{DNF Review} Everealm by J.D. Wright

Synopsis:

Breestlin cannot escape her destiny to become ruler of her father's kingdom, but she never planned to become queen at twenty-three years of age. Upon the return of her first love, Rowan, Bree must quickly learn how to adapt to both her new responsibilities as a ruler and her inability to suppress her feelings for Rowan. To make matters more difficult, her outcast uncle, Silas, will stop at nothing to get what he desires, putting lives and the kingdom in danger. Bree must seek the assistance of the wizard, Dagan, who in a twist of fate discovers much more about his family (and himself) than he could ever imagine in this steamy love story, full of mystery and romance...

Danger awaits, as we journey through Everealm, the first book of the Everealm Series.

There are a lot of issues that I have with Everealm. I requested it from NetGalley because the cover is pretty, and the synopsis makes it sound like an exciting Fantasy with a bit of romance.

Yeah. It’s mostly info dumping, instalove, and ridiculous, pointless, gratuitous sex. So whoever marked it as “Young Adult” on Good Reads obviously didn’t actually read the book. I mean, I don’t mind the occasional sex scene, but this was just silly. Like, every five minutes, someone was ripping clothes off of someone else for practically no reason.

I marked it as DNF at 66% because I just couldn’t take it any more.

Here are my biggest issues with the book:

1. Right from the very first page, it’s one big info dumping telling show. There’s hardly any showing in this book. Except for instalove and sex. There’s plenty of showing there. But any actual conflicts or interesting characters things are told to get out of the way as quickly as possible. I was like, hey why didn’t you just actually write that interesting thing as a scene that we could see happening? That would have been an actual plot. Which is usually good in a book.
2. The sexual content of this book is just silly. I don’t have a problem with sex scenes; I love a good urban fantasy or regency romance, and those almost always have sex in them, but Everealm was like, “we’re going to define most of the characters in this book by their weird sexual fetishes or sexual histories or who they are eventually going to have sex with blah blah”. Everything felt very shock value. Like Silas, the main villain. We got a whole chapter explaining how he was married to this chick that, even though she was 40 was still hot, but he was interested in having sex with younger girls, because sex with his still hot wife was no longer interesting to him. Except for when it was? Cause he still had sex with her. And said wife was ok with that because she too was in love with someone else. Fine. That’s the character you’ve written, but I don’t need an entire chapter (there were multiple chapters about this actually) going on and on about this. Actually write a villain who’s more than just a sex addict. It was like the author was giggling this entire book being like “ooh, look at how naughty I’m being”.
3. Every character had an immediate romantic match. Like, literally every character. Except for maybe Sarita, who was like, ten. Every time someone new was introduced (and there are actually quite a few characters) there was instalove ringing through the halls. I don’t mind one couple having instalove if the plot is really good, and there’s some paranormal thing happening (even then, I prefer not having instalove), but it was like, oh look, someone new, and look, they’ll be making out with or having sex with this person in about three chapters. Great.
4. The writing just isn’t very good. It’s not the worst writing I’ve ever seen. But then again, info dumping is pretty terrible. This isn’t a history book. This is supposed to be a fantasy novel.
5. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters since the book comprised of info dumping and sex. And the few scenes that weren’t those two things were usually inane things like getting measured for a new dress. Blushing at love interest for the seven millionth time. Going to a ball where all of the characters dance with their instalove partners and blush. Again. The few times that something fantasy happened that was interesting quickly ended in stupid romance again. Everything was propelled by romance. As someone who hardly ever reads books without romance, the fact that this was problem for me should tell you something. I don’t mind something being propelled by romance once you’ve established the relationship (aka at the end of the book, or in the second book of a series) but this was just absurd.

There are so many books out there I could have been spending my time reading instead of Everealm.

Content: Well obviously lots of stupid, pointless sex. Not recommended for anyone.