Book Review: Never

　
Last night, I finished reading a book called Never, by J. Grace Pennington.

The writing style of the book just blew me away. I mean, I had high expectations for Never to begin with, and I was still pleasantly surprised by what I read. The characters were vivid and three-dimensional, the storyline was exciting, and there were plenty of plot twists along the way to keep you guessing.

I'm not going to give anything away, but the basic plot goes like this—Travis and Ross Hamilton are brothers who work on a ranch that their father left them when he passed away. Travis is bookish, and wants to become a teacher, and Ross supports him in that endeavour.
Everything goes wrong when a murder is committed in town... and all evidence points to Travis as the killer.
He is sentenced to a certain amount of years of labor in the Dead Mines, which is basically a prison, only much worse.

But all is not what it seems in the Mines, or in the small town of Spencervale, for that matter.

I'm not going to tell you anymore, because let's face it—if you haven't read this book yet, you really should. But enough of my excited ranting; I'll give a more organized and neutral review now for those of you who prefer that to my rambling.

The book has pros and cons as well; every book does. I'll give the pros first, because there are more of them.
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Pros:
- The characters are vibrant and believable; much more so than most characters in other books that are being published these days. They have strengths and they have weaknesses. They have fears and they have doubts. Just like everybody does.

- The writing style is excellent. There aren't many people who can switch from two different points of view (Ross to Travis, in this particular book) without making a mistake or two. But Miss Pennington did it perfectly. She also did a very good job of switching POVs at cliffhangars, which made me read faster to get to the other character's POV to see what happened to them.

- The ending is unexpected. Now, there is information building up to the climax that should tell you how it's going to end, but it still surprised me all the same.
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Okay, now for cons. I only found one or two cons for the book, if I'm going to be completely honest.

Cons:
- There were a few spelling and punctuation mistakes in the book. Not many, but there were some there. Nothing too bad; and probably nothing that normal people would have noticed. I, however, am not normal and nitpick about every little bit of punctuation I come across.
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Now, see, what did I tell you? I've been sitting here nigh on ten minutes, and that's the only con I could come up with. I'm not exaggerating either—I'm making the effort to be completely honest in this review, so what I say is what I think.

So, let me see... I don't think there's much more I have to say. This is a book that would have normally taken me only one night to read, except I've been insanely busy lately, so it took me a few weeks.

If you have any questions about the book, let me know and I'll answer them!

God bless, love and peace,

Theodora