Uptown Oracle Reads… Evermore

Evermore
Sara Holland

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Jules Ember was raised hearing legends of the ancient magic of the wicked Alchemist and the good Sorceress. But she has just learned the truth: not only are the stories true, but she herself is the Alchemist, and Caro—a woman who single-handedly murdered the Queen and Jules’s first love, Roan, in cold blood—is the Sorceress. The whole kingdom believes that Jules is responsible for the murders, and a hefty bounty has been placed on her head. And Caro is intent on destroying Jules, who stole her heart twelve lifetimes ago. Jules must delve into the stories that she now recognizes are accounts of her own past. For it is only by piecing together the mysteries of her lives that Jules will be able to save the person who has captured her own heart in this one.

After Everless, I was so excited to read Evermore and find out more about the world. I wanted to know more about the backstory and the blood coins and the magical aspects behind them. Evermore was a disappointment.

I’m not sure if it fell into second book slump or it catered too much to the fans of the first one (Just guessing but I may be wrong!) but it didn’t feel as great as Everless.

The start of Evermore ended exactly where Everless ended. Jules running for her life. There was a few loops of Jules running, getting caught, escaping, running, getting caught, esca… you get the point. This was being repetitive, and made the start of the book feel super slow, and often unnecessary. Plus, because of all this you never truly fear for Jules life, and the stakes were lowered.

Similar to my feelings for Everless, time is money in this world so why is so much *time* spent on Jules fixating on Liam? Jules tries extremely hard to not fall in love with Liam, except she spends too much of time obsessing about this love. Which of course won’t fix anything, and she apparently has a mission she needs to succeed in. I don’t know, but I felt like there were more important issues in Jules life than a boy.

The magic which I so wanted to see more of is somewhat lacklustre in this book. The ironbloods become nearly defunct with limited page time. Jules ability to ‘stop time’ is even more confusing. Does she stop all time? Stop time for those around her? How can she choose what is and isn’t frozen? Who knows because it’s barely explained throughout. This is disappointing for me, as I adore exploring these aspects in fantasy books.

The Sorceress and Alchemist backstory was extremely well created however. I adored the parts that focused on this, and how the ‘winner’ gets to write history for the people. The relationship dynamic between them was really interesting, and would be great to dissect in the first book to see those hints. I especially liked the ending which pulled together the story threads of the book into a nice little package for the reader.

One issue I had with that backstory though was Jules gains ‘flashbacks’ which don’t seem to help her much. Memory style flashbacks could give Jules some more experience and knowledge to work with in her current time. But instead, Jules still acts like Jules and often makes decisions that you’re less than enthused about. And unfortunately the ending was the best part for me as it finally focused on parts I cared about.

Positives

• Sorceress and Alchemist backstory
• Ending

Negatives

• Slow pacing
• Romance subplot
• Lack of magic

I received Evermore by Sara Holland from the publisher via Edelweiss. This is an unbiased and honest review