Everneath by Brodi Ashton
Everneath book one.
Available now.
What's it about?
Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath, where immortals Feed on the emotions of despairing humans. Now she's returned- to her old life, her family, her friends- before being 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 months reconnecting with her boyfriend, Jack, the one person she loves more than anything. But there's a problem: Cole, the smoldering immortal who first enticed her to the Everneath, has followed Nikki to the mortal world. And he'll do whatever it takes to bring her back- this time as his queen. As Nikki's time grows short and her relationships begin slipping from her grasp, she's 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...
My review
(2.5)
I'll be honest, I found this book difficult to get through, though I found Ashton's take on The Persephone myth to be refreshingly different to anything else I've read before it didn't save the book for me. I like some mystery in a book, it keeps me guessing but I felt the author just left it to long to explain the little details about what the Everneath is and what happens there, and I was so bored with the rest of the book that I didn't feel like trying to guess what it all meant, the only character I felt had any personality was the "bad guy" Cole. The protag Nikki just didn't have anything about her, in her flashbacks to before she went to the Everneath it's all about her boyfriend, does he really love her? Will he cheat on her? She doesn't trust him or understand why he wants to be with her, nevermind they've been best friends for years and he's told her he loves her, I just found it all so frustrating. I was also frustrated with Jack, he's just to understanding, he admits later he knew Nikki couldn't be strung out on drugs when she disappeared, but he doesn't question her either, he's never mad about her disappearence, there are hardly any emotional responses from him throughout the book and I was also annoyed that Nikki chose to go back for the six months to make things right and say goodbye to everyone but she wastes half the time ignoring everyone. I also don't understand why she had to go back, it's repay a debt, a debt because she got to go back to earth for six months? Because if she hadn't gone back she'd still be in there, and she was in there in the first place so an Everliving could feed off her emotions for a century, how did she work up a debt? I just don't get it.
As you can tell I didn't really like this book, there was just to much that didn't make sense for me, and it's unlikely, though not completely impossible, that I'll read the next one.
My thoughts on the cover
This cover is just stunning, the clouds and the smoke coming off the girls gorgeous red dress, it's just a beautiful image and suits the story so well.
Favourite quotes
'I closed my eyes and pictured the boy with the brown hair, and as I took in my first really deep breath of Surface air, a name to match the face came to me. A name I'd been trying to cling to for a century.
"Jack."'
'Cole had been right that first night he came into my bedroom,althought it'd taken me this long to realise it. I did have hope. Somewhere, in the pit of my soul, I believed that I could get out of my debt. That I could stay here.'
