Book Review: Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Everneath by Brodi Ashton
Release Date: January 24, 2012
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Pages: 370
Received: ARC from publisher
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Summary

From Goodreads:

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

Review

Yikes! That's a lot of pages!

I know 370 pages isn't a HUGE book, but to me, it's pretty long. What's even more important than page count is how long a book feels, and on that I'm kind of mixed.

Think of Everneath as a cake (yes, I'm pretty sure I can turn everything back around to food). Imagine a cake that's light and fluffy and goes down super easy. When it comes to this kind of cake, before I know it, I can easily scarf down half...and I could polish off the rest with no trouble at all.

Except, I'm not full. It was fun while it lasted, but I don't have that satisfying feeling of having eaten a big meal. I may even begin to regret spending so many calories on something that left me empty.

That's how Everneath felt to me. It went down easy and the pace never felt particularly slow (though it was far from fast), but I'm having trouble understanding how the relatively sparse story I read managed to fill up so many pages.

Wait, is this an issues book?

I had heard that Nikki's experiences in Everneath were a brilliant metaphor for drug abuse and depression. And, yeah, I guess they were. Brodi Ashton did do a wonderful job weaving these concepts together and capturing the emotions of both the person experiencing the trauma and how their loved ones feel in response.

But I'm NOT an issues reader. I don't want to be mired in sadness, and that's what happened here. Nikki spends most of the book oozing detached heartbreak, shuffling through her life in a haze of resignation and hopelessness. She's beyond tears. She's practically catatonic.

Despite all that, I still managed to like her. She may be a drag, but she's a drag with moral fiber. I actually felt sympathy for Nikki. Brodi Ashton does such a good job highlighting how doggedly persistent Nikki is in wanting to do the right thing but feeling like there is no way out for her.

She doesn't sit around moaning about how life is unfair. She doesn't pout, feel sorry for herself, or make poor choices (outside of the obviously very bad choice of getting involved with Cole in the first place. But those actions are understandable and not entirely her fault).

Do I smell a love triangle?

It's true that there are two guys, but Nikki isn't a flighty girl torn between them. It's very clear that one guy is her relationship and the other is her drug. I know that makes it sound kind of bad and normally I would be frustrated with Nikki over this, but I wasn't.

But...I still wasn't feeling the romance. Jack is a nice guy, but he didn't feel particularly guy like. He was just so unbelievably perfect that he felt more like a woman's dream creation than an actual genuine guy. So did I like him? Yeah, of course. But I didn't believe him and so my swoon only went so far. He did remind me of Jay from The Body Finder though (which is a GOOD thing).

Cole, the other guy, also felt a little forced and, I don't know, hollow? I feel like I should have been swooning all over the place for him, but I don't have a good enough grasp on who he actually is beyond a pretty face. There were a few hints at something deeper going on though, so I hope that gets explored more in the sequel.

Yay for retellings! Or...not.

Outside of the gorgeous cover (yeah, I'm a hopeless cover judge), my main draw was that this is a Hades/Persephone retelling. I am totally in love with retellings, but this one didn't cut it for me. The myth was used more as a rough guideline than a playbook of events and characters. This is fine, but I have to admit some disappointment (I like direct retellings more).

I was also disappointed with the sparseness of the paranormal parts. Brodi Ashton created this unique, intriguing world with the Everneath, but I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. The whole book is told through Nikki's first person narration, and so I only got to know what she knows about the Everneath (which is, apparently, not much).

The story focuses almost entirely on Nikki's feelings--how she feels having come back from the Everneath, and what she felt that led up to her time in the Everneath. Chapters alternate from Before Everneath and After Everneath. I liked the chapters B.E. a lot more. They were like breadcrumbs, with each chapter giving a tiny bit of information that I could use to piece together the Big Mysterious Reason why Nikki chose to leave Jack and go to the Everneath with Cole.

A.E. was a lot less interesting and mostly focused on Nikki trying to rebuild her relationship with Jack. There was also a mystery in this part, but it was pretty easy to figure out and I ended up losing interest the longer it took Nikki to get with the program. There isn't a ton of action in either time period, and sadly the paranormal parts stay far, far in the background.

Bottom line

Everneath is way more of a contemporary issues book than I was expecting and, unfortunately, I'm not the right reader for this story. Nikki's blah mood rubbed off way too much on me and I now feel blah about the whole book. I will be ordering a copy for my library though, as it is a solid read that I think will be appreciated by readers who like contemporary issues, romance, and a touch of paranormal.

It was nice and easy enough to read that I might check out the sequel, but I'm not desperate for it. Everneath ends at a natural point, but it is also a pretty decent cliffhanger, so heads up on that.

Explanation of rating system: Star Rating Key 

Do you have any questions about Everneath that I haven't addressed? Feel free to ask in the comments!


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