Daniel's Reviews > Everlost

3.5 stars

Plot- 7/10
Characters- 7/10
Writing- 7.5/10
World Building- 9.5/10

TOTAL- 7.4/10

Quickie Review (no spoilers)- Neal Shusterman wowed me with Unwind. I seriously loved that book; the action, the great characters, and the scary, almost 1984-esque world building captivated me. So I went into Everlost with very high expectations, and I expected Neal Shusterman to deliver again.

I was disappointed. Now, 3.5 stars is by no means bad. But I guess I was expecting a bit more from the same author who wrote Unwind. I think the biggest problem for me with this book was that I am NOT part of the target audience for this book. Basically, I'm too old to be reading it.

The number one issue I had with this book was the juvenility (is that a word?) of a number of factors. To start with, the writing was juvenile. The sentences were simple, a bit choppy, and the sentence structure was lacking in variety. Even though the main characters are 14-15, the almost childish writing lent itself to 11-12 year old readers, and for me, it kind of detracted from the book.

While we're on the topic of writing, another thing that really got to me was the narrating. Now, I had a friendly argument with another person who I was reading this with (Everlost was a buddy read with 3-4 other people), but one of the problems I had was the narrator. In my opinion, the narrator's job is very much like that of a sports umpire in that their job is to do their job and nothing else. The less attention is paid to you, the better. In a buddy read discussion, I brought up the narrator of Gone by Michael Grant as a comparison. The narrator of Gone simply tells the story. The narrator never mentions or introduces himself/herself, and focuses entirely on the characters of the novel. This helps to make the reader feel very close to the characters and as if they are in the story with them. However, the narrator of Everlost was a bit more... shall we say, prominent. The narrator was almost like a storyteller in that his/her presence was noticeable, and I as a reader could tell that someone was actually telling us the story. I found this to detract from the book, as I felt more detached from the characters and their journeys with a more in-your-face narrator. Now, this is PURELY personal preference. Other people who read this with me liked the narrating style of this book. It just didn't work for me.

Another minor problem that I had with the narrating was that the character perspective changed sometimes without any warning or notice. Usually there's some kind of page break when the perspective changes, but in this book, the narrator would kind of jump back and forth between the thoughts of different characters in a particular scene without any warning. It was a bit disorienting and a bit confusing.

The other issue I had with the book was the characters. Nick was practically useless throughout most of the book. He was just... there to pis off Allie with his stubbornness and his naivety. He finally did something about 250 pages in, and at the end, he AT LAST seemed to find a true purpose for himself. Hopefully this leads to a lot of character development in the next book. Allie REALLY annoyed me early on in the book. So she ignores the warnings of Mary to go find some creepy dude named HAUNTER (warning bell number 1) and drags her friends along with her. She's stupid enough to believe the HAUNTER will give her what she wants and let her go, EVEN THOUGH no one has returned from a visit to his lurking place. She gets her friends trapped and then has the NERVE to beg Mary to essentially sacrifice her hundreds of kids to attempt a futile rescue of her friends. Wow. She redeemed herself at the end, though, so that's what matters. Mary was an interesting character, though I have no idea why she so strongly insists on people staying in Everlost. She figures to be a major part of the second book, but I question her motives. Why is it so important for her to lead people in Everlost? Why can't she just "get where she's going" too? Hmm. I thought the McGill was a good villain- smart enough, complex, and thoroughly disgusting. (view spoiler)[ I thought his conversion to nice Mikey was a bit quick and hard to believe, so we'll see where that leads. (hide spoiler)]

The plot was excruciatingly slow for the majority of the book. Really, it was sluggish and slow for the first 250 pages. The last 50 pages were, however, exciting and full of twists. And you know what they say. It's not how you start, it's how you finish. And even though Everlost wasn't consistently plotted, it certainly finished strong. I want more action and drama in the next book.

The BEST part of this book was easily the world building. If there's one thing Neal Shusterman is good at, it's creating a complex, detail-oriented world. He did it in Unwind, and he did it in Everlost. The idea of a world trapped between life and death was really interesting, and some of the details (the dead spots, the skinjacking, the Chinese restaurants [LOL!], and the crossing buildings/vehicles) were all really interesting, and my curiosity about this world was what kept me reading. I also enjoyed the little tidbits from Mary's book at the end of each chapter- they were a fun way of slowly unraveling the details of Shusterman's created world.

I think that the main reason why I didn't enjoy Everlost as much as I wanted to was that I wasn't the target audience for this book. The book as a whole struck me as a bit juvenile, but I could see how it would appeal to readers slightly younger than me. Even though Everlost began with a whimper, and even though I did find that there were numerous flaws, it did end strongly, and left me with enough curiosity as to what will happen next that I might just end up reading the second book.