Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid

Never Always Sometimes

by Adi Alsaid

Never date your best friend
Always be original
Sometimes rules are meant to be broken

Best friends Dave and Julia were determined to never be cliche high school kids - the ones who sit at the same lunch table every day, dissecting the drama from homeroom and plotting their campaigns for prom king and queen. They even wrote their own Never List of everything they vowed they'd never, ever do in high school.

Some of the rules have been easy to follow; like No. 5, never die your hair a colour of the rainbow, or No. 7, never hook up with a teacher. But Dave has a secret: he's broken rule No. 8, never pine silently after someone for the entirety of high school. It's either that or break rule No. 10, never date your best friend. Dave has loved Julia for as long as he can remember.

Julia is beautiful, wild and impetuous. So when she suggests they do every Never on the list, Dave is happy to play along. He even dyes his hair an unfortunate shade of green. It starts as a joke, but then a funny thing happens: Dave and Julia discover that by skipping the cliches, they've actually been missing out on high school. And maybe even on love.

"An achingly beautiful story ... Reminiscent of John Green's Paper Towns, Alsaid's debut is a gem among contemporary YA novels." - School Library Journal

"An entertaining and romantic road-trip debut." - Kirkus Reviews

Reviewed by whisperingchapters on

2 of 5 stars

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This 2.5 review can be found on Latte Nights Reviews on August 3.

I expected a lot from this book. I was excited about it that I immediately signed up for the blog tour and requested it. I started the book, all excited and happy, thinking this would be a fun and an LOL book but sadly, that wasn’t the case. I didn’t like the characters AT ALL. Julia was so…frustrating and infuriating! I wanted to smack her head or let her die. I know this is bad but I just couldn’t deal with her. She was so demanding and had Dave on a leash. He followed her around all the freaking time, he didn’t have a mind of his own. It’s like Julia did all the thinking for him and he would roll with whatever Julia said. Just writing this review is getting me agitated. I was about to DNF the book but then Dave stands up for himself and someone else and I literally did a jump and a mini dance and grinned because I was so happy that Dave was finally opening his eyes and speaking up for himself. That didn’t last long, though and in the process he hurt someone and I just wanted to smack him, too.

The reason I’m giving it 2.5 is because there were very minimal times where I had fun just a “smidge” and Dave speaking up for himself really got me super happy. The ending is a happy one that I enjoyed a bit. There are two supporting characters that really made me think my rating so I had to bump it up to 2.5 because these characters were fun and cute.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 26 July, 2015: Finished reading
  • 26 July, 2015: Reviewed