Enshadowed

July 15, 2012
Her goth boyfriend, Varen Nethers, disappeared into the sinister, Poe-inflected dream world in Nevermore (2010), and now it's up to cheerleader Isobel Lanley to find him again. The key to rescuing Varen revolves around the mysterious "Poe Toaster," a figure who visits Poe's Baltimore gravesite each year on the author's birthday. Isobel contrives to get to Baltimore on the fateful date but doesn't make much of a plan; most of the action leading up to Isobel's rendezvous with the Toaster involves her encountering frightening fragments of the dream world and hiding those encounters from family, teachers and even her sarcastic sidekick, Gwen. Readers who have forgotten the events of Nevermore are caught up slowly as the plot of this sequel unfolds; readers are reminded of Varen immediately, but the intricacies of the demonlike Nocs and the mechanics of dreams and waking are left somewhat unspecified. The prose is long-winded, moody and filled with awkward figures of speech ("Like flint striking in the dark, Gwen's words snatched Isobel's attention"). Dreams, chase scenes and confrontations blur into one another and become repetitive. Several dream scenes rely on characters falling asleep at unlikely moments (in a cold catacomb, waiting for the story's climax, for example), and the ending brings little in the way of resolution. Tedious; only for readers who can't get enough of Varen, Isobel and Poe. (Paranormal romance. 12 & up)

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October 1, 2012

Gr 7 Up-In this sequel to Nevermore (S & S, 2010), cheerleader heroine Isobel is fixated on finding and saving Varen, the boyfriend she left stranded in a nightmarish dream world inhabited by the creatures in Edgar Allan Poe's writings. Her attempts to maintain a facade of normality are exhaustively described as she plans to deceive her parents (again), run away, and confront the Poe Toaster-a mysterious figure who visits Poe's grave on the anniversary of the author's birth-in the hope of discovering a means of reentering the dream world. Meanwhile, she is tormented by flashes of Varen in mirrored surfaces, pulled into visions by a menacing spirit, and teased by a seductive demoness, Lilith, until Isobel has trouble distinguishing between reality and dreams. Lengthy descriptions set a gothic tone that will appeal to some teens, but the overall experience is hindered by the novel's excessive length and lackluster interaction among characters.-Nicole Politi, The Ocean County Library, Lavallette, NJ

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
With boyfriend Varen trapped in a dream, Isobel ([cf2]Nevermore[cf1]) believes the only way to free him is to meet a mysterious figure on Edgar Allan Poe's birthday at the poet's grave. The story moves slowly as Isobel vacillates between hope and depression. Her emotional turmoil grows wearisome, but the explosive ending leaves suspenseful questions to be answered in the trilogy's final volume.

(Copyright 2013 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)