Character Analysis
School Hottie
When Alex Avery shows up at Gemma's high school, the first thing that she notices about him is that he's super cute. In fact, that's the first thing that everyone notices about him, especially the snotty popular girls who are always making fun of Gemma. One of them even immediately asks Alex to sit at her table:
Kelsey Merritt's hand shot up in the air.
Mr. Sterling sighed. "Yes, Kelsey."
She flashed her pearly white teeth at him and twirled her platinum blond hair around her finger. "I was just going to say that Alex can sit at my table." (3.23-25)
There's an extra seat at Gemma's table, too, however, and this is where Alex winds up parking his butt. While he's pretty chilly to Gemma at first, her attraction to Alex is only compounded by the fact that every time they touch or look at each other, she feels literal sparks flying between them. How weird is that? Needless to say, he definitely has her attention.
While it's too bad that Alex is basically a jerk to Gemma from day one, plenty of girls in books end up with guys who initially brush them off—it's one of the most classic love stories of all time. And Alex is nothing if not a pretty classic love interest—handsome, unavailable, and as we'll now explore, totally heroic, too.
Knight in Shining Armor
Despite his (literally) glaring disinterest in Gemma when they first meet, Alex has a serious knight in shining armor complex. This makes sense because he's a Keeper—one of the people responsible for protecting the star and keeping it away from the Death Walkers. His number one goal is to save humanity, and this involves watching out for Gemma at all times, even if it means getting really bossy and irritating her:
He rapped his fingers on the crystal ball again, trying to prove his point. "Who knows what might happen if you touch it? You might set off its power or something and get sucked into a vision. In fact, you probably shouldn't touch anything at all."
"Including the floor," I said with sarcasm. "Because that seems like it would be very tricky." (20.63-64)
Importantly, much as Alex bosses Gemma around all the time, he also puts himself in harm's way to save her—hiding her while he rushes to fight off Death Walkers at the vampire club, and even punching his own father in the face at one point so she can escape into the woods. Because of this, Alex's bossiness can be seen as part of a general pattern of trying to keep Gemma safe. If he doesn't want her to wind up in dangerous situations, it's at least partially because he's committed himself to getting her out of them.
His Father's Son
Even though Alex is willing to do anything to protect Gemma in the name of saving humanity, he always eventually listens to his father. This is frustrating for Gemma because she doesn't exactly trust Stephan, especially after she learns about how he pushed her mother into the lake. Though Alex punches his father in the face to allow Gemma to run into the woods, he also listens to what Stephan has to say and decides to go along with his plan at the end:
"We need to do it now," Stephan told Alex. "Before things get worse."
"Do what?" My voice sounded weak and pathetic. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Gemma," Alex gave me a sympathetic look. "I already explained to you what was going to happen." (36.28-30)
Alex just sits there and watches as Stephan carries out his diabolical plan to remove Gemma's soul and completely wipe her mind. How horribly cruel, right? We're tempted to take back every nice thing we've said about this guy. However, we've read enough series to know that whether Alex is truly on his dad's team remains to be seen. So for now, our fingers are crossed that he still has Gemma's best interests in mind and that he's only pretending to go along with his dad in order to hide his real agenda.