Review: Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid

Original Title: Never Always Sometimes

Author: Adi Alsaid

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Release Date: August 4th 2015

Source: Netgalley

Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult

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 cliché 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 die 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 rule #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 clichés, they've actually been missing out on high school. And maybe even on love.

REVIEW

Dave and Julia tries not to do anything cliché in their high school life.  They also make a list of 10 such activities.  Towards the end of the high school, they come across this list by accident, and decides to try those things at last.  Dave has love Julia for so long, but has no courage to come forward and say that to her.  And Julia is just plain crazy, well, crazy and fun..and good.  When they try on these clichéd things, they find that they had missed out on many things.  Dave makes new friends, sees a girl that he is interested in and even maybe love her.  But, just when things seem better for Dave, Julia finds that she is in love with Dave.  Things spiral down from there and the author has given a beautiful and realistic approach on the romance.

It's been a while since I had read such a fun book.  I was laughing through most of the book.  The snarky comments and immediate unexpected responses from Julia made the whole book so much more enjoyable.

"You realize this is insane, right?"
"You're mispronouncing 'genius.'"

Sometimes, I don't know whether the author is a sheer genius for making such statements,

"THERE WAS NO greater proof of an underlying human connection than the universal hatred of Monday mornings."

or plain crazy.

"The next morning Dave's hair not only looked like puke, but like puke that had been allowed to sit out overnight."

Seriously?  That comment about Dave's hair made me crack up for so long.

While this was the trend in the first half of the book, the second half of the book became a bit serious and then the climax realistic.

The characters, Julia and Dave, are so good and deep, that I felt like I knew them personally.  They have been so cut out from the world that they didn't even know the basic things every teenager knew for granted.  I loved how the author transformed their ignorance to something so beautiful.  Dave's brother and girlfriend are also another set of adorable characters.  And then there is Julia's mom - well, I don't want to use curse words, so I am leaving her out of this.

The climax is so realistic, no big dramas.  Just ended like real life. :)

Thanks for writing this, Adi!  I am definitely recommending this to anyone interested in fiction.

5 STARS!