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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
I was a little disappointed with this book, though I’ll admit I had some expectations that were just not what the book was intended for.
It was about a girl in high school (which is always draining for me, since I’ve graduated high school the book feels too youthful), but mainly I didn’t really think it was a retelling of Persephone. It had some similarities, but I would NOT have called it a retelling. More like inspired by. (Which was disappointing)
I thought the main character, Nikki, was pretty bland. She didn’t seem particularly strong or thoughtful, and she pretty much just did whatever the boy she currently is dating wanted. Every time something important in the book happens, it’s because she was at home moping and the guy was spending time trying to help her.
Pretty basic romance—childhood friends is a hard one to make romantic, I think, since so few people actually have that relationship it’s not very relatable.
The entire premise, however (though not very similar to Persephone), is very interesting and well thought-out. I think the whole idea of the Everliving vs Forfeits and then not being dead is a REALLY good plot. That part is definitely 10/10.
I would love for Brodi to rewrite this with the same background and some more interesting/thoughtful characters. I am interested enough to read the second one, so I’m very hopeful!!!
It was about a girl in high school (which is always draining for me, since I’ve graduated high school the book feels too youthful), but mainly I didn’t really think it was a retelling of Persephone. It had some similarities, but I would NOT have called it a retelling. More like inspired by. (Which was disappointing)
I thought the main character, Nikki, was pretty bland. She didn’t seem particularly strong or thoughtful, and she pretty much just did whatever the boy she currently is dating wanted. Every time something important in the book happens, it’s because she was at home moping and the guy was spending time trying to help her.
Pretty basic romance—childhood friends is a hard one to make romantic, I think, since so few people actually have that relationship it’s not very relatable.
The entire premise, however (though not very similar to Persephone), is very interesting and well thought-out. I think the whole idea of the Everliving vs Forfeits and then not being dead is a REALLY good plot. That part is definitely 10/10.
I would love for Brodi to rewrite this with the same background and some more interesting/thoughtful characters. I am interested enough to read the second one, so I’m very hopeful!!!
I really liked this book. I am a sucker for young adult books. Yes I’m almost 20 and still gladly read young adult because some are amazing. This book I really enjoyed. I have always loved mythology and love to read stories based on them or retellings of them. Persephone and Hades has always been one of my favourite stories and so even though I love retellings, I was a little hesitant about reading a twist on this one but I thought it was quite good and would recommend it. I absolutely love Jack, he’s too cute for words. I can’t wait to read the next book.
This book was better than I thought it'd be. It had nice characters and I like that it was a retelling of a Greek myth that I don't feel is overdone. This book focuses on the Persephone and Hades myth but it doesn't overwhelm you with it. I liked how it was told from different points of times even if those times were close together. I think this is a solid book and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Greek mythology.
http://nyx-shadow.blogspot.fr/2012/08/enfernite-t1-enfernite-brodi-ashton.html
Some books are 'meh' and others are bad, but some are so awful that I feel that I have a duty to warn others about them.
Plot: Burdened by the tragic death of her mother and her boyfriend's betrayal, Nikki Beckett has accepted the offer of a handsome stranger to make all of her pains go away. After being taken to a place in-between earth and hell, Nikki's emotions are fed on for a century while only six months pass on the world above. But Nikki is different from others in that she emerges from her century still sane, young, and with the memory of her old boyfriend.
Nikki escapes back to the world above, but a clock is ticking down, leaving her with only six months to say her goodbyes before she has to make a choice: become the queen of the Everneath or spend the rest of her existence in the Tunnels, where her remaining life force will be used to power the Everneath.
I was excited by this modern re-telling of the tale of Persephone and misunderstood that Nikki wasn't already a queen, but had a chance to become one. Still, it's rare in YA lit to have a girl become a queen and handle actual royal duties. My hopes were too high.
Any potential for Nikki's growth was nixed, and she hardly spent more than a sentence at a time to consider what her life as queen would be like, rather stopping to think about how ruling the Everneath and becoming an Everliving would require her to feed off of the emotions of other unfortunate souls. Just once I would like to see a YA protagonist throw off her inhibitions and do something 'wrong' like that to further herself, and then not have to read about her whining the rest of the series.
Characters
NIKKI: Dumb, weak-willed, and afraid of action are three words that best describe Nikki. Add to that lovable collection of traits the fact that not one, but two boys are fighting over her. She could have saved the reader several hundred pages of woe by making her decision within fifty pages: Jack or Cole. It's hardly even an option, considering that at the end of her six months she has to go back to the Everneath anyway, yet Nikki spends her time convinced that there is some way to escape her fate. The book would have been much more enjoyable had she come back to say goodbye to everyone and then left with Cole to begin her campaign as the new Queen, rather than nearly four hundred pages of gripping and avoiding time she should have spent actually looking for ways to escape her debt.
JACK: He takes the role of the obligatory 'good guy' in the obligatory YA love triangle. Despite having a history of womanizing, he enters a relationship with the special Nikki and settles down for a long-term relationship. But don't think that Jack is a douche! Oh no, he loves Nikki and cares about her and was broken when she disappeared for six months, never giving up the search to find her! And on the weekends he works at a soup kitchen with Nikki! Look how nice and good and loving Jack is, the reader should love him! I'd love him had he an actual personality and wasn't a cliche good guy. I was actually glad that he fell into the vortex at the end and took Nikki's place in the Tunnels...but then I realized how much angst Nikki would produce using Jack as an excuse.
COLE: Obligatory 'bad boy' to balance out the sacred love triangle of YA lit. I actually enjoyed Cole and his apparent soullessness as he tried to convince Nikki to become the queen. But then he had to go and ruin it by saying that he was in love with Nikki and that his heart was breaking for her. Honestly, I wanted Cole to be a little bit more evil and take a step close to full-on antagonist territory. Out of all of the characters, I sympathized with Cole most, but I don't think that's what Mrs. Ashton was going for when she wrote the book.
Setting: The author spent too much time describing darkness and not enough the actual scenery. The characters were in Utah, as it turns out (I had to google both Park City and the Timpanogos Caves to find this out), though the only sense of location I got was that the book took place west of the Mississippi.
Sentences akin to "the chill crept through my thin jacket" don't make me feel any colder. It's winter at the time of writing this review and sometimes I feel like I need a jacket in my own home, which is 65F...so how cold is in Park City? Throughout much of the book I could hardly tell what season is was either, and everything about Park City seemed wildly generic.
Random Thoughts
#I was moderately enjoying the anthropologist/historian's description of the bracelet that would supposedly unlock the secret on how to escape the Everneath. But then this happened: "So the bracelet has to do with the royalty of the Ring of Death. The Ahk ghosts. Or Everlivings, as some more of contemporary studies have deemed them. Of course, these are all fringe theories." So far, so good, except that he called the Everlivings...well, Everlivings, which is the name that the immortal beings of the Everneath call themselves. "....Ahk ghosts are sort of a popular legend in anthropology circles. Some of my own colleagues believe Ahk ghosts wander the surface of the earth today."
First of all, what type of anthropologists are these? Cultural, I take it, and I know cultural anthropologists personally. I wanted to be an anthropologist. I've read several anthropology textbooks. Most anthropologists DO NOT believe in what they are studying, as that might skew the objectivity and ruin their professional reputation, especially if they believe that there are emotion-stealing immortals running around the planet.
#Jack's grandpa was supposedly one of the last "old-West cowboys, a relic of the history of our town". The author does know that actual cowboys stopped being a thing around 1900, right? And if this book takes place in the modern day...that sets Jack's grandpa's age around 130, had he been a cowboy as a young man.
Why aren't they investigating that lead?
#Enough with the fragments! In some novels, fragmented sentences work, but this was not one of those cases: "But I needed to be here. Needed to glimpse, for a moment, the life I had before. The year I should've had. To see Jack one last time, despite how we left things. To see my family again. This was my chance to say good-bye. It was a chance I didn't get last time." UGH.
#This is a series. I'm stopping at Everneath because I know for a fact that I can't how much whining and self-imposed guilt is coming in the following installments of the series.
Plot: Burdened by the tragic death of her mother and her boyfriend's betrayal, Nikki Beckett has accepted the offer of a handsome stranger to make all of her pains go away. After being taken to a place in-between earth and hell, Nikki's emotions are fed on for a century while only six months pass on the world above. But Nikki is different from others in that she emerges from her century still sane, young, and with the memory of her old boyfriend.
Nikki escapes back to the world above, but a clock is ticking down, leaving her with only six months to say her goodbyes before she has to make a choice: become the queen of the Everneath or spend the rest of her existence in the Tunnels, where her remaining life force will be used to power the Everneath.
I was excited by this modern re-telling of the tale of Persephone and misunderstood that Nikki wasn't already a queen, but had a chance to become one. Still, it's rare in YA lit to have a girl become a queen and handle actual royal duties. My hopes were too high.
Any potential for Nikki's growth was nixed, and she hardly spent more than a sentence at a time to consider what her life as queen would be like, rather stopping to think about how ruling the Everneath and becoming an Everliving would require her to feed off of the emotions of other unfortunate souls. Just once I would like to see a YA protagonist throw off her inhibitions and do something 'wrong' like that to further herself, and then not have to read about her whining the rest of the series.
Characters
NIKKI: Dumb, weak-willed, and afraid of action are three words that best describe Nikki. Add to that lovable collection of traits the fact that not one, but two boys are fighting over her. She could have saved the reader several hundred pages of woe by making her decision within fifty pages: Jack or Cole. It's hardly even an option, considering that at the end of her six months she has to go back to the Everneath anyway, yet Nikki spends her time convinced that there is some way to escape her fate. The book would have been much more enjoyable had she come back to say goodbye to everyone and then left with Cole to begin her campaign as the new Queen, rather than nearly four hundred pages of gripping and avoiding time she should have spent actually looking for ways to escape her debt.
JACK: He takes the role of the obligatory 'good guy' in the obligatory YA love triangle. Despite having a history of womanizing, he enters a relationship with the special Nikki and settles down for a long-term relationship. But don't think that Jack is a douche! Oh no, he loves Nikki and cares about her and was broken when she disappeared for six months, never giving up the search to find her! And on the weekends he works at a soup kitchen with Nikki! Look how nice and good and loving Jack is, the reader should love him! I'd love him had he an actual personality and wasn't a cliche good guy.
COLE: Obligatory 'bad boy' to balance out the sacred love triangle of YA lit. I actually enjoyed Cole and his apparent soullessness as he tried to convince Nikki to become the queen. But then he had to go and ruin it by saying that he was in love with Nikki and that his heart was breaking for her. Honestly, I wanted Cole to be a little bit more evil and take a step close to full-on antagonist territory. Out of all of the characters, I sympathized with Cole most, but I don't think that's what Mrs. Ashton was going for when she wrote the book.
Setting: The author spent too much time describing darkness and not enough the actual scenery. The characters were in Utah, as it turns out (I had to google both Park City and the Timpanogos Caves to find this out), though the only sense of location I got was that the book took place west of the Mississippi.
Sentences akin to "the chill crept through my thin jacket" don't make me feel any colder. It's winter at the time of writing this review and sometimes I feel like I need a jacket in my own home, which is 65F...so how cold is in Park City? Throughout much of the book I could hardly tell what season is was either, and everything about Park City seemed wildly generic.
Random Thoughts
#I was moderately enjoying the anthropologist/historian's description of the bracelet that would supposedly unlock the secret on how to escape the Everneath. But then this happened: "So the bracelet has to do with the royalty of the Ring of Death. The Ahk ghosts. Or Everlivings, as some more of contemporary studies have deemed them. Of course, these are all fringe theories." So far, so good, except that he called the Everlivings...well, Everlivings, which is the name that the immortal beings of the Everneath call themselves. "....Ahk ghosts are sort of a popular legend in anthropology circles. Some of my own colleagues believe Ahk ghosts wander the surface of the earth today."
First of all, what type of anthropologists are these? Cultural, I take it, and I know cultural anthropologists personally. I wanted to be an anthropologist. I've read several anthropology textbooks. Most anthropologists DO NOT believe in what they are studying, as that might skew the objectivity and ruin their professional reputation, especially if they believe that there are emotion-stealing immortals running around the planet.
#Jack's grandpa was supposedly one of the last "old-West cowboys, a relic of the history of our town". The author does know that actual cowboys stopped being a thing around 1900, right? And if this book takes place in the modern day...that sets Jack's grandpa's age around 130, had he been a cowboy as a young man.
Why aren't they investigating that lead?
#Enough with the fragments! In some novels, fragmented sentences work, but this was not one of those cases: "But I needed to be here. Needed to glimpse, for a moment, the life I had before. The year I should've had. To see Jack one last time, despite how we left things. To see my family again. This was my chance to say good-bye. It was a chance I didn't get last time." UGH.
#This is a series. I'm stopping at Everneath because I know for a fact that I can't how much whining and self-imposed guilt is coming in the following installments of the series.
Nikki Bennett has just spent a hundred years as a Forfeit in the Everneath, feeding her emotions and memories to Cole. She survives due to never letting go of one image, her boyfriend Jack's face, and she's able to return to the surface for six months before the Tunnels will come for her. Or she could choose to go with Cole and rule the Everneath as its queen. But Nikki has no interest in feeding off humans and participating in the feed. She just wants to find a way to fix the mess she left behind when she left, and hopefully find a way to stay instead of returning to the Everneath.
The action in the book doesn't pick up until after the halfway mark. There's a lot of built up and because of that, it was too easy to set the book aside and do something else for a bit before coming back to it. But once the action does pick up, the pages fly by and suddenly the book's finished. Nikki's a strong character who doesn't blame anyone else for her decision to go with Cole to the Everneath. She takes the responsibility and the consequences for her actions and does her best to set things right with the people she's hurt. She's not ready to just give up and be a victim, no matter how dire her situation gets, and she doesn't try to make excuses for her addiction to Cole's ability to take away her pain. She knows it's wrong when she asks and when he does it.
Jack's devotion to Nikki is sweet and heartwarming. He could have given up on her a lot of times during the book but even when he says he's done, he can't stay away because he loves her. That love comes into play in a huge way at the end of the book.
Cole's hard to figure out. He's not clearly a bad guy. He does seem to care about Nikki and what happens to her, but he's extremely guarded and that makes it hard to trust him. He's a master manipulator so even when his actions seem sincere, it's hard to forget that he could be lying.
It's a good start to what should be a really good series. Looking forward to the next book.
The action in the book doesn't pick up until after the halfway mark. There's a lot of built up and because of that, it was too easy to set the book aside and do something else for a bit before coming back to it. But once the action does pick up, the pages fly by and suddenly the book's finished. Nikki's a strong character who doesn't blame anyone else for her decision to go with Cole to the Everneath. She takes the responsibility and the consequences for her actions and does her best to set things right with the people she's hurt. She's not ready to just give up and be a victim, no matter how dire her situation gets, and she doesn't try to make excuses for her addiction to Cole's ability to take away her pain. She knows it's wrong when she asks and when he does it.
Jack's devotion to Nikki is sweet and heartwarming. He could have given up on her a lot of times during the book but even when he says he's done, he can't stay away because he loves her. That love comes into play in a huge way at the end of the book.
Cole's hard to figure out. He's not clearly a bad guy. He does seem to care about Nikki and what happens to her, but he's extremely guarded and that makes it hard to trust him. He's a master manipulator so even when his actions seem sincere, it's hard to forget that he could be lying.
It's a good start to what should be a really good series. Looking forward to the next book.
Everneath is a phenomenal modern-day mythology retelling of Persephone and Hades story.
(Hades, the god of the underworld who viciously kidnapped Persephone to make her his queen. You can read more about the myth here.) I actually read this book in March, and until now, I had not been able to find the right words to put into a review. I knew of Persephone's very sad story and Brodi Ashton was able to capture the heartache and enchantment of it so perfectly and unforgettable that it has stayed with me since then.
At the start of the story, we are immediately right by Nikki's side in the underworld as known as the Everneath. It is a bit confusing at first and that is because Nikki is too. There is such a darkness and overwhelming feeling of being lost and sad, that I couldn't help myself get pulled in and feel stuck and helpless just like Nikki did. It was a such a realistic state of mind that I hope to never feel again.
When Nikki slowly comes to her senses alongside Cole, she not only discovers that she's not suppose to have any memories, but that she is lucky to have had survived. Cole is mesmerized by her strength and is determined to have Nikki as his queen so they can overrule and take over the underworld. But Nikki knows that she survived for a reason. There is someone that she is suppose to find... Jack... and chooses to go back to her reality and ignore the consequences, for now.
Even though she was in the Everneath for a year, in our reality, she was only gone for 3 months. She was a star student with a promising future, but after she disappeared, everyone assumed that the fell to drugs and ran-away from home. Her comeback is hard on everyone, especially on Nikki, because when you are in the Everneath all of your feelings and emotions have been drained right out of you and it takes a long time for a little bit, if any, of your happiness to return. But when you meet Jack, as quickly as your heart will swoon for him, it will ache just as much too.
The ending was completely unpredictable to me. I cried and couldn't believe what had happened.
I cannot wait to read the next book, Everbound, and find out what happens next!
http://bumblesandfairytales.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-nobel-beehive-award-review-everneath.html
(Hades, the god of the underworld who viciously kidnapped Persephone to make her his queen. You can read more about the myth here.) I actually read this book in March, and until now, I had not been able to find the right words to put into a review. I knew of Persephone's very sad story and Brodi Ashton was able to capture the heartache and enchantment of it so perfectly and unforgettable that it has stayed with me since then.
At the start of the story, we are immediately right by Nikki's side in the underworld as known as the Everneath. It is a bit confusing at first and that is because Nikki is too. There is such a darkness and overwhelming feeling of being lost and sad, that I couldn't help myself get pulled in and feel stuck and helpless just like Nikki did. It was a such a realistic state of mind that I hope to never feel again.
When Nikki slowly comes to her senses alongside Cole, she not only discovers that she's not suppose to have any memories, but that she is lucky to have had survived. Cole is mesmerized by her strength and is determined to have Nikki as his queen so they can overrule and take over the underworld. But Nikki knows that she survived for a reason. There is someone that she is suppose to find... Jack... and chooses to go back to her reality and ignore the consequences, for now.
Even though she was in the Everneath for a year, in our reality, she was only gone for 3 months. She was a star student with a promising future, but after she disappeared, everyone assumed that the fell to drugs and ran-away from home. Her comeback is hard on everyone, especially on Nikki, because when you are in the Everneath all of your feelings and emotions have been drained right out of you and it takes a long time for a little bit, if any, of your happiness to return. But when you meet Jack, as quickly as your heart will swoon for him, it will ache just as much too.
The ending was completely unpredictable to me. I cried and couldn't believe what had happened.
I cannot wait to read the next book, Everbound, and find out what happens next!
http://bumblesandfairytales.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-nobel-beehive-award-review-everneath.html
It’s been a little while since I read this, so I may have forgotten some things.
The Good:
First thing, the picture is gorgeous. I want that dress! Just the fact that it’s a retelling of the Hades/Persephone and the Orpheus myths gives it points. I thought the plot was interesting, although it bordered on melodramatic at times. (Although if you’re about to be sucked back into the underworld, I suppose you have an excuse to be a little melodramatic.) Nikki was, for the most part, a sympathetic character. Just the fact that she was struggling against going off with the “bad boy” gave her points in my book. And her draw towards Cole was given in terms of an addiction she was struggling against but sometimes succumbed to since his feeding off of her emotions took some of her pain and sorrow away temporarily.
The Bad:
All the drama between Nikki and Jack and Cole was a little painful to read sometimes… and the writing went into the sappy quite a bit. The ending was pretty obvious (I thought) which made it a little anti-climactic for me. Also, I thought the knitting thing was a little strange.
In all, my impression was “Interesting idea, could have been better.”
The Good:
First thing, the picture is gorgeous. I want that dress! Just the fact that it’s a retelling of the Hades/Persephone and the Orpheus myths gives it points. I thought the plot was interesting, although it bordered on melodramatic at times. (Although if you’re about to be sucked back into the underworld, I suppose you have an excuse to be a little melodramatic.) Nikki was, for the most part, a sympathetic character. Just the fact that she was struggling against going off with the “bad boy” gave her points in my book. And her draw towards Cole was given in terms of an addiction she was struggling against but sometimes succumbed to since his feeding off of her emotions took some of her pain and sorrow away temporarily.
The Bad:
All the drama between Nikki and Jack and Cole was a little painful to read sometimes… and the writing went into the sappy quite a bit. The ending was pretty obvious (I thought) which made it a little anti-climactic for me. Also, I thought the knitting thing was a little strange.
In all, my impression was “Interesting idea, could have been better.”