Publication: January 24th 2012 by Balzer & Bray
Source: Library Book
Goodreads Summary: Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath. Now she’s returned—to her old life, her family, her boyfriend—before she’s banished back to the underworld . . . this time forever. She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can’t find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.
Nikki longs to spend these precious months forgetting the Everneath and trying to reconnect with her boyfriend, Jack, the person most devastated by her disappearance—and the one person she loves more than anything. But there’s just one problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who enticed her to the Everneath in the first place, has followed Nikki home. Cole wants to take over the throne in the underworld and is convinced Nikki is the key to making it happen. And he’ll do whatever it takes to bring her back, this time as his queen.
As Nikki’s time on the Surface draws to a close and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she is forced to make the hardest decision of her life: find a way to cheat fate and remain on the Surface with Jack or return to the Everneath and become Cole’s queen.
Everneath is a captivating story of love, loss, and immortality from debut author Brodi Ashton.
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My Thoughts:
*Warning: This Review Contains Romance Spoilers*I really liked this book. The only qualm I had with it was that I think the Everneath thing was confusing and pretty poorly explained. I'll get into that later but first I'm going to talk about what I liked.
I liked the main characters. They all had different personalities that brought interesting parts to the book. But there were some characters that were pretty underdeveloped and clearly placeholders such as Nikki's best friend Jules. She has such a small part in the story and obviously just there to bring a jealousy element at times. I liked Nikki a lot. She is strong and determined yet real and relatable. Although Jack wasn’t my favorite character, I think a lot of people would like him and he definitely showed some parallels with Orpheus without it being annoyingly obvious. I also like how Cole was portrayed and how he was clearly the “bad guy” without being apologetic or underhanded about it.
I think the love triangle was portrayed very well and I really liked the dynamics within it. Although Nikki’s relationships with both guys are very different, I think they’re both relatable and that people will be able to identify with characteristics within either or both relationships. While Nikki’s and Jack’s relationship is sweet and obvious in the best-friend-turned-boyfriend dynamic, Nikki’s and Cole’s relationship is addictive and dangerous in the we-survived-terrible-experiences-and-now-we-feel-this-deep-unexplainable-connection thing. I liked how Ashton kept each boys’ characterization consistent and that each boy expressed his love for Nikki in different ways. Where Jack became very vocal and active in his expression, Cole was more on the passive side yet still expressed how he felt. I really liked how Nikki isn’t wishy-washy with how she feels and knows what she wants which is something fairly rare within a love triangle in a young adult book. I could go on but I just really enjoyed the way the love triangle was handled in this book and it’s definitely something that boosted it in my opinion. Oh, and #TeamCole by the way.
And finally the Everneath. That’s what really killed it and made me dock it a star. When it comes to paranormal books, I want to be able to understand what’s going on. And this book fell short for me in that aspect. It was difficult to understand at first because of the way it is written with the perspectives alternating between the past and the present but eventually I got far enough into the story that I was able to piece things together for the most part. But I’m still just really hazy about the Everneath and Everlivings. Besides wanting there to be some other Greek mythology element, I wasn’t sure why Nikki was even allowed to leave for six months. If she’s just going to have to go back to feed the Tunnels, then why even allow her to leave? It’s clearly based off of the myth of Persephone but then Persephone is never mentioned in the book so I was just confused about that. Also, how is there even enough energy left within someone in order to help fuel the Everneath in the Tunnels? Why do the Forfeits have to go to the Tunnels after being fed on? There’s mention of a debt but it’s not said what the debt actually is. Why is there a debt when the Forfeit has already allowed someone to feed off of them for 100 years? Why do they now owe a debt on top of that experience to the Everneath? I have more questions beyond even those but I will stop there. Very little is explained and it just really frustrated me.
Likes: The characters. Nikki. Cole. The love triangle was very well portrayed.
Dislikes: Everneath and Everlivings poorly explained.
Overall:
Recommend? Yes.
Reading the Next One? Yes.
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