Review: Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Pages: 370
Publisher: Harper Teen
Genre: YA Paranormal
Buy it: Amazon | Barnes and Noble

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...

This gif quite accurately sums up how I felt when I had turned the last page of Everneath:

As a reader, I almost always get sucked into novels and get very emotionally invested. But with Everneath, it was different. Nikki's emotions were my emotions, I felt everything she did, and when she was hurting, I was hurting just as badly. That's how strongly I felt about this book, and reading it was both extremely difficult and very exhilarating because of it. I wasn't just emotionally invested, it went so far beyond that!

Suffice to say that Brodi Ashton has created a unique and wonderfully told novel in Everneath. I really have never read anything like it. I'd also like to say that I went in thinking it was a retelling of Hades and Persephone, but in reality it's not. If anything, it's a retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice more than anything. But there isn't one set mythology that Ashton draws from, she uses Greek and Egyptian throughout the novel, which I thought was really interesting as a mythology buff. She drew some parallels between the two mythologies that I hadn't thought of before, but now I'd really like to explore them.

The plot isn't extremely eventful, but that's because this isn't a plot driven novel. It's completely about the characters, mostly our main ones, Cole, Nikki, and Jack. I have mixed feelings about our protagonist, Nikki, because I felt like some of the choices she made--especially one massive choice that basically screws her over forever--were not thought out well enough. And while I know that's the point, I'm still a little bitter about it because those choices led to what happened in the end of the novel, and the end of the novel left me like this:

To say that I love both Jack and Cole is a huge understatement. I adore both of them for different reasons, and I'm really not on either team. Jack is just... wow. He's the perfect boy, because he never gave up on Nikki, ever, and that's something that literally saves her life several times. Cole is much more complicated, because of what he is, but I really love him as well, and I wouldn't mind if Nikki went with him either.

Can you tell I loved this book? Because I did. I recommend you buy it right now at this very moment, because you'll love it too! So, so good. 5 out of 5 stars.