Always Never Yours – Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka

I’m not the girl in the center of the stage at the end of a love story. I’m the girl before, the girl guys date right before they find their true love. Every one of my relationships end exactly the same.

Megan is the girl all her ex-boyfriends date right before finding their soulmate. She is okay with this until she is cast as Juliet in her high school production of Romeo & Juliet. When she meets Owen on set, she wonders if she wants to be more than just the one before. 

Okay – I’m going to warn you right now that this is going to be an unpopular opinion. I just checked Goodreads and 95% of the reviews were 3 or more stars – this novel has a remarkably high rating. Unfortunately, I am in that 5% who just did not like this one.

Always Never Yours started out with so much promise. I actually really liked Megan in the beginning. Among other things, I admired that we were given a young female character who is bold, embraces her sexuality and does not shy away from her feelings. Even her friends love this about her. This was refreshing.

Unfortunately, it all went downhill from there. The writing seemed a little disjointed (it was clear to me that this was written by two people). Megan’s “home problems” seemed incredibly juvenile for a young lady who seemed to be so mature in other aspects of her life. But what bothered me the absolute most about this novel was it’s portrayal of fidelity.

I can’t get into it too much without venturing into spoiler territory but let’s just say there was entirely too much infidelity among the young people. What is worse, the novel portrayed this as if it were normal – as if this is just how life is. Furthermore, there were few if absolutely no consequences for these actions.

Love is inconvenient sometimes.

I’m not unrealistic. I understand that relationships end and I even understand that infidelity is not uncommon. But it should be. And I don’t want to teach our young people that this behavior is in any way okay. “Love is inconvenient sometimes.” Very true! But that does not mean it is okay to cheat. It just doesn’t.

By the end of this novel, I downright disliked Megan and Owen. I’m not convinced their relationship was really anything special. I’m not convinced their story lasted very many pages past the end of this book 😦

2 Spades