Review: Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Goodreads Summary: 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.

Goodreads / The Book Depository 

Genre: Young Adult, Mythology, Romance
Pages: 3704
Publisher: HarperCollins / Balzer + Bray
How I Got It: Purchased e-book

First line: "I was picturing his face - a boy with floppy brown hair and brown eyes - when the Feed began."

Favorite Quote: "Friends don't eat friends' souls."

Review: 

I bought Everneath on a whim because it was on sale as an e-book, and I'd heard mostly good things about it. Though right now, I am definitely wishing I had a physical copy of it, so I could stare longingly at that dress. The way it mixes with the smoke and the font of the title makes the cover gorgeous. 

I haven't heard a lot of Greek mythology stories, stuff like that usually isn't my forte, but I do find them entertaining (I did, after all, enjoy the movie Hercules). So the plot of this was an interesting idea that immediately grabbed my attention. I can't say I was absolutely enthralled throughout the story, but it did keep my interest, especially towards the end. If the whole book had the sense of urgency and passion that the ending did, I probably would have given it five stars rather than four. 

One of the best things about Everneath is its protagonist, Nikki. I just found her to be a very realistic character. She isn't really whiny and ungrateful or annoying to listen to; she tries to make good decisions in her awful situation. Of course, it was a really bad decision that landed her in that situation to begin with, but I can understand why her emotions got the better of her that night. I had a harder time connecting with the love interest, Jack. Maybe it had to do with the fact that he's quarterback of the football team, and that immediately carried a sense of being very typical? I'm not even sure, I'm just guessing. I ended up liking him at the end of the book, though, just not as much as I wanted to. I wish that Nikki's dad and her brother were a little more fleshed out as characters. They were just never there most of the time and I found it difficult to care for them, especially after how Nikki's dad reacts to his wife's death, and never apologizes to Nikki for it. 

I hope in the sequel that we get a good description of the Everneath, and what it looks like. I was halfway convinced that this was going to contain a love triangle, because I'd heard talk of two boys, but it really isn't. Cole might not be completely evil, but he's still a villain in the book, at least in my opinion. I accidentally read a spoiler before picking this up for the ending of the book, so I wasn't surprised, but I still think it was a really good twist, and now I really want to go read the sequel to see what happens next. Brodi Ashton's writing is pretty clear-cut and simple (not in a bad way), and I look forward to reading more of her works in the future. 

4 stars. 

Books In This Series

1. Everneath 
-- Everfall (1.5) 
2. Everbound 
3. Untitled