Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Tuesday Reviews: Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid


Title: Never Always Sometimes
Author: Adi Alsaid
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release Date: August 4, 2015
Format Read: Hardback
Rating: Four Stars

Description from Goodreads: 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 #5, never dye your hair a color of the rainbow, or #7, never hook up with a teacher. But Dave has a secret: he's broken rule #8, never pine silently after someone for the entirety of high school. It's either that or break #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 love.

I picked up NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES pretty quick after release date. Being a part of Adi's street team, I had to go out and show mu support! And then in February, I was checking my blog and realized I'd never reviewed it. This led me to do some checking, which is when I learned that, FOR MONTHS, I'd thought that I had read and reviewed NAS, when in reality, I hadn't done either. So I fixed that immediately.

Dave and Julia are literal best friend goals. As you journey through part of their high school lives, it becomes easy to fall in love with the pair. They have this perfect, unfailing friendship, and they perfectly balance each other out. Where Julia is wild and reckless, Dave is calm and laid back. She is the fire to his ice, and they are beautiful together. 

The idea of an anti-cliche high school experience was so much fun to read about. Not only did we get to see how each of these events affected their relationship, but also their relationships with the people around them, and it was like watching an experiment. Some of the things on their list, like rule  #5 and the hair dye, are things that I've always wanted to do, but would never really have the guts to go through with, so it was fun watching them experience these things together-- things that I would never, could never, do. 

And Julia and Dave doing them together made for some extremely hilarious chapters, let me tell you. Julia is a force to be reckoned with, and seeing her in all of these different, cliche lights... it was so much fun. Where Dave reminds me a lot of myself, Julia is the anti-Steph, and it was fun to watch the two interact and create these memories and experiences that will last them a lifetime.

And the romance in this one! It was so well done, not too much and too over-the-top, but not too vague and ignored. That's all I'm saying about that, or I'll end up spoiling it.

I definitely enjoyed NEVER ALWAYS SOMETIMES more than Adi's first one. LET'S GET LOST wasn't a bad book, but NAS just raised the bar quite a bit. This was a four star read for me, and I encourage any high schooler, past high schooler, or future high schooler to get their hands on a copy and read it asap. So, you know. Basically everyone. It won't be a bad decision, trust me.

Happily,
Stephanie

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