Review: Everless by Sara Holland

I had such high hopes for this book, because it looks gorgeous and sounds amazing. And I felt sure that it would be a book that I would love, or at least enjoy a whole lot. Sadly, I was wrong. And very much so. I disliked this book so much that I almost hated it. Ahh. And I feel very disappointed about it. Two stars for this one.

And even that feels too kind. But I did not hate it, and there were some things that could have been good But for the most part this book was so bad. I have tons of thoughts about it. I have barely started writing, and I already know I will write so much about this book. Sadly, all of it negative. Cannot stop myself from sharing it.

To start a little positive, I will say that the writing was pretty good. I did not really have any issues with it. I mean, I did not connect with the characters at all, but I still enjoyed the writing a little bit. Sadly that did not save this book. Don't think anything could have saved it. I completely excepted this book to be full of fantasy and adventure and action and some romance. I got nothing of any of that. Sure, it is a fantasy world, but there is barely anything about the time being blood part, barely nothing about how the main character has a power that no one else has. Yawn. I will be honest and say that this book bored me beyond words. And for most of the book, nothing happens. The girl spends most of the time alone, even. No characters to get to know. So no one to love.

I am not going to write much about the plot in this book, mostly only going to mention the romance and how I felt about all of that. There will be some spoilers. But yeah, I wish I had known, so that I would have known to not read this book. Ugh. This book tells the story of Jules. She just turned seventeen. She lives in a small village with her father, whom is sick. In this world, blood is time and money. You can give blood, which means giving up hours or months or years of your life. Many does this, so that they can afford food.

I did find this plot to be kind of exciting. And I would have enjoyed it more, if there had been more about it, if it had been written better. Sadly I found that I didn't care too much. Probably because of Jules. I cared nothing for this girl. She complains about everything. She hates this rich family, because of how she and her father had to leave as their servants ten years ago. She is always getting so filled with rage, without ever doing anything about it. Haha. So it just grew to be silly to read about, to be honest. Disappointing.

There is so much about this story. Jules ends up back as a servant for this rich family, to try to save her father, getting him more years to live. What bothered me the most about that is how she seemed to be perfect at being a servant, at making food and doing what others ordered her to do. What. She had never done it before. Never. It was simply weird. Also, this book takes place over about two weeks, but to this girl, it seemed like it should have been two years. What. And so much about the time thing bothered me.

I'm going to write too much about this book. I simply cannot stop myself. I disliked it way too much. Ugh. Anyway. Not too much about the plot. There is Jules, and there are two boys. Roan, whom Jules loved as a child, and his brother Liam, whom Jules hate very much. Haha. Roan is getting married, to a princess named Ina. Jules ends up having to be her friend, and they are suddenly best of friends within two days. Because that's normal. Except not. And it was tiresome to read about it all, to be honest. Made no sense.

Time to talk a whole bunch about the really weird and awkward romance in this book. First of, there is no romance. The girl keeps claiming she remembers very much from the years before she was seven. That she remembers that she was so in love with Roan back then, and that she has been in love with him ever since, despite not having seen him for ten whole years. They were seven years old, and friends. And she claims she loves him, always going on about how pretty he is, and how she loves him. I could not stand it.

And first of, no, you can not remember all that much since you were seven years old. And no, you can't love a boy you have not seen for ten years. And then when she does see him, she also know that he is engaged, and is to be married in four weeks. Yet all she hopes is that he will look at her and know her as a servant he played with, ten years ago. She almost begs him to look at her and smile at her. To love her. It was a bit pathetic, if I'm being fully honest. She couldn't stop pining for this boy. It was so embarrassing.

And even worse, he was engaged to be married. Worse than that, it was incredibly obvious that he was sleeping with someone else too. This girl never thinks it, but the clues are there, and it just pissed me off that she refused to give thought to it. Also, he is engaged, to a princess, whom the girl is now friends with, and she is so jealous and ahhh. This book sucked. The romance was so bad, since it was not a romance at all. It was false. So false. And highly annoying. Also, we meet Roan in maybe ten pages. Haha. Awful.

So anyway. The romance sucked. As there wasn't any. Oh, there is one kiss. He kisses her, first claiming that he can't go on sleeping with his fiance after he found out his childhood friend was back as a servant in his huge castle. Hahaha. It was so bad. Even worse is that the girl suddenly wants to kiss Liam at the very last page of the book, like a week after she claimed she loved Roan, and had for years. Yeah. That was highly disturbing too. We also do not get to spend time with these boys at all. Ugh. Don't know them.

Another thing that bothers me about this book, is the tagline on the cover. Time is a prison, she is the key. Hahaha. What. She wasn't a key to that at all. Time wasn't really a prison either. That tagline makes zero sense. Maybe it would make sense for a second book, but not for this first one. I know, it's a small thing to be bothered about, but even so. It's annoying. Anyway. Despite not really liking this book at all, I'm a little bit curious about what will happen next. I might end up peeking at the second book. But not excited for it.

I suppose that there are a lot of people who would enjoy this book. But I was not one of them. And I can't really recommend that anyone reads this book. There are lots of better ones. But then again, everyone do have different books that they love. And this was very much not a book for me. I had hoped that Everless would end up being amazing. But it was not. I'm glad I gave it a try, but so upset that I did not like it. Huge thank you to the publisher for the eARC of this book, though I read my hardcover of it, that I bought. Ahh.

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