Everless Hardcover – Deckle Edge, January 2, 2018

Everless is a book that's been on my radar for quite some time. There has been a lot of hype around its debut, and I'm happy to tell you that it's completely warranted. It's hard to go into any YA book these days, particularly in the fantasy realm, that isn't rife with overly saturated tropes and unoriginal plot ideas. While I have rated this book 5 stars, I will say that Sara's debut isn't completely unblemished. She does run into a few road bumps that new authors bump into, mainly her major info-dumping at the beginning of the book. However, it didn't affect my rating for the simple fact that fantasy books both YA and Adult require a fair amount of info-dumping in order to gain a proper world-building foundation. It comes with the territory. She also struggled a bit with some of her mythology in terms of its clarity, however the deeper you dive into the book, the clearer it becomes. The premise in itself is what will keep readers drawn in. It's fresh and deeply intriguing.Sara Holland gives a new and sinister meaning behind the common phrase, "running out of time". Everless introduces us to a world that revolves around time as currency. A person's time can be drained by draining your blood and turning it into iron pieces. Those same pieces can be dissolved into liquid in order to consume them and add time to one's life. Punishments are often dished out by draining one's blood in order to take their time. This is the sadistic equivalent to paying a fine in our world. The rich in Everless world have the most time at their disposal and can realistically live for a long time. Our protagonist Jules Ember and those like her are poor, and must bleed themselves often in order to pay their rent and obtain other bare necessities in order to survive, cutting their life-span down all of the time. It's this kind of world-building that makes me deeply appreciate its originality. It's bleak and it impacts the reader by forcing us to understand the protagonist's plight.Jules takes a job at Everless, the estate of the Gerlings, after she's tired of seeing her father become sick from bleeding his life away in order for them to survive. The Gerlings are one of the wealthiest and significant families in all of Sempera, and they have a history with Jules and her Papa. There are many secrets to Jules past that she must uncover, and we get to see how her life quickly unravels as her trials begin to seem insurmountable. Jules' father always told her to stay away from Everless but of course she doesn't listen. Protagonist never do.Holland subverts common tropes found with the genre of YA and she keeps readers on their toes. The most easiest to point out is the romance in her story. The romance isn't as cut and dry as we are lead to believe and the book's ending completely throws everything we knew out the window and brings us back to square one. Appearances are definitely deceiving in Everless and the book's ending plot twist definitely threw me for a loop, which is saying something about Holland because it's hard not to predict things in YA books these days.I don't always share quotes but one quote stood out in particular in regards to the imagery of just how bleak the world of Everless is,An older couple, two women with backs curved with too much work and too few years, hunch over a small table in the corner, taking turns cutting each other's palms and letting the blood flow into empty vials. I wonder if they're putting time away for their children.Parents are shedding their years by shedding their blood in order to keep their children alive. It's quite sad but it's also a critique on our own world, because isn't that what our parents do for us when we're children, particularly if our family is poor? They work all their lives in order to settle down, start a family, and build a better life for their children, one they didn't have growing up.Everless is lush and an intricately drawn out world that prides itself on secrets and plot twists. The finery and lavish beauty of the world hides the undercurrent of sinister motives and evil magic. Jules' story is an fresh and addictive page turner that will keep you up into the wee hours of the night. I know it definitely did for me. Be sure to pick it up ASAP!

I absolutely loved this book. It is perfect for young girls who want to read a book that is clean. I would recommend reading this book.

I am extremely conflicted about what to rate this. I am waffling between 3 and 4 stars sooooo I'm going to call it a 3.75 rating.....not a thing?...it is here in my brain. Anywho, back to the review, I don't mind admitting it...my name is Beth and I suffer from Old Lady Syndrome at times. In order to combat my memory lapses I take notes periodically with the hope of remembering to put into words everything I felt along the way. At first I was disheartened with the pacing. Then there was the lack of character development and to be completely honest, the plot as a whole was flailing. Yes the writing was very good. Yes the premise was unique BUT it felt very much like a setup book where there is very little going on definitively...no meat, no potatoes, just me starving for a decent plot, skimming and flitting about all the while stewing in resentment- waiting for book #2 to come out so that things can finally start in earnest. Around 64% there was still nothing major going on. The MC suffered from the doldrums and nothing was holding my attention fully. The identity of Jules's parents and the reasoning behind why the queen was so feared were the most interesting questions posed and even those inquiries did not compel me to keep turning pages. Only the preorder price and my own stubbornness kept me going. All of these factors usually amount to a surefire recipe for disaster BUT I am elated to report that I persisted! Not only did I persist but the last 30% was redemption incarnate!! And that ending...oh boy that ending left me fiending for more. I ended up loving someone I initially loathed (as we were often led to do) and detesting someone that I had eventually warmed up to (although done so with a healthy amount of well earned trepidation). The main twist blindsided me. The way in which it unraveled, though laborered in the beginning, was skilfully crafted. As it approached the finish line it commanded my attention and I ate it up in record time. Now now, I know some of you can inhale books at an inhuman rate (and I'm more jealous about that than I care to admit) BUT here I reference my own (oft times sluggish) pace so please take the previous statement with a grain of salt.In the end I found myself caring for the characters which was a wonderous feat in and of itself because I would have balked at that claim around the halfway mark.Anyway, I highly recommend this book and if you find yourself hung up, dejected and thinking of putting it in the DNF pile then I hope you persevere as well because the ending is not only twisty and turny but it also sets up high expectations for the next book in the series. Happy reading!

Vale totalmente la pena. El precio es mejor que en librerías y el libro llegó perfecto. La historia es cautivadora.

This was such a well paced story with artfully crafted world building. I loved the character development and can't wait for the sequel!

Loved the book. Suitable for all ages ❤️

My views of Everless are a little mixed, but it is certainly a promising debut novel. While other reviewers have compared it to the science-fiction film In Time, I do contest this a little. While it shares a key concept - lifespan as currency - that's really about it. The two stories have a very different tone and, let's be honest, this plot device wasn't invented by In Time either.I personally felt that the story's biggest strong point was its ability to sustain a mystery. While its sometimes slow-burning, I never got bored because I was curious to see how the story was going to unfold. For everything that Jules uncovered about her past, she seemed to unearth more mysteries. Why does her father warn her to stay away from the Queen? What happened to necessitate leaving Everless? Why does time sometimes slow down around her? Holland certainly knew how to stoke my curiosity and keep me turning the page.However, there is still something off about the story. While the world building is interesting, I don't think that it was expressed very clearly. A lot of details were delivered early in the story by dense info dumps and it doesn't always entirely make sense. The history concerning the Sorceress and the Alchemist and the binding of time to blood-iron was particularly hard to follow, and I'm still not a hundred percent sure that I have this all down in my mind.The story also doesn't end very well. While it picks up its pace over the final 50 pages and reaches a brutal and surprising climax, it then broke off on a rather sudden cliffhanger. While this wasn't the worst cliffhanger I'd ever read, I still was not a fan. While this stage of Jules's journey was largely wrapped it, it still felt very abrupt and left a lot of threads hanging.My biggest issue with the story was its characters. I personally have a bit of a love/hate relationship with these. While I did like the fact that Jules initially went out of her way to not be a typical YA protagonist, the second half of the story began to lose this as she became a bit of a snowflake. Her relationship with Roan was also a bit frustrating. She knew him when she was seven and hadn't seen him in ten years, yet she was totes in love with him and jealous of his fiance. Unfortunately, I found it hard to get behind her on this point. She was also painfully asking for trouble. Any time someone gave her a warning, she completely ignored it and did the dangerous thing anyway. I'm surprised that she hadn't been killed ten times over by the end of the book.The rest of the cast are a bit variable. While I liked the fact that the cast was largely populated by strong female characters, a lot of these quickly dropped out of the story. As Jules becomes a handmaiden, she leaves behind a lot of her friends in the kitchen and they never really get mentioned again. We also don't really see much of the two princes. While Jules describes Roan as being a saint and Liam as a villain, we don't really see enough of either to determine how accurate she is in this assessment.All in all, Everless is far from perfect but it was a strong debut with enough twists and turns to hold my attention. I am very curious to see where Holland will take Jules's story in the sequel.

"I know better than to be afraid of stories".I do too. But when there is a lot of hype surrounding a book, I'm usually the only person in the entire universe who just doesn't...quite...get it. And that level of disappointment puts me off. But I soooo get it this time!Think of Everless as a kingdom filled with fancy people, fancy dresses and even fancier money - because the money is actually your blood, which clever people manage to drain from you, melt down and make into coins. Coins you can then melt in a coffee, or something, and add those years to your life. Well, probably someone else is drinking your coins, let's be honest - this isn't a happy story kids!It has similar ideas to those in that movie with Justin Timberlake, In Time, if you remember that. But the magic elements, fantasy world and royals set it far apart from that. Equally, I didn't see JT spilling any blood in that film!Jules finds herself getting tangled up in the World of Everless, volunteering as a servant girl as the royals prepare for an upcoming wedding. And they pay pretty well for their servants, so since Jules and her father are running out of time because her father couldn't pay the rent and is now in pretty staggering debt without enough time left to pay it off, this may be Jules' opportunity to settle their debts and make a better life for them.Of course, things never quite go to plan do they? And Jules begins to unravel a little bit more than she bargained for with not only the mysterious Queen, handsome prince she once knew as a child (who by the way is the one getting married - ouch!), but also her own history is a little murkier than she thought.I really liked Jules. She made some stupid choices - whilst she typically does exactly the opposite of what literally everyone tells her to do and doesn't cover her tracks terribly well, she's actually interesting, and I did really want to know what she was all about - her history is almost told like a fable, and I loved that.Alongside the fairy-tale feel to this story, I felt like I really got sucked into the world building. Everless itself was really fun to read about, the villages surrounding it were beautifully described and I felt like I really could picture exactly how Sara Holland wanted us to imagine these places. It definitely lived up to the hype. And the romance isn't actually a major feature either, which is amazing!