Forever Young: Book Three of the Young Blood Trilogy

A Turbulent but Satisfying End to the Series

I wasn’t expecting this last book in the series to come out as soon as it did, but I didn’t mind. This book, unlike the one before it, shifts back to the narrator Ray from the first one, and we find out what happened to him after the last big cliffhanger. Obviously he survives, but things have changed.

The biggest change is that now the series has become a romance. Kind of. Like the summary says, it’s a “twisted romance,” not really like any I’ve come across before. For one, Ray is as always self-centered and limited in his view, making things all about him. There’s an ongoing conflict with him wanting to have a normal life but also to be the big hero who saves Augusta from the big evil vampires. But he’s in love with one, so that complicates it. And he’s so bad at the romance part of it that it’s almost funny sometimes, but that’s part of the story. He’s still a teenage boy, and we all know how clueless they can be when it comes to saying and doing the right thing. The LI (I won’t say just who for spoiler reasons in case it matters) is definitely the more interesting character, even though she struck me as a bit of a Mary Sue at first. But she becomes more real as things go on, maybe every bit as flawed as Ray. A lot of romantic stories have the whole “will they or won’t they” thing, and in this it’s more like “will they or won’t they wind up killing each other.” (Literally.) I was sometimes reminded me of the Buffy/Angel dynamic but with the genders swapped, but Ray is more like a wannabe vampire slayer, not as good at it as he wishes. His guilt still plays a big part, and like happened in the first two books, there’s this overall feeling of upping the stakes and increasing dread, like just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do. There’s a lot out there going on that Ray doesn’t know about, and he’s kinda left out. Things are happening around him more than because of him. That can make for a slightly frustrating listening experience, but I think that’s the point, to show the isolation we all feel at that age, the idea that more exciting stuff is happening to everyone else. There are peaks and valleys in the action and the romance, sometimes things being exciting and sometimes mundane in a depressingly realistic way. And like in the first two books, there’s the spooky music throughout, which I’m pretty sure is the same as before, but for some reason it sounded sadder to me this time. Probably because of what was happening in the story.

There’s something that’s repeated from the second book, how things that were mentioned before get reexamined. An example is an incident where these drunk boys who got their own chapter in the second book are driving around being obnoxious, and this time around, we briefly see them from Ray’s perspective. That was fun. It happens a lot more, but you have to be paying close attention to get some of them. A lot of these pay-offs come in the climax, which is weird and comes at you sideways. I don’t want to give too much away, but it all makes sense, a lot of “what?” and “oh!” moments that can feel disorienting but ultimately good and satisfying. Overall, I’d say the same of the entire trilogy.