The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow Review: Yearning Across A Time Loop That Made Me Ugly Cry

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Bookish Goblin Team

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Published

April 25, 2026

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The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow follows Owen Mallory, a scholar and war veteran recovering from trauma in the legendary kingdom of Dominion. He’s obsessed with the lady-knight Una Everlasting, the legendary hero whose story is the bedrock of Dominion itself. When a never-before-seen tome called The Death of Una Everlasting lands in his lap, Owen thinks he’s found his calling. What he’s actually found is a centuries-old conspiracy architected by a wicked queen, and he and Una are forced to loop back through time again and again to rewrite her story so Dominion can keep being what it is today.

This was my first Alix E. Harrow book and it singlehandedly became my favorite book of 2026 and destroyed me. I ugly cried multiple times. The twists flabbergasted me every time I got bombarded by them, which is a lot. So unconventional, so daring, written with the most ethereal prose I’ve ever read. I’m still bruised from this book and I won’t be moving on anytime soon.

If you came for compelling romance but wanted it to come with exceptional yearning and real plot, clear your schedule. This book has something to say. It’s not a trope-stitched fantasy romance with the hint of a plot just to fill pages.

Read our full summary and review of The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow below. This post contains spoilers.

The Everlasting

Alix E. Harrow
Rating 5/5
Spice Level 3/5
Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romantasy, Adult, Historical
Published: October 28, 2025
Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Starling House, Alix E. Harrow, comes a moving and genre-defying adventure through time โ€“ as a reluctant lady knight and a not-so-heroic-historian will fight through time and space to rewrite their tragic fates . . . and finally reveal the truths hidden beneath the greatest legend ever told.

It begins where it ends: beneath the yew tree โ€“ a girl not yet a knight, and a boy without a story.

It is where she pulls a sword from the heartwood and becomes a legend.

And it is where, more than a thousand years later, he will find her โ€“ and lose her โ€“ and find her โ€“ and lose her again.

It is where a new story will be written โ€“ but whose will it be?

Tropes

  • Literary Fantasy
  • Time Travel
  • Lady Knight x Scholar
  • Forbidden Love
  • Slow Burn
  • Fantasy Romance
  • Star Crossed Lovers

Review

Overall Impressions ๐Ÿ˜Š

This book took me out of a reading slump and threw me right into a worse one. When I finished listening, my eyes were dry from crying. It’s been a long time since a story moved me like this, and the audiobook narration by Moira Quirk and Sid Sagar was genuinely incredible. I’d recommend going that route if you can.

I picked this up because I’d heard it was a unique reading experience and a masterpiece. Both are true. There just aren’t enough words to describe how much I loved this book. What I actually got was something I had to ration. I slowed myself down on purpose because I didn’t want to leave Owen, Una, and the yew. I wanted to stay beneath the yew in the Queen’s Wood as long as I could.

The Everlasting is now permanently in my top fantasy romance standalone recommendations and I don’t see it leaving anytime soon.

Perfect For Fans Ofโ€ฆ ๐ŸŒŸ

his book is for anyone who wants to see love in dark places. People who love reading about characters enduring for one another, those who believe love conquers all (even time), and those who love legendary stories that span many lifetimes.

It’s medieval and full of fantasy elements, occasionally requires some thinking to work out time travel logistics, so it’s not brain candy. You’ll need to pay attention to plot instead of just breezing through the love story. If you’re looking for an easy time, this isn’t it. It’s captivating, but you have to want to be engaged to keep up with it.

It feels like an unconventional fairy tale, having a lady knight and a less built scholar, a change in the usual gender roles in a story like this, which the book definitely comments on. It reminded me a bit of Wild Reverence by Rebecca Ross, with a fresh take on a genre that’s been pretty well explored by now. It also gave a bit of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, but I thought it was more plot driven than that book since there was so much happening.

Characters ๐Ÿ‘ฅ

I loved Owen from the first time I saw him on the page. He was kind, worn and a bit of a “coward” in his own definition while in reality he just didn’t know what it would take him to fight for something. His inner monologue was lovely, I loved that he was speaking to Una the entire time he was narrating the book. For an MMC to captivate me he would have to be willing to go at all lengths, and Owen, Mr. Pathetically down bad from page 0 before he even met his wife (at least in his mind) would do anything for Una even before knowing her. He would conquer time, and he would die. He would make her let him go, so she’d be free.

And Una. Obviously I enjoyed the depiction of a strong woman as the protagonist. But I loved even more Una finding who she is when she started thinking outside of the canvas Yvanne has drawn her on. I loved her finding something to fight for other than what she was told to fight for. I also was heartbroken every time I read with the guilt and uncertainty she lived with on a daily basis.

And I loved Una and Owen together. I loved her becoming soft and him strong for one another. There’s nothing in this couple I couldn’t root for, and that’s what made this story keep going for me.

Vivian Rolfe as a villain was a tragedy of her own, her backstory and the image of who she became made her a nuanced adversary I couldn’t help hate but also try to understand every time she was around. Her relationship with Una felt preordained (heh, it is a time travel book after all).

Every character in this book made me hurt for them, and I’m so sad to see them go.

Plot ๐Ÿ—บ๏ธ

The pacing is breathtaking. We somehow go minutes, hours, years, hundreds of years in the span of a couple hundred pages and it still doesn’t feel enough. I personally felt like I had to ration it because I didn’t want it to be over, but I could’ve read this in one weekend, it felt like water. Every era Owen and Una were in, I was curious how the loop would execute despite being in a circle.

I knew it was a time travel book, but I didn’t realize how cyclical the cycle would be. I was a tad bit unsure about having to relive the same sequence over and over again, but the nuances of causality were captured so effectively, I did find myself marveling at how much Alix E. Harrow would’ve had to think about to make this appear so effortlessly stitched together. Despite the looping timelines and parallel histories, I was never lost. There are moments on page 300 you realize were the reason for why something on page 10 has happened. I’m telling you, it’s a masterpiece.

The ending. I SOBBED the entire last 3 chapters. I am tearing up as I’m writing this paragraph. It’s a good ending. I think every character met their last page the way they deserved. It was neither predictable nor unpredictable, it was a soft, comforting landing after the heartwrenching journey we’ve all endured. It is so earned, I am so full of contentment. Nailing endings like this is all I can ask for from a fantasy book.

My Favorite Quote

โ€œI was eager, too– how sweet it was to die, knowing someone wanted you to live.โ€

Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting

Writing Style and Narration โœ๏ธ

I’m starting to realize I have a huge thing for lush writing of literary fantasy. There’s something about listening to a fairy tale written by a modern author that always has me in a chokehold. I’m assuming that’s why I was swept away by Wild Reverence and that’s one of the reasons why I really liked The Everlasting. If you know any more authors writing like this, please let me know. I need to read every book they’ve ever written.

This entire book is written as Una and Owen talking to each other. IT IS the coolest thing. I’ve never read second person narration before, and I didn’t realize how amazing it could be. It’s like we’re listening to two people who are desperately in love write each other the most epic love letter possible.

The audio narration is amazing. The narrators sound desperately attached to one another in every beat, and you can just hear the conviction and devotion these two characters have for one another. They do the love between the main characters, and the second person narration style, absolute justice. You can almost hear them actually WHIMPER sometimes, it’s a divine experience.

The Everlasting Synopsis

The First Death of Una Everlasting

The story opens with a little girl pulling a sword out of a tree after her fathers are slaughtered in the forest. She swears herself to the queen she just rescued and kills the man that killed them.

Years later, Owen Mallory grows up obsessed with the legend of the Everlasting, reading folklore stories of the warrior woman Una Everlasting throughout the centuries. His father is a rebel against the kingdom who ran away, so Owen grows up feeling exiled in his own kingdom. Owen is a scholar at a university. He goes to war to serve his country, returns home with a big scar on his chest, and becomes a historian focused on folklore and Una’s story, just like everybody else.

Owen receives a mysterious book in the mail, a surreal account of the life and death of Una Everlasting. As he gets ready to dive into the thing that’s going to make his career, the book disappears. He receives a mysterious letter to come to the capital. At the Ministry of War, he’s told this was a test. His job is to write the history of Una Everlasting. Vivian stabs Owen’s hand through the book, and Owen travels back in time.

Owen finds himself at the cottage where Una was last known to be. He convinces her he’s from the future and is there to guide her through her quest. Reluctantly, Una lets him travel with her. Owen quickly realizes the history he knows is wrong. Una was the blade of the queen. After Yvanne claimed the throne, men decided they didn’t want a queen and claimed to be king. Una fought the false kings and united the kingdom under the empire of Dominion. The stories make her seem like a loved angel, but in reality she’s pretty hated because she’s the blade that united the empire.

They travel together to hunt the last dragon. Una has given up so far, defeated and sad, and she has nightmares. Owen realizes that it is him traveling back through time that helps her complete her quests. Una eventually starts believing him, and the two of them begin falling in love. On the road, an older man swears at Una in his own language and grabs her by the hair. Una cuts his hand off. Owen yells as the blade is in the air to spare the man’s life, which is why his hand is cut off instead of his whole head. That night, Una and Owen go to a bath house and they nearly share a moment, but Owen flinches because he knows Una dies after the dragon quest, and he can’t in good conscience be with her. So he decides to write a fake history that will make her seem like the entire world loves her.

Una and Owen make their way to the dragon’s cave. Una fights the dragon for days and nights while Owen waits outside. Eventually she comes back, having killed the last dragon, with the holy grail. They quietly make their way back to the capital and Owen wants to tell Una this is where she dies, but he doesn’t know how to. They get back into the castle and realize it’s been taken by enemies. Una fights them off, and just as she’s about to get pierced by arrows, Owen warns her. She still gets hit by a couple of arrows, but she’s still fighting them off, and Owen uses his revolver to kill a couple of the guys.

Una gives the grail to the queen of Dominion and kneels in front of her. Owen can tell Una loves the queen like a dog. Then the Queen’s Guard kills Una. As Una lays dying after the queen is healed, she begs Owen to come back for her again.

Owen wakes back up in his current timeline at the Ministry of War, and he is with Vivian, except he realizes it’s Yvanne, the queen he’s seen just moments before. He finds out that Vivian, trying to save the soul of Dominion, was looking for a weapon. She found a book she accidentally bled on. The blood made her travel back in time, and she found herself at the actual Yvanne’s bedside. Yvanne, the queen, told Vivian that since they look so much alike, Vivian needs to take her place. Yvanne agrees to let Vivian serve her country. Vivian takes Yvanne’s place after feeding her body to birds once Yvanne is dead. Then Vivian rules as Yvanne.

It’s clear she’s done this multiple times to fix history so she can steer Dominion to its rightful glory. She tells Owen that without him, Una never made it. Without him, Una never became someone important. It’s always him who goes back in time and helps Una achieve her destiny. The grail she got from the dragon is nothing. Yvanne had cancer. It was just Vivian, posing as Yvanne, who took her place.

Owen yearns and thinks about Una. Yvanne shows him Una’s body preserved in the catacombs. Owen grieves the woman he loves, the woman he can’t be with, because he realizes she was not a saint. It’s because of the history he faked. She was a lady knight who was brave and tired, and she’s been through shit.

Owen is escorted to a tower by people who reference Yvanne as Her Majesty, revealing they know her identity. In the tower, he writes the legend of Una about the dragon, the grail, and Ancel, one of the other Queen’s Guard, who betrayed her and killed her. Owen alters the history through the book by making Ancel sound like a villain. When Owen asks for Vivian to be brought back, she comes back as the Ministry of War of his time and reads the book, delighted with the history Owen fabricated. After Owen is tired and nearly gives up, Vivian stabs his hand again.

The Second Death of Una Everlasting

Owen wakes back up in the past, but this time at the beginning of the book where he’s a wandering scholar working on a manuscript. He goes through the motions: war, desertion, the rest. This time the history is a little different. People remember Una. He’s given the book again and sees Una’s history again, going until the end of Ancel’s story. Then the book is taken from him.

Vivian steals the book from Owen after “testing” him and sends a white card via courier inviting him to meet her in the capital. This time Vivian is the chancellor. The original prime minister was assassinated, so she becomes chancellor. Owen and Vivian talk again, and Owen gets his hand stabbed once more. He falls back through time.

This time we’re hearing the story from Una’s perspective in the past. Una is tired, about to succumb to death under the yew, when she sees Owen. She’s immediately drawn to him, even though she doesn’t really understand how she knows him. They go through the same story as before from Una’s perspective this time, but Una is clearly falling in love with him as well, and their relationship progresses further. They cuddle by the fire, tell each other more, take a bath together.

When Una arrives at the dragon’s lair, Owen helps her put on her armor. After that’s over, they go back to the castle to meet Yvanne, and Una knows Owen’s leading her to her death. Owen tells Una not to go in, that she’s going to die, and Ancel is going to betray her. Una doesn’t believe him and is a little offended. But she doesn’t want him to be devastated, so she goes in anyway. She kills the traitors, the Hinterlanders. She walks into the castle and gives Yvanne the grail. Yvanne drinks wine from the grail and seemingly heals. When Ancel goes to Una’s blind side and swings a sword on her, Owen steps in between them, and Ancel stabs Owen in the stomach. Una goes to Owen, but by the time that happens, Ancel’s co-conspirators stab her and she dies.

Owen is carried back up to the tower. Vivian shows up. Owen remembers everything because Una asked him to meet her by the yew again and come back for her. Owen keeps remembering different versions of the events. Vivian reveals there was no Yvanne. She’s just been going back in time to change the events. This time, the crown and the grail are stolen, and she’s making it so the history will tell the story of a queen who reclaims the kingdom.

Vivian tells Owen that the first time she traveled back in time, she was a young queen who got captured, and she had Una save her. But she’s also sent Una back and back again in time, and that’s why Una’s so good at fighting: her body remembers, and every time Una travels back, she becomes better. She doesn’t know. Every time Owen goes back, he gets better too. He’s been to war multiple times. His character is different every time.

Owen asks why Vivian had the grail and the crown stolen. Vivian says it’s so they can have a compelling story. When she’s coronated, they’re going to write a fake prophecy. When the crown and the grail are returned, the rightful queen will be restored. She’s basically setting herself up as the same monarch again. Owen says he’s not going to let this happen, and none of this is worth Una’s life. Vivian tries to tell him he’s going to come back. He’s going to do it again and again. Owen says he’s going to save Una next time. As Owen stabs himself in the palm to go back to his time, Vivian says she knows that. But that’s why she’s never going to allow Owen to travel back in time again, because Una needs to die for Dominion to prevail.

The Third Death of Una Everlasting

Owen is back in the current timeline as a scholar. One day, he is tricked again into telling the story of Una Everlasting, but instead of being sent back in time, he’s given pictures of the pages by Vivian to translate. The chancellor is assassinated again, and Vivian, who is also Yvanne, is appointed Chancellor. Owen translates the book and ends up becoming famous, going on a book tour. He keeps feeling like he’s missing something. He dreams about Una, or at least the version of her he knew, but doesn’t realize what he’s thinking about. He just thinks it’s blasphemous. He becomes famous, gets a tenured position, becomes a decorated scholar, and still doesn’t remember anything.

The archaeology professor he respects so much returns. Owen realizes she was the one who procured the grail and the crown that Vivian is responsible for bringing back, which means Vivian will be crowned queen. They realize this whole thing was Vivian’s orchestration, but Owen can’t really put things together yet because he doesn’t remember. The professor is fired because she tried to destroy the grail. She’s interrogated and almost charged with crimes against the country. She’s fleeing in the night with her friend. Owen asks her why she smashed the grail, and she tells him she found the grail at the grave of Una Everlasting, buried underneath the castle for hundreds of years. And yet there was a cigarette butt in the tomb. A Lucky Star.

Owen starts remembering everything. Vivian becomes queen because the prophecy says when the grail and the crown are returned, Dominion will prevail once more. She wears the crown. Owen starts taking notes in code again. The notes have punctuation errors, and he realizes he’s seen a lot of punctuation errors in Una’s history, The Death of Una Everlasting. The punctuation is a code he left in the notes in one of his past lives. It says: wait for me beneath the yew tree. Slowly, he remembers everything, all the lives he’s lived with Una in the past.

Owen hires a lawyer to see his dad in prison. His father tells him a story about how Owen is not his biological son. Owen’s father (the one who raised him) was a soldier behind enemy lines when his unit had to destroy a village. Owen’s biological mother, an enemy villager, was curled around baby Owen. His adopted father took him home. When the military didn’t let him keep the baby, he shot himself in the foot and deserted the army. So his father’s desertion was to care for Owen. Around the same time, Vivian becomes queen and names herself Yvanne II.

Owen sneaks into the chancellor’s bedroom where Vivian is with the book. He wakes her up at gunpoint and confronts her. They have a candid conversation about how Vivian has come from nothing, how she may not look like herself, how it’s about power and ambition, and how she’s reworked Una over and over until she got herself a history. Owen says this time, he is going to save Una. He goes back in time.

He arrives under the yew and finds Una. Upon seeing Owen, Una also remembers everything. Owen tells her how Vivian has been re-architecting the timeline so she can be the queen of everything, and that Vivian threatened to find them anywhere in time and hunt them down. Una wants to go kill her right away. Owen says she’s too strong, and they need to run away. Owen draws both of their blood, and Una and Owen fall back in time.

Owen and Una run through the past for nine years. They start to slowly open up to each other one more time, fall in love, and they hide. They leave their names behind, but Una starts getting restless because she wants to be a savior. She wants to help those in need. They settle on time. Una becomes pregnant. They abort. Pregnant again, they abort. The third time, Una realizes Owen really wants the baby and she does too. They have the baby and build a cottage on land Una’s parents used to live on. They have a boy and a girl, and they’re in marital bliss.

But then, as they’re enjoying their summer and their two toddlers are running around, Vivian finds them. She asks for the book. Owen leads her to the book, and as he’s giving it to her, he throws it into the fire. They’re surrounded by six medieval men Vivian brought, claiming the family are witches. Una fights them off and kills them all, but she gets stabbed in both hands when she catches a blade by the blade. Owen knows she’s never going to hold a sword again. Vivian shoots Una and kills her. She dies in Owen’s arms. The kids don’t come out because Owen has taught them not to come out if he tells them in modern language. But Vivian is smart and reveals she’s also been here this whole time. She’s seen this play out before. She tells Owen to bring the kids back. Before Vivian killed Una, she whispered something in Una’s ear, and Una was shocked but didn’t know what to do.

Owen is devastated. The only thing he loves in life is Una and the kids, and they’re all in danger. Vivian makes a deal. They go back to the current timeline. Owen gets to play his role: go back in time and move Una back into history. Instead of dying, Una succumbs to her injuries and dies in the tower, supposedly. But in fact, she and Owen can live their lives happily ever after with their kids. Owen reluctantly agrees. Vivian takes him to the yew tree, and Owen realizes the book was made out of the yew. It’s never been the book that’s magical. It’s the tree the whole time.

The Fourth Death of Una Everlasting

They transfer to modern time. Vivian comes through immediately. Owen remembers everything. Vivian tells Owen he needs to go back in time. Owen agrees, but he actually has a different plan this time, even though we don’t know what it is.

He finds the archaeology professor, who acts like she’s supporting Vivian’s claims to the monarchy, but in reality her girlfriend’s been taken. Owen says he’ll fight with her. Then he sees his dad. Owen finds Vivian on the throne, and eventually goes back in time and finds Una. Una remembers him very quickly. She feels a little defeated because she doesn’t think she’s ever going to escape Vivian’s clutches. But the two of them make a plan to get out of this shitty situation they’re in.

They go back through the motions. Una hunts the dragon again, but this time she leaves the dragon alive. They go back to the castle where she’s bringing the grail to Yvanne. When Una gives Yvanne the grail, Vivian turns on them again, and Ancel attacks. They fight, and Una kills everybody again. Ancel reveals that he’s known Vivian has ruined time over and over again. He gives the book to Owen. Una and Owen travel back in time again, to the beginning of everything.

The Last Death of Una Everlasting

This time, just like they agreed on, they find themselves at the beginning of time, where the yew hasn’t even spawned yet. When Owen comes to himself, he’s holding hands with Una, and their hands are buried in the sand. They find what they need: an acorn, the seed of the yew. Their intention is to make sure the yew never gets planted.

As Owen reaches for the acorn and is about to burn it, a little girl approaches them. The girl says it’ll never burn. Owen is taken aback by this strange girl who is a lot older than she looks. She’s pregnant, maybe 18 or 20, hard to say. She tells them it’ll never burn because it’s actually a dragon heart. They realize why Vivian wanted to kill all the dragons. When a dragon dies and you bury its heart in the ground, it grows into a yew tree, and eventually a new dragon spawns at the beginning of time itself.

The girl is Vivian, but this is her initial timeline. When they realize who she is, she welcomes them with their names, revealing she knows who they are because those who go back in time over and over again eventually remember who they are. She tells them her story. She was a little girl of no one, of peasants who sold her to who she calls her teacher. The relationship is clearly really weird. She learned how to read and do math and write in the teacher’s house while doing the dishes. Eventually, when Vivian fixed something in the teacher’s equation, he looked at her teeth and whatnot, and he took her in. After that, she became his companion. Eventually, she became pregnant.

The teacher taught her everything about science, physics, chemistry, and time, and he studied dragons. He dissected and autopsied dragons to study them. Eventually, he figured out what the dragon heart is for. What you need to do is bury a dragon heart in the heart of someone who was not supposed to have been born in their current time yet. It’ll become a yew tree, and the yew can control time. When Vivian gets pregnant with Una, the teacher makes her drink a tea that gives her a miscarriage. Una is born stillborn. Vivian kills the teacher for killing her baby, and then she buries Una with the dragon heart planted in her heart.

Years pass, and when the yew grows to be a tree, Una, as a baby, is found underneath it by the two men whom Una thought were her fathers. Vivian, who resents her child for having everything Vivian was never given, in a twisted way kept sending Una back in time so Una can have everything.

Una asks Vivian if she’ll ever let her go, and Vivian, for the first time in her life, tells her the truth and says no. As Una charges towards her, Vivian moves very quickly, as if this moment itself has happened multiple times, and puts a knife to Owen’s throat. It is Owen who walks into the knife, because he knows he’s always going to be the carrot dangled in front of Una, and he lets himself die. After realizing she’s free forever because Owen’s not there to be dangled in front of her, Una kills Vivian immediately.

Even though Owen’s dead, Una realizes that the true victim is the one who watches the ones they love die. She kicks Vivian’s body down the hill, not even bothering to bury it, but she buries Owen and plants the dragon heart in Owen’s heart. She waits for the yew to grow.

Years and years and years pass. Una doesn’t age because she’s always in the area of the yew. She becomes known as the Green Knight. Maybe hundreds of years pass. She’s not even sure, but she doesn’t age a day. One day, Owen finds himself underneath the tree. He returns with white hair and amber eyes, like a dragon. The two of them remember each other and they get their second happily ever after. Eventually, their kids are born, same as before. Una is known as the Green Knight who protects the yew and the woods, and helps those who need it. The forest becomes home to those who are giving up against the storm: a blacksmith who lays down their knife, a weaver who decided to stop spinning, and so on. Owen’s fathers come by the woods, and Una is very affectionate with them. They don’t know what’s up. A man with orange hair, Ancel, comes years later, and the two of them walk in the woods and come back with tears in their eyes, indicating they both remembered who they were. Ancel leaves to find himself in the world.

Eventually, Owen finishes his book. He decides he’s going to chuck it down in time for Professor Sawbridge, whom he’s loved so much, to tell her what’s going on. He hopes she gives his regards to his father, who’s done everything for him. As he’s writing the final words of the manuscript, he imagines her reaction. He pictures her calling it horseshit, just like she does. He never once writes down Una’s real name. Owen’s last sentence in the book reads something like: “If you say this is horseshit, which I hope you do, and yet you believe that it all happened anyway, come see us by the yew where we’ll be waiting for you a thousand years ago.”

Una and Owen spend their lives together beneath the yew tree, keeping the forest safe and those around them. Their children leave the forest and have their own kids, and their kids pass, and eventually they lay beneath the yew hand in hand, finally departing the world after having lifetimes together to make up for the lifetimes they’ve spent serving the world. The book ends with Professor Sawbridge receiving the book and calling it horseshit. She hopes that it’s not real, but if it is, she says she’ll go to the yew, or she’ll find Owen thousands of years ago.

The Everlasting Spicy Chapters

How The Everlasting: ๐ŸŒถ๏ธ๐ŸŒถ๏ธ๐ŸŒถ๏ธ

Whether you want to get to the heat or want closed-door modifications here’s the list of spicy chapters below.

  • Chapter 17
  • Chapter 22

Tinfoil Hats On: My Next Book Predictions

No tinfoil hats this time, since The Everlasting is a standalone. But here’s a nice detail I noticed while writing this review.

Owen sends his manuscript through time to Professor Sawbridge. She receives it, calls it horseshit, and says that if it’s real, she’ll go to the yew or find Owen a thousand years ago. Sawbridge is an archaeology professor. Her whole thing as a character is that “words lied and bones didn’t.” She’s not just a colleague Owen trusts. She’s the one person in the entire book whose job is literally to dig up the past and find the truth in what’s buried there.

So if she actually believes Owen, she has the means to do something about it. She can go to the yew. She can excavate. She can find their bones. The book never says she does, but the setup is right there. I’m not sure if Alix E. Harrow’s intention was that, but I’d like to think it is.


I’m privileged to have read The Everlasting the first time. While I don’t think I’ll reread it now that I know the big reveal, the lessons from the book, “who’s free if they love someone,” are going to be with me for quite some time. Alix E. Harrow is an insta-buy author for me from now on, and Starling House is probably the next thing on my TBR.

What do you think about The Everlasting? Any other recommendations like this one? Because I’m still beneath the yew.

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