Everneath - by Brodi Ashton

Synopsis:  In this modern twist on the Persephone myth, Seventeen-year-old Nikki Beckett has just returned from the underworld, having spent the last six months in a place called Everneath. She has been given only six months to spend with her family, friends, and her boyfriend Jack before she has to return to Everneath forever. Her heart aches for Jack, and now that she is back, she longs to spend as much time with him as possible. However, Cole, the one responsible for taking her to Everneath, has other plans. He is certain she is the one who can help him take over the throne and has followed her back home. Using all of his power he tries to convince her to come back with him to Everneath and become his queen. 



Genre:  fantasy, romance, mythology

Pages:  370

Level:  intermediate, advanced/mature

Author's website

Opening paragraph:

The Everneath.

History books call it the Underworld.  Or even hell.

But I know it's neither.  It is really call the Everneath,

and it's not a place for the dead.  It's a place for the

Everliving--beings who have discovered the secret to

eternal life.  It's a place for their Forfeits--the humans

who give up everything to nourish the Everliving.  It's

the world caught between this one and the next, a layer

between Earth and hell.  I know because I was a Forfeit.

I would give anything to change this.

Tiger Lily - by Jodi Lynn Anderson

Synopsis:  This is a much darker version of the Peter Pan story, narrated by Tinkerbelle.  In this story, we meet 15-year-old Tiger Lily, who rescues and falls in love with Peter Pan; but when Wendy Darling arrives, everything changes. 



Genre:  fantasy, romance, fairy tale

Pages:  292

Level:  intermediate

Author website

Opening paragraphs:

Let me tell you something straight off.  This is a love story, but not like any you've ever heard.  The boy and the girl are far from innocent.  Dear lives are lost.  And good doesn't win.  In some places, there is something ultimately good about endings.  In Neverland, that is not the case.

To understand what it's like to be a faerie, tall as a walnut and genetically gifted with wings--who happened to witness such a series of events--you must first understand that all faeries are mute.  Somewhere in our evolution, on our long crooked journey from amoeba to dragonfly to faerie, nature must have decided language wasn't necessary for us to survive.  It's good in some ways, not to have a language.  It makes you see things.  You turn your attention, not to babbling about yourself, broadcasting each and every thought to everyone within earshot--as people often do--but to observing.  That's how faeries became so empathic.  We're so attuned to the beating of a heart, the varied thrum of a pulse, the zaps of the synapses of a brain, that we are almost inside others' minds.  Most faeries tune this out by only spending time with other faeries.  They make settlements in tree stumps and barely venture out except to hunt mosquitoes.  I get bored by that.  I like to fly and keep an eye on things.  That was how I saw it, from the beginning.  Some would like to call it being nosy.  That's what my mother would say, at least.