Everneath by Brodi Ashton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Synopsis from Goodreads:
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.
My Review:
The short version: This one just wasn't one for me.
The story line sum up: Every 100 years, the Everliving must take a human forfeit to the Everneath, in order to feed on their souls and remain immortal. Nikki Beckett has spent the last 100 years in the Everneath. She should have died there, but after the feed, she remains young and beautiful. Cole, the Everliving that took her to the Everneath wants to make a run for the throne, and wants Nikki as his queen. But Nikki has ties to the surface, in the form of a boy named Jack, whose face kept her going through the dark days in the Everneath. She chooses to return to the surface, knowing her time there is limited, and that the darkness known as "the tunnels" will come for her. Nikki has only 6 months to decide if she will go with Cole and become royalty of the Everneath, or find a way to stay on the surface with her true love.
The bad: Everneath just felt all over the place, which was mostly because of the way it was written. Each chapter jumps back and forth from the time before Nikki went to the Everneath, to the current time, where Nikki is spending her 6 months on the surface. I really didnt enjoy this at all. At the beginning it felt like i was reading a sequel and that i hadnt read the first book. I felt like there was this whole story that i needed to know about, in order to understand completely what was going on. As the story progressed, things did start to make more sense as gaps were filled in. But i just found the whole thing frustrating, and annoying.
Nikki is a complete and utter downer throughout the whole book. Which i guess is understandable, considering what she'd been through, but geese. She just depressed me. And now i just feel Blah.
The story felt slow. The most exciting part of the book happens in the last 20 pages, and even that is pretty anti climatic. Its pretty much a whole lot of nothing up until then. Not really a romance. Not really a mystery. Not really anything.
Bits and pieces seemed to get thrown in here and there, stuff that seemed like an after thought. Or i guess stuff that wasn't really explained well enough for me to understand why the characters were even bothering? I don't want to be too specific and spoil anything for anyone that plans on reading this though, so that's all I'll say about that.
I didn't like the characters. Nikki was too depressed. Jack was boring. Cole was probably my favourite, but even he barely held my interest. I didn't buy the relationship between Jack and Nikki. I definitely didn't buy it enough to believe that Jack would ever do what he did in the end.
The good: Well, I finished it......???But it took me like 3 weeks and i contemplated putting it down multiple times. I do love the cover. Its probably my favourite of all the "girl in a pretty dress" covers.
Just so you know: I'm not sure that Everneath is a Persephone retelling exactly as I'm not overly familiar with that story. It is full of mythology though. I'm beginning to think that i don't really enjoy books based on mythology. Its been a really long time since i disliked a book enough to give it 2 stars, but the last one was also based on mythology.
Recommend it? Unlikely. Unless you were a massive mythology fan. Or if you don't mind a pretty slow read.
