Everneath by Brodi Ashton

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. 

I really loved the concept of this book. I've recently become obsessed with books incorporating mythology into the plots, and Everneath has a strong modernized twist to the tales of the underworld. The everlings and Tunnels are especially creepy and were some of my favorite parts of this book! I would have loved seeing more development in this area of the story though. Perhaps more clue solving or a stronger presence of everlings to amp up the creepy factor. 


It seemed that for most of the book unfortunately, we're left with Nikki's depressing musings of her old life while she tried resolving the damage she caused by leaving for the underworld  with Cole the first time. I understand Nikki had some some seriously sad situations to deal with, but I started to feel depressed myself because of Nikki! Therefore the first half of this book was very difficult to get past as Nikki was not the happiest or easiest of characters to read. As a result, the first half of this book was incredibly slow. 


What does save this story are the awesome characters (outside of Nikki). Jack is the stellar good guy who is quite rare nowadays in YA books. He's the perfect boyfriend and a complete gentleman without appearing boring. The boy seriously melted my heart. And Cole. Oh, Cole. He was a character that was hard to hate. Even though he's ridiculously evil and manipulative, there is an inert complexity about him that Ashton did an amazing job creating. He really does care about Nikki, despite being so bad, and doesn't want to see her hurt. At times I really felt bad for the guy despite his twisted ways. 


Along with the character developments, the ending of the book was all right. Again, I wish it hadn't taken so long before the story got good. If the first half matched the second half of this book then I think I would have enjoyed it more. I will say that the ending did leave a crack in my heart and I'm intrigued to see where this story is headed.