What If

by Rebecca Donovan

[Leah]

When I heard Rebecca Donovan was finally releasing a new book I was chuffed to pieces. Reason To Breathe is one of my favourite books, and I've been dying to read the sequels (really, I need to make time to finish the other two books) and the thought of a new stand-alone Rebecca Donovan sounded awesome. The synopsis was so, so intriguing; so much so that it sounded a bit confusing, but I was willing to go for it and when I saw it was being published by one of the publishers I'm auto-approved for on Netgalley, I may have let out a little squeal. What If? sounded like a crazy story, and I couldn't wait to get stuck in to it.

While I loved the premise of What If?, I would have preferred massively for it to have gone a bit differently. As much as I liked Cal, the way he comes across throughout the novel is a bit stalker-y. He goes to a party right at the start, to try and see this girl named Nicole, then we skip forward to him at College, and he sees this girl, and he thinks it's Nicole but it's not, it's a girl named Nyelle, who has the same eyes as Nicole, the same Nicole who seemingly went AWOL at some point after graduation, and from then on he engineers meetings with this girl named Nyelle. He doesn't confront her and ask her if she's Nicole (which I would personally do), he just... goes with it, and accepts that this girl named Nyelle may be the girl named Nicole he grew up with. It needed more context - why did this girl mean so much to him? We do get to see Cal and Nicole as kids, along with Richelle and Rae, their best friends, but there's still no solid reason as to why Cal was so hung up on Nicole, and that kinda bothered me a bit.

I also thought Nyelle/Nicole was crazy. Like, needs-to-be-in-an-institution crazy. Climbing frosting trees, canoeing in a freezing cold lake... She seemed like a manic depressive, who wasn't depressed. She was always about doing these crazy things, referring to some kind of list, but never elaborating. And it just made her seem completely nuts. She sort of reminded me a bit of Chloe Price on Rookie Blue - unfiltered, wanting to do crazy things and see unicorns etc. I was never quite sure where I stood with Nyelle, never sure if what she was doing was an act, or her real state (I'm still not sure). Sure, it was kinda cute, and crazy, and it was fun to see Cal doing stuff he probably normally wouldn't do in a million years, but it also seemed quite fantastical, a bit too good to be true.

I wanted to love What If? but I had such a tough time believing it all. It's all very well explained (although some of it I guessed myself, because some of it is kinda obvious) but the novel never felt grounded in reality. It all just seemed like some amazing fantasy - that Cal had spent so much time fixating on this girl he's conjured her up out of nowhere. And I still would have liked to know what was so special about this quiet girl, who dumped her friends, and disappeared. Why it still bothered him after so much time. There just needed to be more of a reason. It's not like guys to be so hung up after so long (especially considering he seems to date the entire campus!). It just wasn't really my kind of book; I wanted it to be. I so wanted it to be, but it just wasn't meant to be.This review was originally posted on Girls Love To Read