Evershade by Alexia Purdy.

Summary:

Ever Shade A dark twist on faeries. For Shade, a chance meeting with a powerful Teleen faery warrior who wields electrical currents and blue fires along his skin, has her joining him on a treacherous mission for the good Seelie Faerie Court across the land of Faerie. Magic and malice abound and nothing is what it really seems to be. The evil Unseelie Queen and her treacherous allies are around every corner as Shade makes her way across the breathtaking landscapes of the world of Faerie, which exists alongside the mundane human world. Shade discovers her own uncharted magic and meets some of the most powerful warriors in Faerie while battling evil dryads, conniving Teleen guards and challenges on her life with every step in a world where nothing can be taken for granted. 

I'm going to approach this particular review I'm going to use a bad news - good news structure because in my personal opinion, although it wasn't a train reck and I didn't absolutely hate it, I feel that this book still needs a lot of work.

Regarding the writing, it's got an alright style but it has no wow factor. It doesn't make me think 'this is a book to lose sleep over'. To me it feels a bit clumsy and wooden and, in a sense, inexperienced. I guess the best way to put it is that it feels like a first draft. Which, actually isn't a bad thing, because issues like this can be fixed with some editing and going back over the book to give it a little bit of TLC. Despite that it's a good first draft. Unfortunately there's a difference between a good draft and a good novel.

Also, the character development is seriously lacking throughout the book. I feel like the characters don't at all feel like real people. They seem a bit like bad actors performing a new TV series that they pull the plug on after one season. The reactions given by the characters also were unrealistic and as a reader I felt a bit confused as to where they are at. At the beggining of the novel Shade has no disbelief for the fact that a strange man who has broken into an abandoned warehouse was shooting lightning out of his fingers and a women just simply upped and flew away; she holds no fear, no shock and all that is well and good but then within a few pages we see her change from this nonchalant reaction to disbelieving that faeries exist and acting shocked at the revelation when she'd just seen, first hand, a man turn into lightning and wasn't even that bothered by it. 

These things I felt made it hard to read.

But, despite this, I feel that the premise has promise and that the plot isn't actually that bad. Although the book didn't inspire me, it was entertaining and I felt that if it was just tweeked slightly here and there and built upon the foundation that the author has already built, it has the potential to become a great novel and one that I could enjoy beggining to end.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

3/5 stars.