Book Review

Never-Contented Things by Sarah Porter

My day was very productive until I picked up Never-Contented Things, planning to read just a few pages.That concluded the day’s productivity. I’m not saying that this book is perfect but I am sure as heck saying that it is gripping. This is NOT a romance. It’s really good YA Urban Fantasy/Fae Horror, with a really good fledgling romance in it.

Ksenia and Josh are foster siblings. They met in foster care when Josh was ten and Ksenia was twelve and have been in the same home ever since. Now Josh has just turned sixteen and Ksenia is a few days away from eighteen, the year when she’s considered to be an adult and leaves the foster care system. Their foster parents are concerned that Ksenia and Josh have an unhealthy relationship (the words “codependent” and “enmeshed” come to mind) but the siblings, who craved stability for so many years before they met, insist that they have to always be together.

Ksenia and Josh attend a party in the woods near their house. Josh runs off with a good-looking boy and Ksenia drinks a sips of wine and faints. When she wakes up, Josh is missing. He reappears but something seems…off, and Ksenia realizes that she is going to have fight for the souls and the lives of Josh, her friend Lexi, and herself.

This book manages to be a huge page-turner without sacrificing a slow build. That slow build, the gradual realization that everything is WRONG and that everything may, in fact, be lethal is loaded with dread without ever losing momentum.

Here’s a sample of the writing. I’m cutting a lot out to give you just the flavor (cuts marked by ellipsis). TW for gore. It starts when Ksenia sees one of the people who kidnapped Josh and tells him that Josh “won’t take kindly” to her murdering him, with the clear implication that she wants to. Ksenia is the narrator in this section (different chapters have different narrators).

“It’s the thought that counts, Ksenia…So we can both take my murder for already accomplished, the blood long since swallowed by the earth, roses bursting on the spot. And we can say you’ve served out your long years in prison, and at last been freed, and now we’ve met again.”

I’d thought at first he might be in high school or college, a freshman at most. Then I thought, no, older than that. But now I got the sense that both guesses were way off. In the light his skin had an ashy, faceted look, not youthful at all…Up close I could see that his eyes were an unnaturally bright, pale green, as sour as stomach acid.

“That’s all behind us now. We can meet as old friends, and recall the time I stole your brother from you, albeit temporarily, and how you gouged out my eyes with a broken bottle to avenge him. We can laugh about it together, remembering how your hands were gloved in gore up to the elbows. Wax nostalgic as the hours wear on; oh Ksenia, what a little savage you once were!…

He bent in and kissed me on the cheek…the feeling of his lips stayed with me. A cool, dry hush, hushon the skin that shrieked and burned.

That’s good stuff! The use of the word “faceted” and the elegant, awful “gloved in gore.” That mix of hypnotic, repulsive, and just “off,” the weird, clever conversation that could mean many different things, the contradictory description of the kiss that nevertheless makes perfect sense. That’s some good horrific Fae shit right there. This isn’t the kind of story where one special member of the Fae is super hot and just needs the love of a good woman. This is the Unseelie Court in all its awfulness and elegance (“Unseelie” refers in British Isle folklore to, how I can put it without offending them…Fairy Folk who are not benevolent).

A lot of this story is about boundaries and the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Ksenia loves Josh as a brother and Josh is in love with Ksenia romantically to the point of obsession. Ksenia’s love for Josh makes it difficult for her to set boundaries with him and makes it difficult for her to see him clearly or to face consequences for his actions (she’s ferociously protective). Josh loves Ksenia possessively, certain that he can make her return his romantic/sexual love. He’s controlling in the “I’m willing to go to any lengths to make you stay with me” kind of way. The relationship between the foster siblings is NOT the romance I allude to at the start of this review. It is toxic and portrayed as such.

As a foil, we have Lexie, who loves Ksenia both as a friend and romantically. Lexie is not focused on convincing Ksenia to like her or to love her. She’s focused on supporting Ksenia as Ksenia makes a series of choices. As she tells Josh:

I want Ksenia to choose the direction of her own life, whatever that is. I want her to have the full range of possibilities. And if you don’twant those possibilities for her, I’d say your love isn’t worth much.

The romance between Ksenia and Lexie is a tiny, fragile little thing that doesn’t get room to develop by the end of the book. I liked it that instead of making them fall into each other’s arms, the book acknowledges that they will have to define and refine their relationship when they have some room to breathe.

This is a horror urban fantasy, and some parts are very horrible (TW for children in peril and for the abuse of illusionary animals in one scene). This is definitely for older teens and adults, high school and up, due to graphic violence, general creepiness, and subject matter. As far as I know, it’s a stand alone.

The parts that stick in my mind are about the importance of nurture, self-acceptance and healing, empathy, and freedom. The world of the Fae thrives on lies and crumbles on truth, which means that Ksenia has to face up to some painful emotional truths. But those truths allow her to grow, and making decisions based on reality, as opposed to illusion, deceit and manipulation, allows her to be free. It’s a beautiful book.

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Never-Contented Things by Sarah Porter

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  1. Kate K.F. says:

    Thank you for the review, I was already interested in this because I liked her other book.

    If you haven’t read it before, I highly recommend Vassa in the Night by the same author. Its a retelling of one of the Baba Yaga fairy tales but Baba Yaga owns a convenience store in Brooklyn and has three sisters at the heart of it. Porter is really good at writing relationships and weird and realistic together.

  2. I’m glad to see that another reviewer enjoyed this one. I’ve seen so many DNF and negative reviews and I really enjoyed it. A lot of moments, like you said, will definitely be sticking with me for a long time. The imagery was so vivid.

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