Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzales
The premise was great and it started strong, but in the end Never Ever Getting Back Together was just bad. It’s meant to be a light, brain candy sort of book with a sweet f/f romance, but there were too many things that bothered me about it to allow it to be very enjoyable.
The idea of a Bachelor-type reality TV show with all the competitors exes and the winner rekindling their romance with one lucky ex has excellent potential. Once I realized the guy was only 20 and his six exes were 18 to early twenties the whole thing just became silly. I realize the ages are to make it YA, but it’s just not something that lends itself to being a YA book precisely because of the ages. Also, he supposedly dated some of these girls for long periods of time, and these are not his only exes (in fact it’s insinuated there are MANY more) so the timeline just doesn’t work out for him to be only 20.
Maya was really mean to Skye at first (since it’s intended to be enemies to lovers, though that changeover was completely anticlimactic, just a sort of oh, it was a misunderstanding sort of thing, and happened very early on). Because of this, three of the other girls joined Skye in hating Maya. Once Skye started liking Maya the girls continued to hate Maya. This makes no sense. They would definitely not have been so loyal to someone they just met that they continue to hate the girl she only used to hate.
Jordy was really the only well-written character with his own voice, completely fleshed out. He had depth and made you really hate him and his slimy narcissism, The explanation of how he was royal adjacent was not totally explained and had some contradictions, though.
Maya and Skye may as well have been the same character. Aside from Maya liberally using four-letter words, they sounded identical. This presented a problem because the chapters switched point of view between them regularly. Sometimes it was nearly impossible to tell who was narrating until the other one’s name was written.
There are several things that were completely unrealistic, but the worst was when Skye cut off all her hair. None of the girls even commented on it. There is no way a bunch of girls would not comment on someone suddenly going from long hair to a pixie cut. Jordy barely reacted when he saw her. It was just sort of a he raised his eyebrows sort of thing. He had just told her how much he liked her long hair so him not saying anything about her cutting her hair in response to that just seems strange.
The girls tended to be incredibly immature, well beyond what I’d expect of people their ages. They acted more like 14-year-olds most of the time. Especially when Skye threw an incredible hissy fit at the end. Her behavior was out of character and rather insufferable. Maya’s obsession with getting back at Jordy for cheating on her two years before also seemed rather ridiculous, tiring, and very immature.
The formatting on the Kindle version is terrible. There are a few random scene change stars right in the middle of sentences. Conversations are written in paragraph blocks and because attributions aren’t always properly given, sometimes what seems to be one character speaking is actually two. There are also many random spaces right in the middle of paragraphs. Along with the generally poor writing, the formatting made it rather annoying to read.
I had high hopes for Never Ever Getting Back Together so it was disappointing that I ended up disliking it so much. Sure, there are good moments, but they are almost completely overshadowed. This is one book to just not bother with for sure.
2 (out of 5) Stars
Books Read in 2023: 5
Pages Read in 2023: 1736
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