Saving Everest is a novel that dances that contains several massive issues; they are addressed and/or resolved in a haphazard manner. The novel begins with everyone in school hearing rumors of popular student Everest's attempted suicide, an occurrence that touches upon all subsequent events in this novel. Ostracized by his friends and other students who look to the cool kids for behavioral clues, Everest is at first wary when Beverley, the sole black girl in the school, decides to befriend him. Beverley goes from being completely ignored by everyone in the school to spurring all sorts of characters to change in positive ways. She's almost Pollyanna-ish, and most of the awful behavior that she is subjected to in this novel slides right off her back. While a lot of what happens in this novel could be described as cute, it left me with a lot more questions than answers.

What is this town's policy on truancy?
How about child abandonment?
Why are people racist in one scene and then totally okay with characters of color later?

Overall, I found this to be a decent but largely uneven novel.

This had a lot of potential, and I was sure I would just love it but it just wasn't for me.

Bev & Ev, were cute but not enough so to save the pacing of this story.

I was lucky enough to read this ARC and thoroughly enjoyed it! It dealt with some sensitive issues very honestly and with great empathy. It was very true to life and represented the serious issues that young people face today with the pressures that society puts on them. I would highly recommend this book and would definitely read more by this author.

Getting into a New Adult/Young Adult story always takes a bit of recalibration in all senses of the word, though I do go into a read like this from time to time.

‘Saving Everest’ got me curious and yes, it delves into the heavy angst bit that seems to be the pre-requisite of such books these days along with the weightier topics of depression and suicide, familial fractures and the difficult routes out of these states.

Essentially, there are no surprises in here: the blurb is as the story goes and while I can respect the way friendship and emotive teen issues resonate with YA readers, this didn’t do much for me at all.

I do have a tendency to get antsy with pages after pages of internal monologues or with scenes that might or might not lead anywhere plot-wise; flipping through the pages as Sky Chase builds a slow burn between Beverly and Everest got me frustrated only because I couldn’t get up the anticipation to what was coming. There is barely a buildup between the protagonists through a whopping few hundred pages—a very mild romance best describes the story of two young people helping each other grow and change—and sort of ends as it fizzles out unsatisfactorily. My mistake perhaps, then, was to have gone through this book thinking it was categorised as a NA or YA romance when it didn’t quite feel like one.

Again, ‘Saving Everest’ is in no way badly written or badly handled technically. My reason for finding it unremarkable has to do with my own expectations and the  literary distance that I’ve travelled since my YA days, where going back is more than a little difficult right now.