Everbound Review

TITLE Everbound (Everneath #2)
AUTHOR Brodi Ashton
PUBLICATION January 22nd 2013 by Balzer + Bray
READ January 23 to 24, 2013
SOURCE Purchased

Nikki Beckett could only watch as her boyfriend, Jack, sacrificed himself to save her, taking her place in the Tunnels of the Everneath for eternity — a debt that should’ve been hers. She’s living a borrowed life, and she doesn’t know what to do with the guilt. And every night Jack appears in her dreams, lost and confused and wasting away.

Desperate for answers, Nikki turns to Cole, the immortal bad boy who wants to make her his queen — and the one person least likely to help. But his heart has been touched by everything about Nikki, and he agrees to assist her in the only way he can: by taking her to the Everneath himself.

Nikki and Cole descend into the Everneath, only to discover that their journey will be more difficult than they’d anticipated — and more deadly. But Nikki vows to stop at nothing to save Jack — even if it means making an incredible sacrifice of her own.

In this enthralling sequel to Everneath, Brodi Ashton tests the bonds of destiny and explores the lengths we’ll go to for the ones we love.

Can I get a hell yes for this year continuing to be the year of awesome sequels? *waits for it* Ok, thank you. So you can tell where this review is going. I have not run into one sophomore slump yet this year and I hope to goodness that it stays that way. Everbound was Everneath on crack, which means that the angst was amped up and the action was coming at me in droves. I enjoyed this follow-up so much, maybe even more than its predecessor.

I have admit that I remembered barely anything of Everneath when I went into reading this novel. Thankfully Ashton does a wonderful job of recapping all of the important bits without it feeling like a giant info dump right off the bat. Nicki is dealing with the loss of Jack and she feels responsible for him being in the Everneath. I think Nicki could probably be taken as pretty whiney in this installment but after all that she went through and her sudden loss of Jack I think it was warranted. I loved how she wasn’t just wallowing in it, she was being proactive and trying to find anyway that she could save him. Once Cole comes back into her life, she sees an opportunity to go down (up?) and save Jack and from there the story moved at a break neck pace.

I mentioned that I don’t really remember too much from Everneath, one thing I definitely don’t remember is it being as funny as I found Everbound. The way that Cole and Nikki pick at each other had me laughing in more than one instant and it made reading this novel that much more fun. I am a sucker for a bad boy and a huge Cole fan. This one made me even more so because we see a completely new side of him and I think Nikki may be softening him up a bit. It was frustrating that Nikki seemed completely oblivious to how much Cole loves her, there were so many times that I just wanted her to grab him and smooch his lips off.

One thing that we get a lot more of here is the world of the Everneath. It was exhilarating reading Cole, Nikki & Max go through whatever the Everneath threw at them and I loved getting to know more about it. Through that we also got a lot more mythology weaved into the tale which worked seamlessly. It really felt like the action didn’t really let up in the last half and right when the story was wrapping up Ashton threw a twist at me that I had NO IDEA WAS COMING. I didn’t even suspect it, it didn’t cross my mind and I almost threw my book when I realized it was ending on that note.

Leaving off at a definite high point and leaving me with a plethora of questions, Everbound is an awesome sequel that I won’t soon forget. I think this is one people will be talking about for a long time to come.