Book Review: Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Do love this cover!

At First Sight: After what felt like a hundred years, Nikki Becket woke up in the Everneath, where the Everliving take their Forfeits - humans they convince to follow them to the caves - so they can feed off their emotions. Usually, once The Feed is done, the Forfeits are little more than shadows to be claimed by the Tunnels. But Nikki is different, Nikki still remembers her life, and she's still 'young', and she decides to go back to the surface so say a proper goodbye to those she left behind once.

She has only six months before the Shadows of the Everneath come back to claim her. Nikki is determined to make the best out of the situation, righting things with her best friend and her family, with the boy she loved all her life, Jack. But for Nikki, nothing is easy anymore and the fact that Cole - the Everliving who first took her to the Everneath - followed her and wants her to return with him, isn't helping at all. 

Second Glance: It was hard to write a summary for Everneath because it's easy to give away too much and I didn't want to do that. But I do have to say that I came very close to not finishing this book because from the very start I felt like there was no way the book was going to end on a good note - and well, I won't say which way it goes but it ends on a bit of a cliffhanger and book 2 is coming out next year so you do the math. 

I liked Nikki as a narrator, she has a nice voice and I enjoyed the flashbacks telling what happened to make her follow Cole to the Everneath in the first place, that was actually the part that kept me interested and reading even though I had a rather ominous feeling about the book. 

That being said, I can't say I liked the book all that much. There was a lot of info and a lot of mythology and I'm not really sure all of it was explained, and right at the beginning I had some problems with the stuff Nikki knew - like that she had six months on the surface before she was claimed by the Everneath again, because I didn't know how she knew that and it's the kind of little thing that sometimes bothers me. 

Also, Cole? I found him kind of douche-y right from the start, so I didn't see the appeal of him all that much.

Bottom Line: In the end, I found Everneath to be an interesting story. There were some characters I really liked - Jack, for example - but I never quite clicked with the story. I can see how it can make for an addictive read for other people, though. And I have to admit that maybe I'm just a little tired of spin/twist/re-tellings of the Hades and Persephone story, and this is a bit of that.