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Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9780385734370
ISBN number: 0385734379
Label: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Manufacturer: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: December 09, 2008
Publishing house: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Age index: Young Adult
Release Date: December 09, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 13470
Studio: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
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Product Description:
Sixteen-year-old Erin Misrahe just wants to be like everyone else in her new school. But Erin has more to worry about than passing AP Chemistry or making friends. In times of stress, she has always been overcome by her alter ego, Shevaun, whose violent behavior wreaks havoc on those around her. Erin can never remember anything about these episodes, and she’s grateful to have been spared them for a while.
But when a protective friend comes back into Erin’s life, he insists that Shevaun is a vampire who actually exists apart from Erin. Shevaun has dangerous allies, like the handsome witch Adjila—and they’re determined to sever Shevaun’s connection to Erin once and for all.
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Rated by buyers 
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Okay, there seems to be two camps on the quality of this novel and I tend to side with the group that finds it better than just okay. My family and I have read the other Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and we always find ourselves wishing for a bit more character development and more background. That being said, Erin is a well-fleshed out character with understandable amount of angst, since she has labored under the life-long misconception that she is mentally ill as opposed to mentally-linked to a vampire. Shevaun (the vampire) is not as well drawn out but the two point-of-views mesh well-enough in the plot for the book to be a page-turning quick read with a mostly satisifying conclusion. The book is not as original as I'd hoped for but worth a try if you are a Atwater-Rhodes fan.
Rated by buyers -
Erin is a human girl who has awful dreams in which she becomes Shevaun, an immortal vampire. For years she was hospitalized for these 'schizophrenic' episodes.
The problem is, they may not be dreams. As it happens, Shevaun is real.
This story tells about how Erin and Shevaun battle for their lives and their independence, each one surrounded by the people who love her.
This was a fast read and I did really enjoy it. I'd love to see more books in this world where vampires, witches, and shapeshifters really exist.
Rated by buyers 
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I can't deny that Persistence of Memory has an interesting premise. The protagonist, Erin, is a teenage girl who has been institutionalized most of her life due to multiple personalities and hallucinations. As the novel begins, Erin's alternate personality, Shevaun, has been suppressed by drugs for about a year, and Erin is taking the very first steps toward going to a regular high school and having a "normal" life. Right at this inopportune time, Shevaun reasserts herself and once again threatens to destroy Erin's sanity, and perhaps her life.
The jacket copy suggests that the central plot of the story involves Erin trying to discover whether Shevaun is an alternate personality or whether she is actually a separate person who is psychically linked to Erin. I really liked this idea, and really felt for Erin in the early scenes as she struggled with her visions. However, I think this question is resolved far too quickly, dissipating a lot of the tension in the story. I think Atwater-Rhodes may have erred by giving showing us too many long, detailed scenes of Shevaun's life. The question of Erin's sanity would have been more ambiguous, and more compelling, had we been limited to brief, dreamlike scenes of Shevaun.
Another point when too much is given away is when Erin's friend Marissa mentions a death in her family. In any real-life conversation, if your new best friend tells you that two of her close relatives have died, wouldn't you ask how? Wouldn't you ask what happened? Instead, the whole thing just gets glossed over, and it's too obvious, because that's not really the way conversations work. It's too much of a giveaway that the deaths tie in with the larger plot and that revealing the details would be a spoiler. Atwater-Rhodes would have done better to have Marissa tell Erin a half-truth, or just have Marissa be upset but not say why.
As the plot unfolds, it moves away from its initial focus on Erin. Instead, it revolves around some (rather juvenile) bickering among vampires, shapeshifters, and witches over who is to blame for Erin's problems and who should be fixing them. There are far too many characters for such a short book, most of whom don't turn out to be important. There's a major plot point that is raised, but as far as I can tell, dropped completely. Then there is more bickering, and Erin becomes more and more of a pawn in this story, until finally, in the climactic scene, she doesn't actually *do* much of anything.
The prose struck me as very, very simple. I admit, I like a more lush and descriptive style of prose, especially in tales of the supernatural.
The biggest issue I had with Persistence of Memory, though, is as I mentioned above: Erin is too much of a pawn in her own story. She is introduced as a compelling, tragic character, and instead becomes a chip on the table in the middle of a big, overly-byzantine supernatural bicker-fest.
Rated by buyers 
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Erin Misrahe is not a normal 16-year old that lives in Concord, Massachusetts. She just started going half time to public school and finally has a friend. After spending the better part of her life in institutions and mental hospitals for violent behavior, schizophrenia and dissociative personality, her doctors are finally trying to re-associate her with the world. Aside for a few anxiety attacks and being afraid that she may still hurt someone, Erin is doing fine; that is until she suffers an anxiety attack and wakes up in France, subsequent to a man that says they have been together for years (and since she is 16 she is slightly baffled by how many years that could be) and that she is not Erin but Shevaun (who Erin recognizes as her alternate personality). After Erin "wakes up" for her little episode strange things start to happen and an old friend comes back into her life to warn her that someone wants to harm her, Shevaun who is a vampire.
The book belongs to the Den of Shadows series by Amelia Atwater Rhodes and some of the characters present in other books make an appearance here. The book had a good premise and it was intriguing to read through the book to learn what the story was between Shevaun and Erin. It was a light book, easy to read (you can read it in one sitting) and not overly complicated (although it tried to be). The book tried to weave a complicated story full of character's back histories, some psychology (that is not really delved into, merely mentioned) and some major issues about growing up thinking you are crazy and can't trust yourself. I said that the book tried to weave the complicated story and it was actually somewhat doing that when I notice that I had less than 15 pages to read in the book. Then, I questioned how could this book possibly conclude so quickly when everything seemed to be so messed up. The thing is that fo all the time the author spend trying to create a full world full of history, conflict and interesting character, she fails in the conclusion of the story by dismissing all the created suspense and launching into a simple conclusion of the story's events in a way that was all to convenient. It was frustrating.
The characters she presented us were hollow and incomplete, she failed to produce more complete versions of the people that were taking part in the story and thus give us a better understanding of the character's reactions, reasons and actions. I understand that there are several books through which the characters in this book are linked, and I have read some of them. But even then, having known Alexander's story (In the Forests of the Night), for example, I know that there is still a lot missing to him, as with most of the characters in this and the other books by Amelia Atwater Rhodes.
The book was not bad, but I felt it was incomplete. It felt hurried at the end, as if the author rushed to finish her paper before handing it in to the teacher. Read this book if you are a fan of this author and have read the other Den of Shadows books. It was an easy book to read but disappointing in the end.
Rated by buyers -
I was intrigued by the plot for this book...it sounded so interesting and different from anything else I've ever read. As interesting as it sounded, though, I wasn't quite as excited about this book as I was reading it. I felt that Erin, the main character, was very well written and the author did a wonderful job of describing Erin's schizophrenia, but most of the rest of the characters were flat. The book was a bit confusing in some parts, some scenes just seemed out of place and irrelevent while the ending was just plain weird and, in my opinion, didn't fit in with the rest of the story. All in all, this wasn't a terrible read and I am impressed with the fact that it is a "clean" story with no sex or bad language. It is rare to find teenage literature that doesn't involve bed hopping, binge drinking or colorful vocabulary. I am going to donate this book to my daughter's school library and would not hesitate to donate other books in the series, if any others come about. Even though this book didn't appeal to me all that much, it has a lot of creative aspects that I did enjoy, and that many others will undoubtedly enjoy as well.
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