Review: Evermore

Evermore by Sara Holland
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Many thanks to Edelweiss, HarperTeen, and Sara Holland for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are 100% my own and independent of receiving an advance copy.

Evermore is the sequel to Everless. Sometimes you can get away without reading the first novel in a series and they can stand alone. This is not the case. Without reading the first novel you will feel fairly lost and won’t understand what is going on, how the world works, and the characters’ backstories. There is no real recap of what has happened previously to catch you up on where we are in the story. If you have read the first book you will remember that Jules Ember is the ancient Alchemist, who has lived twelve previous lives and is in a battle with The Sorceress. Jules had no prior memory of her other lives and is still trying to play catch up on her history, her powers and figuring out how she can kill The Sorceress. She stole the Sorceress’ heart and broke it into pieces and swallowed it. This is her last life and if she dies all is lost. The Sorceress has been alive the whole time, killed The Alchemist each life and controlled the last Queen. The new queen is Jules’ twin sister but doesn’t know it and thinks Jules has killed their father. Jules is in love with Liam, who has been helping her learn about her history and prepare for her battle against The Sorceress. The Sorceress is on a mission to kill all those who are close to Jules in an effort to break her heart. Only then will The Sorceress be able to kill her and steal her power back. In this land people give their blood because it holds their time, their years in life. Rich people have loads of time, whereas poor people beg for an hour of time.

I am sorry to say that I really didn’t enjoy this one any more than the first. The same problems that plagued the first book cropped up in this one. I had hopes that with the second one, they would have worked on things like character development, story problems and building something exciting, but nope, didn’t happen. I thought there were huge problems. I can’t stand when writers rely on tropes and don’t bother to develop storylines. Liam and Jules love story wasn’t developed in the first book and just because you say they are in love, then six chapters later they kiss and then they SLEEP TOGETHER???? Why - I don’t buy it. They have to share some experiences, build some connection. Most of the story was her rejecting him, pushing him away because she didn’t want him to be a target. He may or may not have been hurt, who know because we never hear that much from him, he believes she doesn’t like him because they aren’t that close and then boom - they are in love. Nope. The whole story was weak. There wasn’t any buildup up to the final scene between The Sorceress and The Alchemist. If I am waiting two books then please, make it exciting! Don’t get me started on her twin sister. That was the weakest storyline ever! She starts off by telling her sister she did kill Roan and then no contact, for hundreds of pages and Ina is hunting her, ready to kill her, and all of a sudden she believes her? Even Jules says that everybody else questioned her more than Ina. Why was she believed? I thought it was a trick until nope, nothing else is mentioned. I DON’T GET IT!!! I hate when YA books get lazy. Even the small details bothered me. When Jules puts on the Huntsman’s costume after sleeping with Liam (which is still bothering me because you are cutting out a whole bunch of readers when you add sex to the mix, especially when it wasn’t necessary), Jules comments that she hopes no one notices that the costume doesn’t fit properly and the cloak hangs crooked. Why doesn’t it fit properly? It was her twin sister’s? It should have fit perfectly. But because she was sneaking around it fits the storyline better to make her in an outfit that doesn’t fit because it creates tension in case she is caught. To me, that is manipulation, cheap and lazy of the author. I do have to say that the covers are beautiful and suck me in each time. I think that there are other series that are better worth your time and investment.

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