MINI REVIEW: EVERLASTING APPLE

Want a bite?...

To start off, I honestly cannot remember if I received a copy of this story for free, bought it, won it, or just picked it up during a promotion. It's been sitting on my Kindle for a long time now and since I wasn't really loving my main read at the moment, I decided to give myself a break with this piece of short fiction.

3/5 Overall, this provided the fun little break that I was hoping for. It's creative, fast paced, and I appreciated how it was split up into chapters even though it was already so short.

The premise is an interesting one as it puts the poison apple (maybe from Snow White, maybe not, the parallels are evident at least) to center stage. The apple is far more powerful than you might guess though, taking on a sort of supernatural sentience with some surprising powers that manifest gradually throughout the book. There is a family line tasked with watching over it since it cannot be left unattended and it cannot be destroyed. I found the idea of turning the apple itself into such a compelling character to be an awesome one.

What held things back for me a little was simply how I felt as though this piece could have, and perhaps should have, been a bit longer. There's a lot going on and things start to get pretty wild starting at roughly the 50% mark of the story where a LOT is thrown at you and not really explained. There is also sort of a main character switch at one point which I found to be disorienting. Without getting into spoilers, I also found the ending to be a bit confusing as well as somewhat abrupt.

I think this easily could have been at least a novella with some additional scenes, flashbacks, or conversations to flesh out some of the genuinely interesting ideas presented. That said, I really did enjoy this for what it is and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's maybe finding their current read a to be a slog, is in between larger books, or hasn't read anything in a while and just needs that quick hit to get back into the swing of things. I hope more people give this one a chance since it really is a quick and entertaining read. I think I have one or two other short pieces by this author so I definitely plan on taking a look at those at some point.

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