United By Pop received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are our own.
Title: The Edge of Everything
Author: Jeff Giles
Purchase: Available from 9th February 2017 in the UK and 31st January 2017 the US.
Overall rating: 3/5 stars
Great for: Fans of contemporary romance with a supernatural twist, such as ‘Twilight’ and ‘The Morganville Vampire’ series.
Themes: Contemporary, supernatural, paranormal, romance, fantasy.
Review: The synopsis – A girl has a supernatural boyfriend – This didn’t intrigue me in the slightest and I was hesitant to start this book. The early accolade this has already garnered, however, had me intrigued. Full of winter blues and craving me some blissful, contemporary, escapist fluff I dived into this without my expectations being too highly placed. I was, surprisingly and delightfully, initially proven wrong in my projections for this.
The pastel colour palette used for the front cover has this marketed for the young adult contemporary romantic genre, but this delivers so much more than that. Meet modern day Romeo and Juliet – X and Zoe. Z is from the Lowlands; a level of hell reserved for the bounty hunter of souls – and Zoe, well Zoe is a pretty average human. Pretty average, that is if you don’t count the tragic death of her father, her family’s mysterious past, her neighbours’ mysterious disappearance and now and her boyfriend’s supernatural status…
What initially assaulted me was a storm of high-emotion and high-action. I cried a total of four times in the first forty pages and probably managed to exhale only the same number of times. Every part of me was invested in the story!
Once the dramatic beginning had concluded other elements of the story that I was not keen on – the supernatural boyfriend – started to move more to the forefront of the novel’s focus and, as a result, my own focus slipped. The family dynamics that had previously captivated my attention were far more interesting to me than the romantic drama that followed.
I feel this book was not a bad one, in any sense of the word, but wasn’t exactly suited to my tastes. Insta-love is my number one pet hate and this did exhibit that flaw, which had me, I confess, biasedly against this. The romantic drama was eye-roll worthy and I only continued with the story in the hopes of a return of my initial reaction. The first 100 pages is undoubtedly 5-star reading, and gives me faith in Giles as a writer I’d be keen to read more from, but the rest, unfortunately, just wasn’t for me.
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