Book Review: Dark Flame by Alyson Noël

Dark Flame by Alyson Noël
(The Immortals, #4)
Release Date: June 22, 2010
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 320 pages

Ever is trying to help Haven transition into life as an immortal. But with Haven drunk on her new powers and acting recklessly, she poses the ultimate threat—exposing their secret world to the outside. As Ever struggles to keep the Immortals hidden, it only propels Haven closer to the enemy—Roman and his evil companions.

At the same time, Ever delves deeper into dark magick to free Damen from Roman’s power. But when her spell backfires, it binds her to the one guy who’s hell-bent on her destruction. Now there’s a strange, foreign pulse coursing through her, and no matter what she does, she can’t stop thinking about Roman—and longing for his touch. As she struggles to resist the fiery attraction threatening to consume her, Roman is more than willing to take advantage of her weakened state…and Ever edges closer and closer to surrender.

Frantic to break the spell before its too late, Ever turns to Jude for help, risking everything she knows and loves to save herself—and her future with Damen …

Dark Flame is the fourth installment in The Immortal series. Fair warning this review is going to be harsh. I am going to say that after I read this book, it was a good month and a half before I started reading the next book in the series. That is how much I disliked this book. In fact, I have gone back and forth between deciding if I was actually going to finish reading or not. FYI I am currently on chapter 2 of the fifth book right now. The deciding factor on me finishing this series is for 2 reasons. One I already own the books. It would be a waste of money for me to have bought them and to not read them. Two, from what I've been told, the ending of the series does wrap up nicely.

Before I get into the bad, and trust me there is plenty of bad. I will start with the good. At the end of Shadowland, Ever is faced with another impossible decision. Because of Roman, Ever's best friend is now on the verge of death. She has to decide whether to let Haven die, or give her the elixir and become an Immortal. While everyone around her is telling Ever to let Haven go because it's the right thing to do, Ever just can't let her friend die and gives her the elixir. Now I personally have never been in a situation where I have to choose between life and death for someone, and I pray that I never have to. So I can only guess what I would do if I were in her situation. If I were in her situation, and it were my best friend dying I would probably give her the elixir too. It shows that Ever values her friendship with Haven, and just can't lose her. Ever has a lot of heart and I do value that in a person. It's one of the consistent things in the series. Ever really does have a lot of heart, and puts others before herself.

Unfortunately, at least in my opinion Ever saving Haven was probably one of the dumbest things she could have possibly done. You can never predict how someone will act when given a "super power" As said in the first Spiderman film, "With great power, comes great responsibility" When Haven becomes an Immortal, she turns into such a spoiled brat and aligns herself with Roman. That makes no sense to me. Roman tried to kill her! And of course because Haven is an idiot, refuses to listen to Ever's warnings about him. Because she is in love with Roman. It's always frustrating when reading a book, or watching a tv series when a character will choose a significant other over a very close friend. Haven trust Roman more than Ever. Ever saved her life, and this is how she repays her.

Unfortunately Ever's mistakes don't end here. She rather stupidly tries to deal with Roman on her own, and surprise surprise it backfires big time. The majority of this book is Ever dealing with her consequences of what she unsuccessfully tried to do to Roman. While I do admit, that I did feel for Ever because seeing her suffer and her ultimate downfall was very hard to read. But in the back of my mind I kept thinking, she did this to herself. Ever constantly makes rash decisions without thinking and without taking advice from others.

Plot development. There is basically none. Damen and Ever still can't touch each other. I think this is ridiculous that this plot is still going on, and I now think this will last until the very last book.