Book Review: Secrets Ever Green

Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph

The exquisite, emotional adventure of a young woman pushing through grief to uncover magical secrets and follow in her father’s footsteps 

“The worst part of my life was pretending to be something I wasn’t.” Ivy Rune is not the natural Arborist talent everyone believes she is. Every year, in the town of Windermere, students are allocated a career and, in Ivy’s case, permanent accommodation, depending on their results in the final practical exam. 

If Ivy fails her final exams, she will not have a job in the industry she’s trained for, and most importantly, she won’t be able to live in her childhood home, which holds her final memories of her father and has been left empty waiting for her in the decade since his presumed death. 

“These things were part of my childhood, my history, but I had no claim to them unless I proved I was worthy of his legacy. My father’s work and research belonged to the Arborist trade. Even though I was his only child, unless I became an Arborist, I would lose it all.”

Ivy should be first in line to win the top spot in the Arborist career avenue. The entire town believes that she will, because—before he disappeared and was presumed dead ten years ago—Ivy’s father was the best Arborist the town has ever seen. Unfortunately, she’s been coasting by on the good fortune that her classroom partner is studious and trusts that Ivy agrees with her answers from a position of insider Arborist knowledge. On top of the pressure to meet these standards of botanical excellence and the loss of her father, Ivy lives with the crumbling sense of sadness in not knowing her mother before she sailed away one day, so long ago that Ivy does not remember her face.   

In the middle of all this, a mysterious man approaches Ivy with instructions (ostensibly from her father, ten years ago, specifically for Ivy) that lead her to discover a magic underworld hiding in plain sight, unlocking the secrets to where her father spent his time before he disappeared. Suddenly, in the middle of the most crucial week of her life, where studying in the library will secure her future, Ivy is exploring the forest, following handwritten clues from her dead father. 

“Wonder spread across my face in a wide smile. This was incredible. Nothing in my life was extraordinary, so I had no words to describe the feeling of how unbelievable this was… It was like I had stepped into another world. A time before people existed.  Ancient trees formed a circle, taller than any trees in Windermere.”

Author Sara Knightly has created a wondrous and charming hometown for Ivy. Windermere is filled with lore and whispered, near-forgotten myths so naturally woven into the story that it felt as though I had grown up in the community with Ivy and her best friend York, understanding their fears, ambitions, and curiosity on a cellular level. 

This story fills your senses: “The smell of sugar and rising dough from Wilder’s Bakery, mixed with the salt from the sea, brought back every good memory of living in town when I was a child.” We taste the comforting, enticing sweetness of freshly baked goods from the local bakery; we breathe in the nostalgic scent of sawdust from Ivy’s childhood, which feels like another lifetime; we feel the sharp, painful glint in the corner of our eyes when mysterious golden light shines into Ivy’s face and causes the same sensation in her. 

This natural, almost effortless sense of being surrounded by Secrets Ever Green’s world applies to its characters, too: I felt the complexity of Ivy wanting guidance and support from the adults in her life, and I felt in my veins the betrayal and shame she experienced when they treated her in a way that made it clear, through unintentional twists in their phrasing, that she was not loved unconditionally, nor was she theirs to care for indefinitely.

“It took me a moment to realize I envied them. They were grounded in a way I would never be. If I was a tree, my roots would be shallow and thin, desperately clinging to anything to stabilize me. Nothing grounded me but loss. My parents were missing pieces, forever holes in my life.” 

The way grief is written into Ivy’s story is remarkable. Often it’s just one line that hits at the heart of her pain, and then the story continues. Knightly has mastered the art of pulling back the protagonist’s layers to their most vulnerable truth and then moving the story along in light of that knowledge. Ivy has tangled herself up in grief, moving forward because it’s all she knows, but the story is weighed down by her   heartache. In fact, even in Ivy’s darkest moments, though we are barely holding back tears in sympathy, we feel the story surge forward because what could possibly happen next?! 

Secrets Ever Green’s twists and turns—though surprising, sometimes even shocking, and frequently packing gutpunches—don’t feel as sudden and sharp as a typical twist. We move through the book mostly as though Ivy is holding our hand and pulling us between these vividly described locations with the strength of the compelling mystery. 

But the closer we get to the end of the book, the more the experience of reading it feels like skiing down an exhilarating slope, picking up speed, ramping up the drama, raising the stakes, and accelerating the timeline. Secrets Ever Green would be an engaging, entertaining book club read, and I strongly recommend it for anyone doing buddy-reads, because there’s so much to react to, and so much to feel! Every new direction the story takes feels rewarding; every emotional response (from ourselves as readers, and from Ivy) whether positive or negative, feels earned. We are fully immersed in this story, residents of Windermere, rooting for Ivy (and for our boy York!) the whole way. 

Ivy felt like a friend I’d known for years, sitting right next to me, pulling me through her hometown, pushing me to crouch behind a rock in hiding, showing me the impossibly tall magic trees her father guided her toward. I breathed in the pollen that Ivy’s father left in his journals; I gently held the white orchid pressed into a delicate state of preservation between his passionate notes. Even as I held my Kindle and tapped to turn the page, it felt as though I were holding soft, worn, well-loved paperback, petals threatening to spill out at any moment.

I giggled at the banter between Ivy and her classmates (and her deeply teenage frenemies!), and I developed a fondness for many of Secret Ever Green’s supporting characters. But special mention must go to Ivy’s best friend, York, who is my first favorite book boyfriend of this year—despite, and I must make this clear, not being a genuine love interest for Ivy. There isn’t a true romance arc in this story, and readers should know that going in, but York has all the qualities of the typical love interest. York is the boy for readers who love a loyal childhood best friend, a true ride-or-die. He’s the person who knows Ivy so well that they can communicate with a look; he’d go anywhere with Ivy, just because she asked, and he’s the person she wants to share all the secrets she uncovers on this new adventure with. 

I really enjoyed reading the inner dialogue of Ivy reluctantly analyzing her relationship to York based mostly on an awkward will-they-won’t-they narrative pushed by the adults. The tension Ivy and York feel is stretched thin by the circumstances of a now-or-never life-changing exam time, and the ache of both their home lives not being an ideal situation to support their dreams. That said, for most of the book, they’re able to lean on and confide in each other in a way that feels both true to the teenage experience and incredible as a lover of fierce, steadfast friendships. However their friendship goes, in this book or the next, the calm, confident way York protects, supports, and listens to Ivy made me want him to be my boyfriend. I would read this entire book from his point of view; In fact, I feel that I need it. 

Readers should be aware that York’s father is known to be the kind of man whose family is afraid of him. He drinks, he shouts, he instills fear at the rumble of his voice, and the whole town is aware of it, offering York and his mother extra doses of kindness in the moments they are able to. For most of the story, we are presented with the evidence of his controlling and dangerous personality, in offhand comments from York, in the way he retreats into himself, in the town gossip, and in Ivy’s uncharacteristic wariness around the older man when she runs into them in town. 

There is one scene in the book where Ivy pushes past her fear and knowledge of how best to handle the situation (carefully, tiptoeing around York’s father so as to keep the peace between the man and his son) and finds herself running from the house as he appears suddenly. The situation does not get violent, but there is a persistent tone of awareness that this is an abusive man. Gentle, coded language is used when the other adults around town offer help to York in whichever ways they can. I felt this was handled with grace, compassion, and understanding, but readers may find the undercurrent of the topic, which runs throughout the story, triggering. 

While these are certainly not direct comps, if you enjoyed the high-stress aptitude-test-to-permanent-industry-specific-careers pipeline in the Divergent series or the Herbology classes and suspicious teachers who may know more than they let on in the Harry Potter series, give this book a go. 

Secrets Ever Green is so much more than you could ever imagine, even when you’re deep into the story and feel you have a grasp on what’s possible. By the final few chapters, I was consumed with a feral, burning desire to reach through the page and, with all my might, pull out the next book in this Everlight series. The story has an exciting, riveting conclusion that unravels hundreds of new questions and an altogether thrilling, potentially much darker tale to come in the second installment. Readers will lean forward, sit up straighter, pant with desperation in anticipation of what is to come.

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Thank you for reading Andrea Marks-Joseph’s book review of Secrets Ever Green by Sara Knightly! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.