The Edge Of Everything is a love story made in hell

The YA romantic novel, The Edge of Everything, written by Jeff Giles and published in March 2016, is about a girl named Zoe who is coping with her father´s death. Her life changes when she meets X, a bounty hunter from the Lowlands (a version of hell where the bounty hunter feels deliverance through physical pain and suffering). X and Zoe can’t forget each other and X starts to do everything in his power to fight against a unknown power which guides the Lowlands and to escape.

The characters are well described which helps get you hooked. Zoe, for example, is a normal teenager with a very bright character who is annoyed by her little brother. She becomes even more relatable to our world when she uses modern social media platforms like Instagram. However, actually there is a big issue about the using of the social media platforms which this book is showing us. After Zoe posted a picture, the police uses it to put Zoe in a awkward position, which shows us that we shouldn’t just post everything on the internet without thinking.

X is a boy around 20 years old who is a little bit shy in his contact with girls but his mysterious character covers that. He lives in something that you could call a jail. He has two good friends: his teacher who taught him how to fight and catch evil people from the real world is one friend; the other is actually one of the evil people he caught.

This book includes both action and romance. In my opinion, the book can be read in two ways: in the event you don’t like love stories, you can very well just focus on the action; or, vice versa. Otherwise, both the love story and the action parts are balanced and at most times they will both happen in the same moment.

Reading this book had ups and downs: I was hooked from the first few pages, but after page 30 to 40 my level of interest dropped. However, it was just a short low point. After that, the tension is kept high throughout.

The love story of the book is not unique. It is actually very standard: two people fall in love with each other but they can’t live together because one of the two has a different public status or one is in danger when he/she is seen by someone else. On the other hand, the action portions of this book are completely unique to make up for this. It was the one thing in this book which caught me the most because it had a lot of tension in these parts and I always wanted to know what happens next.

The title fits well for this book. Especially if you don’t believe in an afterlife, because in almost every scene, there’s a chance that someone dies or loses family members. For example, right at the beginning when Zoe’s brother goes missing in the snowstorm and Zoe goes out with a thin coat to find her brother, there is a high chance that either Zoe or her brother will freeze to death; likewise a couple pages later when they were attacked by a stranger.

This was a well-written and exciting book with two story lines, both containing plenty of tension. This book is very relatable to the real world and and you’ll automatically compare it with your own experience and life as teenager. I think it’s a good choice to read and I’m already excited to read the second book The Brink of Darkness.