This is a bit of a weird one. At its most basic, think Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince series, but with a funky modern day and sci-fi twist on it. It follows the story of two adopted siblings- Ksenia and Josh- whose desire not to be moved apart from each other plunges them into a dark and twisted world.
I’ll be honest: this was probably a bit too out there for me. It’s messy, it’s cruel and the things that happen between the pages here are genuinely disturbing. At one point, you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t; your vision of reality is warped. However, the characters do grow. It’s a story of redemption and finding your way, and choosing who to love. However, it’s probably a tad too much for me.

Let me start by saying that I am obsessed with anything about the Fae/Faeries. Very obsessed. And I needed something to read while waiting for the next book in the Folk of the Air series. This one bridged that gap perfectly, and the best part? It's a Stand-a-lone! That means no waiting on the next book!!

Overall it's a great book of the perfect length (not too long, not too short).

I tried my best to get through this book on several occasions and just could not. The story would not stay with me and no matter what I tried I could not seem to move forward. The characters were not memorable and the world that was created was not depicted well.

I did enjoy some aspects of this book. It was very horrory which I did like. Very creepy!! I did not enjoy the incesty-abusive relationship or rapey-ness though.

DNF - Apologies but I was unable to read Never-Contented Things. I tried multiple times, both before and after publication, to get into this story but even in the initial chapters there was something quite unsettling about the narrative and the relationship between the two siblings creeped me out.

Thank you for the opportunity to read.

I've given a star rating based on my experience of the novel from what I read, as NetGalley requires a rating to publish a review.

Never-Contended Things is a dark contemporary fantasy involving faeries and foster siblings, and is disturbing to read but that just made me like it all the more. The book's central message is that no matter what you go through in life, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and you can heal. The book is uncomfortable for a reason, which I don't think many reviewers seem to understand.

It's a hard book to read, but if you can persevere it's definitely worth it. Ksenia's character arc is one of the best I've read in a long while. She starts off being very much in denial, and hating herself -- believing she can never be loved properly. But by the end, she is learning that she deserves to be happy.

I stopped and started this book multiple times and truly tried to get into it, however the writing style and the mannerisms of the characters was just not something that I could connect with.

It was more magical realism than I was expecting and not as much fantasy as I was hoping for.

This is a dark, creepy book. It's not horror but it's skirting the line. While this is clearly written in the tone of YA/Teen it is maybe only appropriate for about 15+ due to the sex scenes and gore. Sarah Porter takes us into the realm of the Fae (without actually ever referencing fairies) that is far from all happy and delightful. Some things are easy: obtaining food, having clothing, no money needed, etc. While other things are harder: no real people, creepy fairies, mini versions of yourself, crumbling infrastructure, etc. The overall morale is quite simple, even if the story itself is complex, in order to get something you must give something. Be careful that what you're getting is worth that is being sacrificed.
Yes it's true some believe there is incest in this book. Read #10 below for more

Tips to Reading Never-Contented Things
I'm gonna give a list of tips. These are things that I found I had to accept or make my brain ignore in order to get a bit of enjoyment out of Porter's novel.
1) Fairies exist. They will not be called fairies (and they are clearly evil).
2) Remember the standard fairy rule: never eat or drink while in the Fae realm.
3) Stop thinking you know what will happen and just go with it. This story is teens making decisions and (of course) those decisions may not always be logical or make sense to you as the reader. Remember being a teen is confusing.
4) Yes teens have sex. If you'd like to live in a world of ignorance leave this book behind.
5) Children are creepy and vulnerable.
6) You might want to keep the lights on while you read this.
7) Little mini gremlins (as I called them in my head) are clever. Not weird or stupid; but clever.
8) Just because it's obvious what is happening to us doesn't mean our characters see the whole picture.
9) This is a fictional story with magic. Therefore anything can happen.
10) Finally and the most important; FOSTER SIBLINGS BEING ATTRACTED TO ONE ANOTHER IS NOT INCEST!!! They met at 11 and 14. This is NOT incest at all. They are not blood related. They merely live in the same house. You may find it awkward or weird (and you're supposed to) but it doesn't make it wrong, illegal and is technically not inappropriate. They are just two teens, like any other, that met each other as teens. Sorry to yell but it infuriates me that people are condemning this book because a core plot point is incest. It's not incest as there is zero blood relation!

Choosing Who To Love
Even were the attraction between our two leading teens incestual it would be okay to be in this book. Why? Because it's fiction. You may not want to read it and that's fine. Then put it down. One of my favourite books as a teen was Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. Partially because it's so horrifying but also because it made the point that you don't choose who to love. You just fall in love. It helped 14 year old me understand that the world is messed up, and as we humans live in this weird world, so too can our desires be explainable. It doesn't make us bad people; it's merely a complication that we have to deal with as we (ourselves) deem appropriate. We may need to follow a few laws in place for our own protection (and that of future offspring) but that doesn't mean that we are fundamentally bad people.

Writing Style
This likely would have been a higher rating had the writing style been a little smoother. At times Never-Contented Things felt disjointed. Like there were chunks of the story missing. I also felt that too much was revealed too soon. It was very obvious to me from the get-go what was happening. I'd have liked a little more mystery to the events transpiring and subtle foreshadows. Readers are smart (yes even teenagers) and can sort certain things out in their mind. In fact many readers love to have ah-ha moments that have pieces falling into place perfectly. But you can't have an ah-ha moment if you've known what's happening all along.

Overall
The idea here is not necessarily new. Fae realms and trapping humans has long been a fundamental piece of most fairy stories. What's unique here is the driver that leads our characters to decide to act the way they do. One of those pieces is the unique relationship between our two lead foster kids. It would have helped understand their co-dependent relationship had there been more back story on where they came from and how they got to the foster home where they met. I also felt like no time was given to the foster parents who (obviously) have an influence on the teens and setting rules. More early development of all our characters (before any fairies show up) would have been great.
My favourite part of all is the little nod to traditional fairy stories by making one of the most evil of them named 'Unseelie'. This is the name commonly used to describe the lower or underground or evil Fae court. It was perfect and an early tip off to just how far these crazy fairies might be willing to go.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

Never-Contented Things by Sarah Porter

4.25 stars

Ksenia and Josh are the odd foster kids who are a little two close for people who are being raised as siblings. When they encounter a Prince and his fairy in the forest where they usually drink and party, they are sucked into a dark and layered world of cruelty. Josh goes missing and Ksenia must pick up the pieces of his leaving. Lexie, their best friend, has to figure out what is going on and enter the dark world of the faeries to save her friends. Never-Contented Things is based off of the poem “The Goblin Market” and if you know anything about that the poem there is sexual fruit things, sister incest, and possible antisemitism. I read the poem for the first-time semester and was scarred by it. Not in a bad way, but I’m still not sure psychologically where I stand with the poem. Never-Contented Things seems to garner the same reaction from reviewers that “The Goblin Market” did with me, but I’ll be honest once I got to Lexie’s POV in this novel I was sold and ate this book as quickly as one who happens upon goblin fruit. I was sucked into this world and its strangely dark oddities. I would categorize this as horror fantasy. It’s on the more adult side of the YA spectrum, but it definitely has some promise to stand apart from the usual YA fantasy. It’s dark and creepy. The writing has a lot of stilted moments. Ksenia’s POV for the first portion of this novel is off-center and made me feel a little uncertain if I wanted to continue reading. I’m glad that I did because as much as I toed the line of DNFing at the first 25% once I got to Lexie’s POV, I saw where Porter was going with this story plot wise and was immediately impressed. Porter has a fantastic imagination that lends to a creepy and horrifying fairy story that will leave the reader unsettled. I was impressed with how once this story found it’s footing it became a stellar and definitely impressive tale.


Whimsical Writing Scale: 4

The characters in this novel seem to be where people have the most problem. Particularly in regards to the representation of certain communities, but as I don’t belong to those groups of marginalized people I won’t speak on their behalf and I’ll be discussing the characters as how I interacted and engaged with them (see OWNvoices reviews for more representation commentary).
Ksenia is an odd duck. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I liked her androgynous character and her ambiguity of gender, but she was not always the most engaging to interact with and then she would suddenly become the most fun to follow. That’s what I mean by as an odd duck. I was going back and forth in a tug-of-war, but once I got to the final portion, I was a definite fan of where the story was going for her.
Lexie is my favorite of all the characters we follow. She has the best characterization and development of plot. I enjoyed how Porter’s writing of her and the plot was gripping. Lexie offers a layer of friendship, loyalty, determination, and love in a story that is wracked with obsession and manipulation.


Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: Ksenia- 3.5 Lexie- 4.75

The Villain-Josh would be easy to brand the villain, but he is a young boy with no comprehension of the extensity of his actions. What he does is despicable and absolutely disgusting in regards to human life, but he is young and it is obvious that he is not grounded in reality which comes from trauma and abandonment issues. I didn’t like him at all. In fact, I hated him, but I also realize that he’s a kid and doesn’t deserve to be hung by his toes (nobody deserves that).
The real villains here are the faeries. Those are some unsettling creatures. No, thank you. They are led by Prince who has a monopoly on the fae people and is obsessed with spreading his world into the human world. He creates changelings out of straw and makes dead bodies to trick people into believing that the humans have died as he forces them to live in his cruel world. We also have a chapter from Unselle, a faerie with high-rank in the Prince’s command. She is unsettling. The villains are definitely creepy and I didn’t want to encounter them. They were kind of my favorite thing about this novel as well as the creepy and unsettling world they inhabit.


Villain Scale: 4.5

This novel isn’t perfect. I think many will be unimpressed and have issues with it. There is a lot of blurred lines and issues, but when I think of how messed up “The Goblin Market” is I can’t be mad. It’s a fantastic twist on the tale and I’m impressed. It wasn’t as amazing as I thought it would be and it’s not as bad as most of the people who DNFed it say it is. I’m glad I read it because I had a lot of fun. If you are looking for a dark YA fantasy with questionable morals and horrifying creatures then this one is for you. (It worked for me.)


Plotastic Scale: 4

Cover Thoughts: I love this cover. It freaks me out, but it’s kind of brilliant in design.

Thank you, Netgalley and Tor Teen, for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Really nice!! It reminded me a lot of Labyrinth, sadly it sticked a lot to normal "YA tropes", and the story was quite familiar, however the whole incest situation was kinda offputting

I wanted to love this book. I really did. Any sort of dark urban fantasy involving faeries is usually my cup of tea. But as much as I tried getting through this one, it was too weird even for me. The unhealthy relationship between Ksenia and Josh might have been well written, I'm not a great judge for that, but I wasn't feeling it and it's not the kind of story I enjoy reading personally. I had hoped this would give me some of those weird fantasy Labyrinth vibes as I've seen others compare the two, but it was just messy. Nothing made sense. The story was all over the place. There was a LOT of discussion surrounding incest. Definitely not enough faeries. And just. . . yeah, I couldn't get through it. DNF at 41%

Because I DNFed this title, I will not be formally reviewing it on my blog.

Frankly, Never-Contented Things is a significant disappointment. Sarah Porter's version of the cruelty of the Fae towards humans is neither original nor good. The heroes are weak, and the villains are boring. Ksenia spends so much time defending her relationship with Josh to an invisible audience that the rest of the story feels like an afterthought. As such, those elements Ms. Porter intends to be horrifying are dull, and the entire story lacks excitement. I found myself severely detached while reading it, not caught up in any character's story enough to warrant my full attention. I finished it in the off-chance it got better and because I still really like the cover. It is not one I would recommend to others though. If you want stories about the Fae, stick with Holly Black, Julie Kagawa, Melissa Marr, or Sarah J. Maas.

A creepy haunting story thats stays with you. Fans of holly black would enjoy this book. Fast paced story in a new creepy fairy world.

Unfortunately this book just really wasn’t for me. I really tried but it seemed full of tropes...which I normally don’t mind, but they weren’t even done originally or well. I thought the dialogue was awkward and didn’t care about the characters at all. The world wasn’t really unique and I just could not get into the writing style.

Thank you netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Sadly I don't think that this book was for me, I didn't really enjoy the story, and the dialogue just wasn't for me.

I had to DNF this at 30%. I really tried to push through but I really couldn't get past the relationship between Ksenia and her foster brother Josh. Granted I don't know whether that was going to be a thing throughout the book but out still didn't sit well with me. Once I Kind of got into the writing and the weirdness of the other world the main character was now in the book changed point of views to a different character still in the real world which was a last straw for me. Also i really don't feel like the cover matched the contents of the book.

This book was messy and extremely hard to get through. It's definitely unique in that way. Props for queer characters!

I hate not loving a book that I was extremely looking forward too. This story was just not my cup of tea.

Looking at it from a distance this is a story I would love. The bones of the story are there. Dark Fey, crazy cringe worthy love addiction, and diverse characters. When you put all the authors words (and there are a lot of words) together the story just doesn't flow right. Her words were too slow for this book that screamed to be fast paced. The things I wanted to know about are skipped over and instead we get long very detailed descriptions of things that just didn't matter to the plot. I felt like the author chose to use 30 words when a simple 5 would have worked and the story would have moved. As it was this 361 page book took me 6 days to read and I read each and every day. It was just that tough to get through.

I did like the Fey part of the story, but we get so little of it that after reading I was left with so many questions. It honestly felt like the author wanted to write a book about a dark foster sibling relationship, but threw in a few Fey things to grab a different set of readers. It was very disappointing.

I expected so much more from this book. I really wanted to love it, but in the end it was just way too slow, way too wordy, and not enough Fey for me.

Here’s my first DNF of the year and it sucks because I was really excited to read this book. I usually love books with faeries, but not this time around. As I was reading this I found myself looking at the percentage read and cringing because I had so much left to read and shortly after that I decided it wasn’t worth continuing and here’s why.

The characters felt like the usual edgy teens that often feature in the more urban fantasy leaning faerie stories which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I mean, in the stories faeries go for weirdly beautiful, the talented, the artistic so Ksenia (Kezzer) and Josh fit that perfectly. They’re foster kids and have been with the same family for years, though they themselves aren’t related. They remind me of the alt-emo crowd from high school and I can’t shake the image of Ksenia as the girl version of the guy from A Clockwork Orange. The characters are memorable for sure, but they’re relationship was weird.

As I mentioned, they’re unrelated foster children BUT they’re secretly in love. It was weirdly incestuous despite them not actually being related. Total put-off. I kept thinking maybe it would get better, but it did not. Somehow Jaime and Cersei from GoT was less weird than this – perhaps because of the setting and the precedent among royal families.

Also, this may seem like a small, petty thing, but I HATE THE NICKNAME KEZZER. It’s like nails on a chalkboard and every time I read it I cringed. It’s like the nickname a drug dealer gave themselves to sound tough, but he’s really a skinny, pale dude that really needs to shave off his pathetic excuse for a moustache and get a life.

And lastly, the POV shifted to that of Josh and Kezzer’s friend Lexi. I thought there was hope for the book at that point, but I didn’t like her either. Her characterization felt forced and at that point I decided enough was enough. I have too many books in my TBR that I want to read and there wasn’t a good reason to continue wasting my time with this one. I read 40% of the book, so I definitely gave it a fair chance but it wasn’t meant to be!

I was so pumped to read this book, because lately I’ve been so obsessed with faeries and anything that have to do with them, so when I knew that this book was about faeries I immediately added it to my TBR, and it became one of my most anticipated releases of this year, and I have to say that it was so much different from what I expected.

The thing about this book was that when I initially picked it up, I expected a story like The Cruel Prince, and I ended up pretty disappointed because it had nothing to do with it. In fact, it was entirely different. Though this book had very wicked faeries in it, it was more focused on the two main characters’ relationship and the toxicity of that love, and how these two characters grew throughout the story, and I really enjoyed that.

However, I had a lot of issues with the writing. There was something about this particular author’s writing that made me feel disconnected to the story, and though I was actually enjoying reading about these characters, I was engaged enough with it to fully love it. There was a big difference between the dialogues and the descriptions, and that made the characters at times seemed pretty juvenile, because even though the descriptions were flushed and creepy and so atmospheric, the dialogues were so plain and awkward, and even forced at times, and that created a huge gap between those two things, and that was one of the reasons why I lowered my rating.

Still, I adored our female protagonist. I couldn’t care less about the male character, but I think that our main character was so complex and interesting, and had such a great character arc and evolution throughout the story that even though there were things I didn’t enjoy, I was still interested in continuing with the book because of her.

Overall, this book had its pros and its cons. The characters and their interactions and relationships in the book were very complex and real, but at the same time the writing was a bit odd and I feel we didn’t get a lot of information about the faerie or the fae world, and that was one of the things that I was the most intrigued about.