Review: Everlasting

★★★★☆

'' ''You want to be a Watchman, well, here it is. This job is dangerous. It's unpredictable. You either have the gall to get through it, or you cower and find a life in Ethyreal City. Which will it be? '' ''

I bought The Night Watchmen series a while ago and been wanting to read them ever since, but for some reason haven't. So two days ago I picked Everlasting up and felt it was time.

The main character, Faye Middleton, thought her whole life that she was a Defect in a world where you can have only onw of two paths: You are either a Hunter or a Witch. Being neither means bye-bye to the life as you know it. Within the Coven, when coming of age, you are to go through a Culling ceremony, in which you will find who you are and who your partner will be. Your partner will always be of the opposite sex and all pairs are Hunter-Witch. And that's where the story begins.

At first I thought, that this is going to be one of those 'males are Hunters and females are Witches' things, but fortunately that wasn't the case exactly. Just a large percentage.

At first the storyline might feel too rushed an/or messy, since there are many things to be explained to the reader. The world is full of rules, tradition, and whatnot, and telling all of them in first-person narrating can be a bit messy. But as you get through the first five-or-so chapters, it settles down a lot.

As we can expect, the main character has given up, since she knows she is a Defect in world where Defects are considered the worst shame. At frst she appears to be like that, but then she gets her act together and starts to evolve. What I found great was that the story breathed with her. If time was running slow, the story slowed down, or if it's was flying fast, then it flew. You get a real sense of what she is thinking in every situation, without sugar-coating anything.

You might think, based on genre and the cover, that this is one of those 'main character sees a boy, falls in love, nothing else matters' book. That is not the case, for the most part. And this is the point where I tell you that Candace Knoebel has been able to create a badass male character, who really is angsty through his actions, not just words. Ladies and Gentlemen, Jaxen is the most genuine angsty male character I've read. And believe me, I've read a lot YA.

All in all, this is a relatively fast to read. My copy had 407 pages and quite large font. I'm definitely going to continue this series after I've finished Cara Brookins' Rise.