(Everlife #2)
Publication
Date: February 28, 2017
Hardcover, 443 pages, Harlequin Teen
Genres:
YA, Paranormal
My Firstlife is over, but my
Everlife is only now beginning.
With her last living breath, Tenley
"Ten" Lockwood made her choice and picked her realm in the Everlife.
Now, as the war between Troika and Myriad rages, she must face the
consequences.
Because Ten possesses a rare
supernatural ability to absorb and share light, the Powers That Be have the
highest expectations for her future—and the enemy wants her neutralized.
Fighting to save her Secondlife, she must learn about her realm from the ground
up while launching her first mission: convincing a select group of humans to
join her side before they die. No pressure, right?
But Ten's competition is Killian,
the boy she can't forget—the one who gave up everything for her happiness. He
has only one shot at redemption: beating Ten at a game she's never even played.
As their throw-downs heat up, so do their undeniable feelings, and soon, Ten
will have to make another choice. Love…or victory.
My Review
Firstlife was a fun read, if a bit odd and scattered. There was a
spunky heroine, a couple of hunky guys, and a unique paranormal-esque world to
keep my attention. While most of those things continued on in Lifeblood, they seemed to have lost
momentum since book one.
Ten is still spunky, which is fine. She has some sass to
her, but that sass seemed to get in the way of actually getting to know her as
a person. She’s too obsessed with numbers and being all goody two-shoes for
readers to even connect with her. Don’t get me wrong, her obsession with
numbers is a great quality, but she doesn’t have any realness to her other than
that oftentimes distracting characteristic. She doesn’t even spend enough time
with her family in book two for readers to get a sense of how she would
interact with them.
Part of the reason it’s hard to get to know Ten is how
fast-paced the book was. A lot of things needed to be slowed down for not only
character development, but also world and relationship development. It was
difficult to get to know other characters and to even care about them when
something bad would happen to them. It was also hard to understand the limitations
of the Troikan and Myridian powers in this sequel. I was constantly asking
myself questions: Why can Ten do this? Why couldn’t she do that earlier? Why
can this person do that? How does this thing connect to that other magical
thing from before? Why is this character acting like Ten’s servant? Why does
Killian/Asher/Deacon/anybody even like Ten? Like I said, I was confused.
Part of that confusion may have been my fault. I didn’t
remember a whole lot from Firstlife.
And, while I believe there is a glossary at the beginning of the book that
outlines some of the terms in the Myridian and Troikan realms, reading Lifeblood in ebook form and trying to
flip back and forth isn’t an easy feat.
All in all, I do have to hand it to Gena for trying to build
a unique world in a time period where the same ol’ same ol’ fantasy and
paranormal books are all the craze. I just wish she’d taken the time to really
build a world where the rules and restrictions are clearly set out for readers.
And, while I’m a little let down by this series, enough to where I’m not sure
if I’ll pick up book three, I definitely won’t be giving up on Gena’s future non-Everlife books anytime soon.
*Note: I received
a copy of this book to review from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way
affected my opinion/review.
Oh no! Only 2 stars? I have this book on my TBR list. I still need to read the first one but I had a lot of hope for this series. I hope your next read works better for you.
ReplyDeleteI know! I was super disappointed.
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