Item: Never Always Sometimes
Rating: 2.00
Author: layawaydragon

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

I don't know how I feel about this one. I'll have to come back to it later.

Content Warning: Cheating, Stalking, Breaking & Entering

>>Took awhile to get into because Dave is just so sappy in love with Julia and I found them boring and pretentious. It wasn't until the other Love Interest and Brother got involved that I was emotionally invested at all. I'm sure if I read it when I was in my John Green phase I would've feel better about it.
>>The dialogue and banter is better than similar YA novels like John Green's.
>>Did not find Julia's jokes about Dave's name funny though. Too many white people play that shit straight.
>>The teacher subplot is...horribly unacceptable and not funny. Poor guy. :/
>>Skimmed over all the physically cheating parts, because I found it really awkward and in bad taste. I was internally screaming and cringing. It's a sore spot for me, admittedly.
>>Wish Julia had more character progression and resolution
>>Totally saw the Brother's secret coming from a mile away.
>>I'll still be trying out Alsaid's other novels. I think I should've done more research and picked a different one given the content.

Never Always Sometimes

by Adi Alsaid

Reviewed by layawaydragon on Jan 20, 2018

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