Review: Everneath

Title:  Everneath
Series:  Everneath #1
Author:  Brodi Ashton
Publisher:  Balzer + Bray
Pages:  370
Format:  Paperback
Source:  Bought

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.

My Review:  I really don't know how to feel about this book.  It was a bit of a challenge for me to read because I felt like it was a little slow in the beginning.  It did eventually pick up but even after that I'm left feeling a little disappointed.

I really enjoyed the fresh new spin on the Persephone myth and the unique ideas that we were introduced to.  I've read a lot of mythology books but this wasn't like any of the others.  The feeding and the concept of the underworld being home to not the dead but the Everlivings was fascinating and I had a lot of fun learning more about that.  It was a little frustrating that we didn't really get to see it first hand much, only in the very beginning.  I would have liked to see a little more action and adventure scattered throughout the story rather than the more mundane things that Nikki was concentrating on. 

Nikki was an interesting character.  I could definitely sympathize with where she was coming from and I felt bad for her.  Even though she was the one that had committed the mistakes, I still felt like when she did, she hadn't been told what exactly she was getting into.  The consequences to what she did far outweighed what they should have been.  Jack was a good guy and an interesting character.  He had a lot of depth and I enjoyed the parts he was in.  He loved Nikki through and through and that was really admirable.  Still, I just really loved Cole.  I'm a sucker for the bad boys in books and Cole was just too hard to resist.  I could tell all throughout the story that he truly loved Nikki and I felt bad for him since she treated him so horribly.  None of what happened was his fault and I was getting really ticked off that everyone was acting like it was.  Nikki had asked him to do what he did and he'd complied to make her feel better.  She tried to push all of her mistakes onto him.

A lot of what happened was predictable but still entertaining to read.  The ending was absolutely amazing.  Very beautifully written.  It had nice closure but still left things open enough for the sequel, Everbound, which I am really looking forward to. 

 Three Cards