Unfortunately Last Bus to Everland was a DNF for me. I have really enjoyed Sophie Cameron books previously but I very rarely read YA books with a contemporary setting anymore so I found it difficult to get into the story. The story sounds like a really fascinating, coming of age tale and I'm sure contemporary YA fans will absolutely adore this one but ultimately it just was not for me.

Having loved Out Of The Blue by Sophie Cameron, I was super excited to read her book. Even though it took me a little longer than anticipated, I had a lovely time in the world of Everland and will continue to Sophie Cameron's work in the future.

Even though the book does have moments that are touching and you can get the warm feeling from many scenes from the book, these are often contrasted with Body's home life. I think that the balance is well done and that both times are given their time to develop. That being said, Sophie Cameron touches on the reality for so many teenagers in the book.

The stress of zero-hour contracts, feeling inadequate compared to a sibling, the feeling of being lost altogether and mental illness, agoraphobia is tackled in the book. While I cannot speak to my own experiences of the book, I do think that their inclusion was important and will help a lot of people.

The book was also really diverse, Brody is gay and so is his brother as well as Everland being a point for a lot of different people globally. All these characters add to the story and give it more weight.

I really did like Everland and while at the beginning, I did think that they were going to stay at Everland for good, I liked the idea that they could come and go more powerful as a story device. I also liked the world that was created and how it could act as this safe space for the characters. I'm sure there are a lot of people who want an Everland.

The characters were really great and I think that Sophie Cameron does a great job making them feel real. I loved Brody as the centre protagonist and seeing his progress throughout the novel was great. I also really liked Nico and saw him as an equal for Brody but also for opposing what he wants. The book also gives us parents who do their best but are trying for there children.

One of the main reasons why I picked this up now was because last year if the pandemic had not happened I wanted to go to Scotland. I loved reading about it, especially Edinburgh and hopefully, I will get to visit when the pandemic is over.

Even though the last twenty per cent does offer a scary turn in the story, I think that this adds to the pacing of the story and adds more weight to the situation and to Brody. I don't know how to explain it but I still felt safe in the book and that nothing too bad was going to happen. This is a credit to Sophie Cameron's writing obviously. I also found it really fast-paced as I really wanted to know what happened to my faves.

I really loved the ending as it was so emotional and adds so much to the overall arc of the story. I also was just solely attached to the characters and I feel like all of them got the ending they deserved and needed. Brody especially, I loved that for him. The character development tho.

As you can tell, I really loved Last Bus To Everland and highly recommend that reads this book if you feel like you just don't fit in.

The Verdict:

Last Bus To Everland is a book that captures the magic of escape but also finding out where you truly fit in.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book.

DNF @ 40%

As I was scrolling through my NetGalley account this afternoon, I realised I completely forgot to review this title. I’ve tried reading a few times now but each time I end up putting it down and it just isn't holding my interest. It’s a book I may come back to in the future, but for now I am marking it as DNF.

This book leaves you with weird emotions. Like on the one hand you're happy, but on the other hand it makes you so sad. Melancholic I would say.

This book is sort of a Peter Pan retelling. It's about Brody, a gay teen struggling in the real world until he meets Nico, who takes him to Everland. Everland, where Brody can finally be himself. However things don't do well and he's left with a choice: to go back or to stay.

This book has nice romance that is not farfetched and doesn't get in the way of the plot, there is an excellent take on both found family and real family relationships.

In conclusion, this is a spectacular book.

p.s. I would also say that making most of you cast queer is the best thing you can do to your book, but I'm biased

I really adored this book! It handled so many different but equally important topics, sexuality, mental illness, eating disorders among others and although there was the potential for it all to feel crammed in just for the sake of it, it didn’t feel like that at all. Every issue felt like it had a place, even if it was small, and it made it feel realistic and was able to normalise a lot of these often taboo subjects. Every character felt well rounded, flaws, baggage and all. It was able to handle so many real life issues and encapsulate that in a wonderfully Peter Pan-esque plot and it felt like a really well balanced mix of real life and magical elements. I just wish there had been more of Jett! If there was a little spin off novel about Jett and that record shop I would honestly be all for it.

A fun, inclusive story about lonely, queer teenagers in Edinburgh meeting each night in a magical portal world to party, bond and find a place where they belong. I love Sophie Cameron's writing, and it was especially nice to read a book with locations where I've been.

Recently, my reading tastes have changed a lot. I don’t even think it’s that they’ve changed, per se... I’ve just discovered a genre that I haven’t really ventured into before. That genre is magical realism - and one of the books that helped me realise that is this one.

I really loved this book! With a perfect blend of contemporary issues and fantastical elements, it had me captivated right from the start and I couldn’t put it down. The characters are so well-written and I felt like I was reading about real people. So when they each had their own stories and they own issues, I wanted them all to succeed and have the best endings. The characters are one of the most important aspects of a story for me - they can make or break how good a story is, and I loved this one a lot!

I also loved the world building. It’s delightfully magical and implausible, and it makes we want to visit Everland myself to see what I’d see there and who I’d meet. It’s so cool that there are doors all over the world, but there are important things considered too like the fact you can’t travel to other places; you can only go through your own door. Everything has been considered and it felt so well thought out.

I really loved this book, and more than anything, I’m grateful that it’s helped me discover a genre that is now one of my favourites. I can’t wait to read more books in this genre, as well as more books by this author!

Brody, the main character, is having a rough time of it for various reasons and needs a way to escape from it. A chance meeting introduces him to the magical place 'Everland' which can offer him this. But is there a price attached to the respite it offers from everyday life?

I really enjoyed Sophie Cameron's previous book 'Out of the Blue' and actually received a NetGalley copy of Last Bus to Everland many months ago. However, it wasn't until I picked up the paperback in Waterstones Aviemore that I actually started reading it, and then I found that I couldn't put it down.

The descriptive writing in this book is outstanding and transports you to the otherworld realm that Brody finds so much peace in. Familiarity with the immersive online gaming world (and how damaging gaming addiction can be) made me feel that this was an accurate portrayal of the solace that those who find life hard can find in environments such as WOW. (The author may also be making comparisons to drugs or other addictions?) It accurately examines the person's withdrawal from friends and family and external activities as they find themselves more and more drawn to the addictive activity.

You are introduced to an array of characters from the flamboyant, and supposedly confident, Nicco, to Brody's Dad, suffering from an invisible illness that is ridiculed by society. Everyone has something that is hard to deal with. But it's how they each deal with it that will ultimately surprise you in this book. Family interactions are both heart-warming and heart-breaking and the ending of the book left me in tears.

An outstanding book that had me making notes in the margins all the way through, Last Bus to Everland is one that I will be recommending to many. It genuinely made me think about my relationship and communication with my own teenage/young adult sons, and what kind of challenges they might be facing that I am not aware of being wrapped up in my own day to day minutia.

This book reminds/teaches the reader that no matter how bad it seems, or how much you feel like you don't fit in, there is always someone that you can talk to, and that problems can always be tackled together

Just read Last Bus to Everland by @toomanysophies and I loved it. Emotional and magical, sad, funny, and wise. (There’s even a Harry Styles reference 🙌🏻)

A magical but still very much grounded in the real world fairy tale, set in my home town of Edinburgh? I was always going to be on board with this. I loved Sophie Cameron’s last book and this followed it up brilliantly.

I received Sophie Cameron’s first book, Out of the Blue, in my very first Book Box Club box, and it was such a surprisingly enjoyable read, that when this popped up on NetGalley I had to request it. This story follows Brody, who feels out of place in pretty much every aspect of his life. His family has financial struggles, he has a very gifted older brother who gets a lot of the attention, and he is repeatedly harassed by some girls from school. One day he meets Nico who takes him along to Everland – this fantastical alternate reality, access to which appears only once a week and time works very differently there. Here Brody feels right at home, understood, but as time goes on he might be getting too caught up in getting lost. While this novel started as what felt like a coming of age young adult novel, it deals with some heavier and important topics, such as mental disabilities, hidden disabilities and society’s response to this, as well as how you can never really know what someone else is going through. They may appear happy and fortunate, but could still be dealing with their own serious struggles. In the end it follows Brody along his journey of finding his place in the world, whichever world that may be. This was such a quick and diverse read, pretty much anything you can think of has representation in this book.

I received this book from the publisher via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved the feel of this book - it’s sort of gently whimsical but still dealing with teenage life. Brody doesn’t feel like he fits in really, but finds Nico and Everland and begins to drift from his real life into the wonderful fantasy that is Everland.

Much like Cameron’s previous book, this is a perfect blend of contemporary and fantastical. Everland is the perfect foil to the reality of Brody’s real life, and feeling like he doesn’t know where he’s heading. In some ways that doesn’t change in the book, he just becomes more comfortable with it, which I really like.

The book is also casually inclusive - lots of different races and sexualities, which is awesome.

Really lovely and enjoyable read.

Brody feels as though no one understands him; not his genius older brother, not his overworked parents and most certainly not the girls set on making his life a misery. Then he meets Nico, an art student who takes Brody to Everland, a place whose door only opens at 11:21pm each Thursday. Here is where Brody finds his people and some respite from a world where he feels out of place.

43307357I should start this review by saying, be prepared with tissues when reading this book. Sophie Cameron has done it again and written a beautifully, captivating novel you will not want to put down. I had to give myself sometime after finishing this book to write the review because it was all I could think about and if I had written the review immediately it would have been a lot longer than this.

The Last Bus to Everland is set in Edinburgh, Scotland, as well as Everland, a magical Narnia-esque location. I love the way that Everland was brought into the story and I immediately had a vision of it in my head. Sophie Cameron is incredible at bringing fantasy elements into real-world settings. As someone who struggles with brand new fantasy worlds and getting my head around them, the way Sophie describes Everland makes this book easy to get into, even if you aren’t a big fantasy genre fan.

The Last Book to Everland is light in places whilst also delving deep into serious issues. One of the issues this book explores incredibly is poverty. Brody is part of a working-class family and this is made obvious from the start. Sophie Cameron doesn’t hide the hardships that Brody and his family are facing. I feel poverty is a topic that should be discussed more in YA books. It deals with parents working long shifts, struggling to pay pills, cutting back on food, cutting back on hobbies and more. The reactions of Brody and his family are intertwined with the magic of Everland throughout the story. It certainly feels like you are going through the struggles with Brody too.

This book also covers the issues of bullying and mental health, both in extraordinary ways. We follow Brody throughout all the emotions he feels whilst being bullied. This book doesn’t have Brody immediately have the strength to confront the bullies and I feel this is extremely realistic. Brody’s Dad suffers from a mental illness that I had never read about in a YA book before. It is extremely eye-opening to read, and I am glad that Sophie included this in the book.

I love the family relationships in this book. Any book with family playing a huge part in the storyline is a book I am interested in. There is both found family and biological family relationships and story arcs throughout this book. It was the family scenes throughout the book that made me cry the most.

I enjoyed that the romance throughout the book was incidental to the family relationships. The plot was never Nico saved Brody or Brody saved Nico. It was a lot more about how meeting Nico and everyone in Everland helped Brody become more comfortable in himself. I love reading plots like this especially in LGBTQ+ books as it makes me happy to see characters happy and content.

This book is heart-warming, heart-breaking, beautiful, magical and captivating. I cannot recommend this book enough. Sophie Cameron has done it once again and written a wonderful novel that will appeal to both fans of contemporary and fantasy YA.

This review will appear on my blog, Foxes and Fairy Tales on May 2, 2019.
https://foxesfairytale.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/arc-review-last-bus-to-everland

I read Sophie Cameron's debut, Out of the Blue, last year and really enjoyed it. Like Out of the Blue, Last Bus to Everland is set in Edinburgh, just a short drive from where I live. Cameron has really captured the city, both the atmosphere and the descriptions of key locations.

As much as I loved the idea of Everland -- a Narnia/ Neverland / Wonderland hybrid -- and the postal fantasy premise, I really thought the 'real world' aspects where the heart and strength of Last Bus to Everland. Usually, I'm not a huge fan of YA contemporaries, but Cameron really wins me over.

Brody's having a hard time: closeted, bullied at school, and his families really struggling for cash since his dad developed agoraphobia, not too mention, he constantly feels overshadowed by his prodigy older brother. I loved how well the family dynamic was written. I thought Brody came across as a really relatable character and a believable teenage boy. He really, deeply loves his family, but he doesn't always like them, you know?

I also really liked how big a part the family's financial struggle played throughout the story. It affected their relationships, Brody's attitudes and his overall happiness. The story also looks at the pressures on teenagers: parental expectations, sibling rivalry, overachievers, underachievers, queer teens and neglected teens.

Brody has some pretty dark moments, feeling alienated from his friends and family, but there's a stripe of hope woven throughout. He's a kid with a heart of gold, but he's real enough to make selfish choices and mistakes.

Last Bus to Everland is a soft, character-driven story. There's a rawness there that really gets to you. This is a story for anyone who's ever felt isolated and had to keep going anyway.

I sat down to write this review of Last Bus to Everland, but then I realised that I had no words to offer, only tears. So, I went away for a bit, thought it over, came back and I… still have no words, only tears. But we’re gonna give writing this a go anyhow.

Last Bus to Everland is the story of Brody Fair, a gay teen in Edinburgh, the middle child of three, who feels out of place in the world. He’s bullied at school, feels like no one cares at home, but then he meets Nico. Nico takes him to Everland, a magical place that opens up every Thursday at 11:21pm. There, Brody finds a place for himself, but soon things start going wrong in Everland, and he has to make a decision to stay there forever or go and never come back.

The thing I loved most about this book was the family relationships. There’s a found family relationship, yes, but also the most lovely biological family relationship. Even when Brody thinks no one cares for him, you as the reader know that his family would stand behind him whatever. I think my favourite part of that was the relationship between Brody and his brother Jake. It was perfectly angsty and I probably almost cried multiple times reading the scenes they had together. Particularly the big heart-to-heart at the end.

I also loved that the romance was kind of incidental to this family relationship. The plot wasn’t that Nico saved Brody or vice versa, but more that meeting Nico and everyone in Everland helped Brody become comfortable with himself. Because the most beautiful thing in LGBT books is the characters getting to be happy and content with themselves and finding their place in the world, and that will never not make me cry.

And even if the ending did make me sad (though hopeful? In a way), there was nothing I didn’t like about this book. It was so soft and just… healing I guess would be the word. It’s just got that rawness and authenticity that comes with an LGBT author.

So, really, I don’t know what else to say to convince you to read this. Just that it’s one you’re not going to want to miss.

This wonderful second outing by the writer who gave us Out of the Blue reads like an episode of Black Mirror.
The themes of Peter Pan and the forever young is cut clean and clear through the storytelling, but that only brings to the front the motivations for wanting such a fantastical escape.
The contrast of the fanciful to the gritty realism of modern day living is breathtaking; the characters are able to show the conflict of being in two worlds.
This is a perfect read for people who loved the Night Circus.