Review: Firstlife - Gena Showalter

 

Review: Firstlife - Book #1 Everlife Series - Gena Showalter - February 2016

Normally Gena Showalter has written supernatural/paranormal type books, so when I discovered that she had written a dystopian of sorts I knew I had to read it as I love this type of sub-genre where it talks about the afterlife and reincarnations. In Firstlife, we discover a society where the people are given two choices - to sign which will allow them after their first death to live again in a society of their choice. There is the Myriads and the Troikans. For those who remain unsigned , after they die they go to the outer realms to a place called The Many Ends which is a limbo of in-betweeness and seen as the rough place to be and live out their second life. Tenley aka Ten Lockwood's family are high up in the Myriad's food chain and so it was assumed that she would happily sign with them. However Tenley refused to sign any parties and her family threw her to the wolves by placing her inside an insane asylum where they will try and break Ten by making her choose. Her strength and ability to not be broken as come to the attention of both parties and they both want her for their own reasonings as their was a prophecy about someone who held the right amount of light and darkness - had a balance that could make one party better than the other.  So both parties send in a Labourer to try and get her to sign, but what happens when she starts to fall for one of the Labourers and sees the other as her new best friend . During the novel as well, we read as Ten's Aunt stars as Loony Lina and it gets us thinking about Ten's past life and whether she has in fact been fused with a previous generation . One of my favourite parts about this book was the letter/email correspondence between the Labourers and their superiors . At first glance, Firstlife looks like a hard and long read as it does sit at over 500+ pages long, but it is one of those stories - a bit like Anna Todd's After series, where once you get stuck into it- the pages just flip on by and as you turn the last page - you are suprised as you read the book quicker than you thought. As a fast reader myself, it normally takes me 1-2 hours to read a book but Firstlife due to the size took me about 3-4 hours.  The first 3/4 of the book was exciting however I found the last 1/4 start to drag, I am however looking forward to reading book #2 as would love to hopefully discover more about Tenley's past.