. I was annoyed because Ever was not learning from her mistake in Blue Moon and she never thought about anyone else only herself. The whole issue of the book was the fact that Ever and Damen could not touch which I understood on a level. However, they used their powers to control energy and they ended up kissing and holding hands throughout the book and they even had a heavy make out session once. So without the physical separation I found it hard to sympathize. I mean if they can’t touch but can use magic that feels like touch what is the difference. At least she had that limited ability. So I found it hard to miss the physical action when it was essentially there thanks to magic. It made it feel like the problem wasn’t really a problem. I guess technically all the thoughts that Ever was feeling would be possible but I don’t think anyone who complained as much as she did would be someone I would want to know. Ever also complained about the twins living with Damen and him taking care of them which I would understand if she wasn’t the reason they were stuck on earth, and the one who brought them to Damen in the first place. I did love Jude as a character and want to learn much more about him. I didn’t feel like we heard from him as much as we heard about him so I hope to see more of him in the future. However I did love the teacher that Sabine is dating. But again I thought Ever’s irritation at their relationship was ridiculous when she was the one who made it happen in the first place. And all that complaining about other people didn’t make Ever learn anything because she chose wrong again when the big decisions came. I just wonder is Haven will forgive Ever because I don’t see that situation turning out well. Over all I felt like this book was just passing time and dragging out the story line. Ever was selfish from cover to cover and I am hoping that Dark Flame will be much better to make up for this story.
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