This was a very interesting book, didn't quite hit the hype that I saw for it but the story was well done and interesting.

I'm torn down the middle on this one. The storytelling is good, the pacing is a bit off in parts (some of it felt drawn out), and the paranormal aspects of the tale weren't my favorite in that genre, but overall I did enjoy reading this book. I'll have to look into other books by this author now.

This book was so different from anything I've read. The pace was a bit slow at times, but I really liked the characters...the twist at the end was unexpected. I also felt things wrapped up to quickly, which lends itself to a sequel.

This book is...interesting...I guess? I'm still pretty on the fence about this one.

X is a bounty hunter for hell? I think? Zoe was human. Star crossed lovers and all that. A bunch of plot-twists and action and confusion ensues. The end. Basically.

Except, it ends on a cliffhanger, so I'm assuming at some point there will be a second one. I don't think I'll be waiting around for it.

Overall, it was pretty well written, with characters I enjoyed getting to know. Even the side characters were good. But the plot...the plot seemed to jump all over the place. I felt as though I was missing important back information, but there was none, you just jump in and attempt to figure out what is going on.

Unfortunately I could not finish this book, as the story or action itself didn't grab me. I also felt that the characters were filled with too many clichés - too many descriptions of hot/irresistible love interest, and not enough tension in many scenes.

Absolutely loved this book. I've bought several copies for my school library and will be book talking this one to classes. Riveting story with a great romance. I loved the two main characters.

The Edge of Everything started out great, but did not follow through well with the plot. As fantastical as it was, it still should have been believable, and I didn't believe it. The character weren't relateable, and the changing in point of view was disconcerting. Also, the love at first sight in YA books is overplayed and again not believable.

Zoe goes out into a snow storm to find her missing brother. While out in the elements, she comes across a murderous madman and a very handsome young man, who has supernatural powers. Zoe's life is forever changed because she can't stop thinking about X, the mysterious man she met in the snow. When X returns to the Lowlands, where he resides, Zoe tries to heal from the recent loss of her father. This novel features cave exploration and is set in Montana.

It was a solid fantasy novel.

3.75/5 starts.
This book stays at the edge of Contemporary and Fantasy (Paranormal). It was strange and a page turner. Jeff Giles succeeded to create something fresh and unique. Although, something was off and I cannot put my finger on it.
When the blurb came out about this book, a lot of people - including me - thought this was a contemporary novel. Wrong. Alright, half wrong. It is so much more than that.
You might want to read this book only for its beginning and end. There is so much tension and suspense that you want to grip something tightly. For a second, I got the impression I was reading a thriller/horror novel.
There are two worlds in this book-universe: our world and the Low Lands - kind of like a hell type of dimension. Our main characters are star crossed lovers from these two worlds, Zoe and X respectively. Their life stories are very interesting so I will let the book to tell you more about them.
The good romance loses same of its credibility due to the rushed start. It was like the author knew that they are going to be together and he was not quite sure how to deal with it so it happened quite fast. Don't get me wrong some moments felt real and genuine.
I feel like I am in minority because I preferred X's part of the story even though we still need to learn more about it. Zoe was a weird character and I mixed feelings about her. In one scene I was liking her and in the next I was despising her. She was not too considered and responsible at times. I grew more sympathetic towards her at the end of the book when things started to get resolved - somewhat.
I liked that the parent figure is not brushed off and be there just for show. That mother was involved. I am so glad. Lately, I see in a lot of YA books that the parent is portrayed as a villain or uncaring or dead or simply not there. And, my dear readers, I feel frustrated because it is not a good representation of how the parent-child relationship should be. In a lot of instances, I detected myself thinking, "That is not how my relationship with my parents is." I am not saying that those instances are not real too... But as I got older, I realized these type of books can send a dangerous messages - directly or indirectly - to the younger audience. And it is not good. It took me a good junk of my life to realize that the adults in my life were also teenagers at some point. (That is a lot of time of my life since I just reached adulthood. Adulthood such a weird word to say about myself when I do not feel like and adult at all.)
I was intrigued by the other bounty hunters (Banger and Ripper). I never thought I was going to feel sympathetic towards killers. I am telling you. This book is toying with your mind forcing you to see that things are not always black or white.
As a Minor Spoiler - How the heck did those dogs are still alive by the end of this book? Don't get it wrong, I am not complaining. It is just unbelievable among other things. - End Spoiler
Overall, this book was my cup of tea. Although, something was off and I cannot put my finger on it. I am looking forward to the next installment. I recommend this for its story arc which overshadows the annoying parts. In my opinion, it is something unique because it uses things we have read before but in an unexpected combination.
Give this book a try if you feel like it is something you would like to read.

This is my sole opinion. ^_^

I would like to say thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Well color me surprised! Admittedly, I went into this one with very little prior knowledge except a synopsis that sounded interesting and a cover that was ridiculously beautiful. This turned out to be so much more than I thought it was going to be. While I was not a huge fan of the insta-love, I did appreciate the complexity of both Zoe and X. Their lives are clearly complicated and GIles does an excellent job of developing them separately as well as together that even if insta-love is not your thing (it's not mine, trust me) you believe in it through these two. While Zoe is certainly a compelling character, let's talk about X, because to me he is the star of this show. He is just so interesting and I love the back story that Giles created for him. While, really, he could be considered a conglomeration of different tropes, there is something utterly disarming and unique about him. Add that with his complex relationship with Zoe and a plot that twists and turns constantly and you really do have the recipe for success. Definitely looking forward to having this in the YA collection and sharing it with teen readers.

Thank you to Bloomsbury for sending me an early copy of The Edge of Everything.

I am on the fence about this book. Part of me adored the writing and the characters, but another part really disliked the plot. It took me a while to understand what exactly was going on, and still, I am left with some questions. Like what’s up with the whole name thing. Why is knowing someone’s name such a terrible, terrifying thing?

The other major pet peeve I encountered with The Edge of Everything is the insta-true-love. I’m a romantic at heart, and adore stories about star-crossed lovers, yet Zoe and X fell in love absurdly fast and absurdly deep. Too deep for me, the reader, to follow. And sadly, their relationship ended up boring me instead of enticing me.

The prose really is lovely, though.

I struggled to rate this book, to come up with a coherent enough review that captured my thoughts. The Edge of Everything had moments where I couldn’t stop reading, where I was sucked right into the world alongside the characters. But just as frequently I put it down, whether out of boredom or simply a lack of interest in the story. So by the end of the book, after several sections of binge-reading and moments of almost DNFing the whole thing, I had a lot of mixed feelings.

On the positive end of things, the writing is good. Giles as a way of really setting a scene (not counting the info dumps that became a tad bit annoying) in a way that both felt like an urban fantasy and a contemporary. It gave the book a different spin compared to a lot of the books I read. And the characters were solid on their own, though nothing about them stuck with me post-read.

My issues began with the pacing. Sometimes, I’d be hooked and unable to put it down. Yet for every one of these moments, which were randomly scattered throughout, there were just as many times that dragged and dragged. I love a good supernatural/paranormal story but this one just didn’t quite seem to reach that same level of interest for me as others.

Next came the insta-love. I rarely see a need for this kind of romance in any book or any genre even. I love to ship characters and if I can’t find a reason to then we have a problem. There was nothing about the romance to indicate there be a reason for them to be together, so why should I, as a reader, care? The beginning of The Edge of Everything started pretty strong and I was invested in the story but it soon turned to the romance playing a far more dominant role, which doesn’t work when the romance isn’t really built on anything in the first place.

Now I mentioned that the characters, individually, were pretty decent. Put them together and it’s a bunch of tropes with half not really serving much of a purpose. I just never connected with any of them. There was a distance between me and them that wasn’t working.

Also, brief trigger mention but there’s a short section related to animal violence and cruelty which is personally one of my only triggers and I almost put it down for that alone.

A lot was going on in this book. You get action, some (not so good) romance, mystery, and a supernatural element. But while that worked for some parts of The Edge of Everything, overall I think that perhaps it would have been nicer to see a stronger focus on fewer elements but with more development. Closer to the inch wide, mile deep idea versus the other way around.

I’m not sure if I’d really recommend this book. It received a lot of hype and, for me, it wasn’t warranted, but if that many people did enjoy it then perhaps it just wasn’t a good fit for me and others will enjoy it more. So if insta-love and uneven pacing doesn’t bother you, then I would give it a go. For me, it was an… interesting ride.

On Friday, February 3, Ridley High School was privileged to welcome Jeff Giles for a presentation in the Board Room! A longtime writer for Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone, he has just released a debut young adult novel: The Edge of Everything. The novel has received rave reviews from Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson, bestselling authors James Dashner and Melissa de la Cruz, and Ms. Pickett! Jeff Giles shared stories from his days in entertainment journalism, discussed how he found time to write a novel while working full-time, and talked about incorporating facts to make his fiction more realistic. For example, he studied “snow ghosts” in Montana and tried his hand at caving so these elements would be more believable within the pages of his novel. He also spoke about the importance of working closely with an editor in order to turn a good draft into a great book.

Over 150 students attended this special event and, as always, they were a wonderful audience. They impressed our guest of honor with thoughtful, insightful questions about his writing process. Thank you so much to Jeff Giles for making Ridley High School a stop on his book tour! And as always, THANK YOU to Children’s Book World in Haverford for making this event possible!

Going into this book, I had high expectations and hope that this wouldn't turn into a dominantly romance based story. Here we follow Zoe, and her journey to figure out who killed her neighbors and what actually happened to her dad. "X", a resident of the lowlands mysteriously shows up on the scene of a winter storm to harvest a soul. There begins a tale of coming-of-age, love, and sacrifice. As you can see from the synopsis, there's the line:

The first fifty to one hundred pages of this book were really solid, they could make me appreciate Giles as a writer. His craft is there, his descriptions are there, and up to my standards, and so I really enjoyed his writing style. Then we get to the part where the romantic subplot starts overshadowing the urban fantasy aspect of it. I had all sorts of problems with the romance.

<b><i><blockquote>For the perfect love, what would you be willing to lose?</b></i></blockquote>
First of all, it was insta-love, which as you may know is my number one pet peeve in YA. I honestly thought that in this situation, it would have been better to portray a slow burn than to jump on the first opportunity of romance. Some parts of this plot were underwhelming, and I really didn't like how they used the involvement of the father to further their own purpose. It was predictable to me at least, and I found it distasteful. Also, I found the whole romance to fall flat and be underwhelming in general.

My only favorite part about this was the sibling relationship between Zoe and Jonah. Jonah is an eight year old, who has ADHD and is a very sensitive child. Because of their single mother and mostly absent father, it has fallen on Zoe's shoulders to be the protectors of him. It's refreshing to see this healthy relationship portrayed in YA books, when usually if there's siblings, they're kind of brushed away as side characters. But truly, all of the character in this book were interacting with Jonah in one way or another.

I would like to see this worldbuilding be expanded. I honestly thought that what we knew of the "Lowlands" isn't enough to lead us on. I read this some time ago, and the only thing that I can remember is that it was like hell, but the author doesn't really describe the particular landscapes, or the rules that govern that society in them. The ending of this book does set you up right for the next installment, where I would hope that the author could develop the concept of "Lowlands."

Overall, although I could enjoy the reading experience for what it was, this just wasn't the book for me.

**<i>Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange to my honest review. All opinions are my own</i>**

4/5 Stars

I really enjoyed The Edge of Everything. It’s the story of Zoe, a teenage girl who is in the midst of dealing with the loss of her father, and X, a guy who was born in the Lowlands and is abused by the rulers into being a bounty hunter for criminal souls.
Zoe’s little brother Jonah was lost in a blizzard one night and she ends up on the hunt for him. Eventually she finds him and together they reach the closest house for shelter, a home abandoned after the owners were tragically killed. But once they reach the house and rest, a violent man named Stan shows up, and threatens to hurt them and their dogs. This is where X comes in, on a mission to collect his criminal soul and bring it to the underworld. They both have an immediate attraction to each other to give the story a nice and light romantic edge.
Jeff Giles creates both Zoe’s and X’s worlds in an interesting amount of detail and collides them together in a dynamic way throughout the book. The mountains Zoe lives in and the Lowlands in which X resides are described very well. I felt as though when the Lowlands were first mentioned, I was expecting obscurity and maybe an overdone cheesiness to the new world. Throughout reading the book, I was impressed! There was detail; order and hierarchy Giles described that gave me a full understanding of everything (although I don’t know exactly everything to the Lowlands as the book sets up for a sequel… At least I hope so!).
He really captures the character’s personalities in his writing and really keeps you equally interested in both accounts, as the chapters switch from Zoe to X. This book was not what I expected, which is a great thing. There better be a second one, Jeff.

Did not finish........sorry but I was totally bored.

I really like the idea behind this book, as well as some of the more imaginative contents. There were also a lot of analogies which I found to be quite witty and / or thoughtful. Otherwise, however, this book wasn’t really for me.

While still in the first half of this book, I could not figure out whether I couldn’t get into it because of the narrative style, or because I simply could not get attached to any of the characters. But as I continued reading, I realized that it’s a combination of the two. While, like the story itself, I liked the idea behind the characters, something about the way this book was narrated kept me from immersing myself into the world and caring for any of the personages, even though I really really wanted to.

Another factor was the dialogue (which I suppose is categorized under narrative style anyway), and how characters would take an exaggerated amount of time sometimes to get to the point, or to tell other characters something important.

I also really disliked Zoe, spending the first few chapters growling and shaking my head at her actions. X, on the other hand, I found to the likeable for the most part, and I would not mind reading more about him. The only downside to his character, in fact, was the insta-love he shares with Zoe. I am not a believer of love at first sight, and this will definitely have affected how I experienced this book.

Overall, it was an alright book, and I have noticed that many people loved it to pieces (and many who have yet to read it will likely love it as well). As for me, I left the experience disappointed, and unsure as to whether I will read the sequel when it’s released, or not.

with novels where the male love interest repeatedly “saves” the girl from harm. In this book, even though Zoe is strong and capable, she’s still saved by X multiple times. It’s such a common trope now, and it’s another one that really bothers me.

The story is extremely fast-paced and exciting, and the concept is really unique. The whole backstory of X and his friends from the Lowlands is something I’ve never seen done in a book before, and that’s truly the best part of this book.

The characterization and relationships in this novel (apart from the insta-love) were also spot on. Zoe’s relationship with her brother and mother was such a rewarding interaction because you could see they deeply cared for each other and were close to each other. In a lot of young adult books, the parents are absent for a lot of the time, but that wasn’t the case here. Zoe’s relationship with her family and friends is extremely important. Her relationship with her best friend was also really perfect.

I enjoyed the writing for the most part. Jeff Giles made the decision to include recent social media trends in his novel (Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram), and that’s not something I’d ever do if I wrote a book because it dates a novel, but I understand why he chose to do it and it didn’t bother me a lot. The writing is simple, but some of the descriptions were lovely.

Overall, this is a really solid start to a series. I think it will do well, but I will most likely not be continuing with the series because I never felt any strong connection to the characters or the story. However, if you’re a fan of young adult fantasy/romances and the premise sounds interesting, I definitely recommend you read it.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This has affected my review in no way.

This cover is highly misleading because I didn't pay attention to the synopsis and just started reading I figured I had stumbled on a YA Contemporary novel. Newp. NEWP!

This is not a YA-Contemporary, it's a fantasy. A fantasy that I'm having a hard time rating, but I think a 3 will do it justice.

Zoe lives with her mom and little brother, Jonah and they're still recovering after their father died suddenly from a caving incident. Strange things begin to happen when her neighbors go missing and on a particularly bad snow storm a creepy man shows up, but much to Zoe and Jonah's surprise is a heroic guy, who is mysterious and well...he glows. He also saves Zoe and Jonah from being killed.

This book is so strange, I felt like I was reading two different books that had common factors. When I read Zoe's half I felt like I was reading a true YA Contemporary - a girl who lost her dad and she's being raised by a single mom. I wasn't keen on Zoe, she was whiny, superficial and just outright mean to her little brother at times.

X is the mysterious glowing guy who shows up, turns out he's a bounty hunter from the Lowlands of Hell. He becomes infected with the sins and transgressions of his bounty which compels him to retrieve their souls. His half of the story was great - I enjoyed him, there was a story and a whole new world behind him, but I also felt like there were times I didn't have enough questions answered.

Romance? Yes, there is romance in here and it made me facepalm with how fast they were suddenly, like, totally, in love with one another. I think it was two or three days and it wasn't an "I think I love you," it was an "I will come back to you, NO MATTER WHAT MY LOVE!" kind of love. I would have liked to see more developed by way of chemistry, their relationship and what actually drove X to do what he did, not just because he was head over heels for a girl he just met.

Altogether it was a quick read, was it fun? I enjoyed X's story, but sadly I couldn't get into Zoe's and I cannot help but feel it was due to her personality. As I said before, it was like reading two separate stories and at one point I felt an entire disconnect from the Bountyhunter aspect, too.

I will say this, if you are a YA-Contemporary reader then I think this would be the perfect book to transition yourself into the fantasy genre because it does kind of bridge the gap between them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book but also had a couple problems that aren't really big issues but just little things that bothered me. First the concept of the lowlands was so incredibly interesting to me. It is so dark and twisted. I loved learning more about how it worked. I also really loved X as a character and can't wait to see how his story continues in this series. He was adorable and you really see him become a new person through this story. This was a really fast read. I easily flew through it and wanted to keep reading to see what happened next. The only issues I really had was, one, I was left with a lot of questions that while I know some will be answered in future books there were some that I think could've at least been brought up in this first book. Two, while I loved Zoe, the way she talked through out the beginning of the story was very "teen talk" it just seemed to be trying to hard to make her seem like a teen. Again though I have those issues I still can't wait to see what happens next and enjoyed the plot of this book.