Evernight -- Claudia Gray

Ahem.  A prologue describes a girl in the middle of Big Trouble, blaming herself for all of it, sure that Her Man will protect her but terrified that Her Man will be hurt.  Then, the story begins:  A girl is uprooted from her hometown and goes to a new school where there are many beautiful, stylish and standoffish students.  She meets a boy with bronze-colored hair, whose looks are described as "perfection", who seems to run faster than any human should, and who immediately appoints himself her protector.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, that's what I thought, too.  But at about the halfway point, there's a pretty major plot twist -- one that genuinely surprised me.  And then there was another one as well, but that one I'd expected from the first chapter.

Bianca Olivier is about to begin classes at Evernight Academy.  She doesn't want to leave the small town she's lived in her whole life, but she doesn't have a choice.  Although her parents will both be living and teaching at Evernight, she'll be living in the dormitory area with the other students.  As I said above, most of the other students are preternaturally beautiful.  They're also rich.  And very few of them are particularly friendly towards the new students. 

Lucas is different.  Bianca feels herself drawn towards him from almost the very moment they meet, and he seems to feel the same way.  But everyone at Evernight has secrets...

While it was a fun idea, I didn't find the characters or their interactions particularly compelling.  While I was told that Bianca and Lucas were in luuurve, I never felt it, and none of the characters, Bianca included, were particularly three-dimensional.  Balthazar is the only one who I'd be interested in reading more about. 

I did like this bit:  "But we don't change, Bianca.  That's the scariest part.  And it's one reason a lot of people here act like teenagers, even when they're centuries old.  They don't understand themselves or the world they have to join.  It's sort of like perpetual adolescence."  It made me think of Cassidy from Preacher, who, at first, seems like the most awesomely not-tortured vampire EVER.  But later it becomes clear that because he's practically invincible, he hasn't grown up at all and never thinks about the consequences of his actions.  This is the first time I've run into a similar idea in a YA vampire book.

Both plot twists were well-done -- as I said, I didn't even see the first one coming.  After they hit, I looked back and there were clues leading to both -- the clues leading to the first twist were especially nicely subtle.  While I had some large issues with it, it'd be a perfect pick for not-overly nitpicky fans of the Twilight saga, the Marked series and Vampire Academy.

A spoiler follows, but I'm not going to give away anything too, too major -- as I already gave you the read-alikes, it's kind of obvious...

I realize this is exactly the sort of thing I should just let go, just chalk up to suspension of disbelief, but I... can't.  It's too silly.  Okay.  Seriously.  If you were going to start a boarding school that was secretly for vampires, would you really name it Evernight?  And would you really put it a Gothic-style building?  And would you really make the school colors red, black and grey?  With ravens and a sword on the school crest?  Really??