Dark Flame - Alyson Noel

Dark Flame is the fourth book in The Immortals series by Alyson Noel. It was published by Macmillan Children’s Books on 27th September 2010 and it is 336 pages long.

Plot
After not long being an Immortal herself, Ever is helping best friend Haven deal with the transformation. The power of being an Immortal is more than Haven truly understands though and is fully determined to make the most of her new found abilities but in doing so, she puts a massive strain on her friendship with Ever.

Friendship isn’t the only thing being strained as Ever’s relationship with Damon becomes even more complicated. As she delves a lot deeper into a world of magick that she doesn’t really understand, Ever manages to make things a lot worse than she ever thought possible. When she tries to cast a spell to take control over Roman and get the one thing she wants most in the world, it backfires, only to push them closer together. Too scared and embarrassed to turn to Damon for help, Ever spirals into a huge mess that she can’t get herself out of. The one person who can probably help her could also be the one person who pushes her further and further away from Damon.

What I thought
The Immortals is one of those series that even though I have certain problems with it, I am always really excited for the release of the newest book. Needless to say, I had this one on pre order and that doesn’t happen very much for me anymore.

As I just said, there are problems with this series as a whole. Maybe I should say problem because there is only really one thing that bugs me. Ever. I have had many conversations on Twitter about just how much she annoys me and why. It seems to me like Ever has no common sense whatsoever. She has had to make a lot of hard (and some not very hard at all) decisions throughout the series but no matter what, she always makes the wrong choice. In Dark Flame we see her making another stupid choice and not really thinking about what she is doing. After three books, I would have thought that she’d learnt from her mistakes by now. Damon is extremely reassuring when he says that he will always be there for her, no matter what, but does she listen? Nope! I guess I wish that Damon would either dump her already or Haven would give her a nice hard slap around the face.

Damon however, was just as lovely as he ever has been. Obviously I do think he’s being a little bit silly letting Ever getting away with being a complete crazy person all of the time. I guess you could say that he is the kind of boyfriend that girls would die for. Unconditional love. Always there for his girlfriend no matter what happens. Smoking hot! What more could you ask for apart from maybe getting rid of Ever? The thing is, no matter how many lives Damon and Ever have been through together, then are only in the current one now. Ever lies to Damon, goes behind his back and generally treats him like dirt. I don’t understand how he puts up with her.

When the third book in this series ended, Haven had just been turned into an Immortal due to a really hard decision that Ever had to make. As soon as I closed the book, I was dying to read Dark Flame to find out what was going to happen next with her. Haven is quite a feisty character anyway so add in immortality and you can bet that you are going to get one impossible teenager. As much as I wanted to slap Haven for being quite selfish for wanting to do as she pleased, I don’t really blame her. I would like to think that I could be sensible in her situation but I doubt very much that I could refrain from doing whatever I wanted.

Taking away my problems with the characters, I did really like this book. I felt like the twist of having Haven as an Immortal really shook things up a bit, instead of being all about Ever and which boy to choose. This new plot twist has set up the main storyline to be, what I think will be, much darker than what we have seen before. I really hope that this is the case as it will make book 4 stand out completely to the rest of the series. Haven went through an awful lot in Dark Flame and now has her life spread all over the place, not really having any stability so I think she could maybe end up going off the rails a bit and causing some trouble.

There were quite a lot of twists that I didn’t see coming at all and I loved where the plot was heading in certain areas. Getting to see Jude in different settings was one of my favourite parts and I’m hoping that we get to see more of this in future books. I think he is a really interesting character and has the potential to be someone amazing in this series. There is so much I don’t know about him that I would like to. The ending was a complete shocker and actually had me gasping. Overall, Dark Flame was entertaining throughout and I will still be waiting eagerly for the fourth book, Night Star.