Never Always Sometimes

by Adi Alsaid

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Reading With ABC http://readingwithabc.com http://readingwithabc.com/review-never-always-sometimes-by-adi-alsaid/Never Always Sometimes is a special story. It’s a story of friendship, love, nevers, firsts, lasts, maybes and forevers. I think that the best worked to describe it is bittersweet.

The story is so wonderful that in a way, it makes it harder for me to talk about it, especially without spoiling it. I’m a big fan of Alsaid’s Let’s Get Lost, and although I liked and enjoyed Never Always Sometimes, it lacked some of the magic of his first book.

This is the story of two best friends that create a list of Nevers the day before starting high school. This list contains clichés that they want to avoid to remain original and true to themselves. As seniors, Dave finds the list and they decide to do all the clichés. As they embark in this adventure they find that by avoiding them, they’d missed out on a lot of other experiences.

Dave and Juia’s friendship is SO amazing. They find comfort in each other and they rely on each other for everything. Their dialogues and their time together are precious and they were my favorite part of the book. Being so comfortable with other human being, being of a same mind and predict each other’s words and behaviors was so amazing to read.

Dave is sweet, and the calming force behind Julia’s hurricane like personality. They balance each other perfectly. On the other hand, Julia is crazy! She’s impulsive and never thinks of consequences to her actions.

“As long as we don’t get turned into something that looks more like high school, more like everybody else and less like us, I’ll be okay.”

The writing is very good and a pleasure to read. It’s enthralling and kept me reading page after page. The pace is a bit slow at times. The plot, the story was unexpected to me. I’m not even sure what to say here without spoiling it for you, but the heartbreak was real and it made me cry. Oh, the feels were real!

I hope the best for Julia and Dave and that their friendship can mend with time. Can we have a short story of what happened after? Pretty please :)

“If you wanted Dave to be prom king, you should have tried talking to other people for the last four years. People vote their friends onto the ballot, so the people with the most friends get on. Dave has one friend.”

“But she’s such a great friend!” Julia cried out."

Overall, Never Always Sometimes is a wonderful and bittersweet story. As tory that I really enjoyed, even as I wished for a different ending. I’m looking forward to Alsaid’s next book ;)

“Human beings are more or less formulas. Pun intended. We are not any one thing that is mathematically provable. We are more or less than we are anything. We are more or less kind, or more or less not. More or less selfish, happy, wise, lonely. Just like things are rarely always true or never true, we aren’t ever exactly one thing or another. We are more or less”This review was originally posted on Reading With ABC