Review: Never Always Sometimes by Adi Alsaid

Title: Never Always Sometimes
Author: Adi Alsaid
Publisher: HarlequinTeen
Release date: August 4th 2015
Pages: 320
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: HarlequinTeen provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!
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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 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 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.

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I loved Adi Alsaid's writing style in his debut, Let's Get Lost, so I was really excited to read another one of his novels. But sadly, Never Always Sometimes doesn't quite live up to Let's Get Lost's greatness - while Alsaid's writing still carries the novel, his sophomore novel lacks the original premise and unique characters I loved in Let's Get Lost.

Even though Dave and Julia pride themselves on not being high school cliches, that's pretty much exactly what they are: they are the stereotypical too-smart-for-high-school outsiders. I understand that this was probably an intentional move on Alsaid's part, but that doesn't make them any less cliched, especially because this is such an overdone trope in contemporary YA. 

Dave's character frustrated me from the beginning on. The entire first part is just Dave pining away for Julia; all he talks about is how great Julia is and how much he loves her and how hard it is to keep his love a secret. It just got really annoying after a while.

Julia is pretty much the definition of a manic pixie dream girl, and again, I understand that this is probably intentional and that Alsaid is playing with the trope. I just don't think it works - there's nothing new to Julia that would work against the MPDG trope. I didn't understand her emotions; she's just this overly quirky girl who is always barefoot, and we never even find out why. I was hoping we would get more insights into her character in the part that she narrates, and I did enjoy finding out about her family life. But other than that, she remains a personality-less trope with no deeper explorations of what makes her so quirky and different. And the whole thing about her pretty much harassing a teacher.... that's just not okay.

Dave and Julia's friendship is fun to read about, in parts; some of their witty dialogue can be entertaining. But for the most part, I felt like it was trying too hard to be John-Green-esque, with the whole unrealistically-smart teenager thing, and this just doesn't work as well when anyone but John Green tries to do it. I wish their whole friendship hadn't been reduced to this type of dialogue; we don't even get to find out how they became friends or how Dave's feelings for Julia developed. 

The secondary characters had some potential. I actually liked Gretchen, the other part of the book's obligatory love triangle, more than Dave and Julia; she seems like less of a stereotype to me. But she still sort of felt like an outsider to the story, considering she's such an important part of the novel but doesn't get to narrate her parts the way Dave and Julia do. I also liked reading about Dave's and Julia's families because both are really interesting set-ups, I just wish their stories had been elaborated on a little more at the end - I especially wanted to see what would happen with Dave's brother, Brett.

Like I said, I did really enjoy Alsaid's writing. Like in Let's Get Lost, the writing flows really nicely and is light entertaining for the most part. This is interspersed with some deeper insights that actually make the reader think. However, I just don't think these insights work as well in Never Always Sometimes as they did in Let's Get Lost because the story isn't strong enough to carry such deep messages.

All in all, Never Always Sometimes is a very okay book. It's not bad, it just doesn't stand out within the contemporary YA genre. For a book that wants to tackle cliches, it doesn't actually complexify them all that much. While Alsaid's poignant writing style ensured I wanted to finish the novel, the story and the characters bored me, for the most part. To be honest, there are plenty of better best-friends-maybe-falling-in-love YA books out there, and I wouldn't particularly recommend this one. I'll still keep my eye out for what Alsaid publishes next, though, because I do really enjoy his writing style.

Review: Let's Get Lost by Adi Alsaid

Title: Let's Get Lost
Author: Adi Alsaid
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Release date: July 29th 2014
Pages: 352
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: BEA 2014
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Five strangers. Countless adventures.One epic way to get lost.
Four teens across the country have only one thing in common: a girl named LEILA. She crashes into their lives in her absurdly red car at the moment they need someone the most.
There's HUDSON, a small-town mechanic who is willing to throw away his dreams for true love. And BREE, a runaway who seizes every Tuesday—and a few stolen goods along the way. ELLIOT believes in happy endings…until his own life goes off-script. And SONIA worries that when she lost her boyfriend, she also lost the ability to love.
Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia find a friend in Leila. And when Leila leaves them, their lives are forever changed. But it is during Leila's own 4,268-mile journey that she discovers the most important truth— sometimes, what you need most is right where you started. And maybe the only way to find what you're looking for is to get lost along the way.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

After the tons of buzz for Adi Alsaid's book at BEA, I was super excited about Let's Get Lost, and luckily it didn't disappoint! I loved Adi Alsaid's writing style - it's the perfect balance of funny and poignant, making this a novel that is both entertaining and heartbreaking.

The novel is separated into five parts, each focusing on a different character, and I did not enjoy them all equally. My favorite parts were Bree's and Sonia's - both of them get into ridiculous situations with Leila, and they are hilarious to read about. Underneath all of these entertaining scenes lies stellar character development for both Bree and Sonia: both of their background stories are heartbreaking and made me feel for them throughout their parts. To me, these two sections are the funniest but also convey a very strong message.

Hudson's and Elliot's sections are the two that I took issue with. I did really enjoy these parts - they, too, have great humor and poignancy - but they both have problematic themes. Hudson's story adheres a bit too closely to the manic pixie dream girl trope: Hudson is the good guy with issues, and along comes this "whirlwind of a girl" who is so different from anyone else he knows and helps him discover himself. The manic pixie dream girl (aka Leila) works as a plot tool - and therefore an object - without really having a personality of her own. Looking back after I've finished the novel, and knowing what I know now about Leila, it makes sense that we wouldn't find out much about Leila, but while reading Hudson's section, the set-up didn't sit right with me, just because this trope is very problematic in terms of women's representation and it just frustrates me every time I see it.

In Elliot's story, too, my issues are gender-related. This section takes place after Elliot has confessed his love for his friend and she has turned him down, and the whole story revolves around Eliot trying, again and again, to win her over, after she has said no. It's the classic "friendzone"  story, which automatically made me dislike Eliot for his sense of entitlement to women. The way he does not respect her no and continues to attempt to win her over is deeply problematic and perpetuates rape culture, ideas of male entitlement, and traditional gender roles within the "courting"  process. His behavior is simply not okay, and that made it hard for me to enjoy Elliot's story, even though his section, too, had some very entertaining parts.

The last part of the novel is about Leila, and it's another section that I loved. After finding out about Leila's background, I wanted to go back and reread everything, just to see how much better I could understand Leila's behavior now that I know what she's going through. Her story is heartbreaking but hopeful, and I loved it. The only part I took issue with is the ending, because that just seemed unnecessary and unrealistic to me.

I know the negative parts of this review almost outweigh the positive ones, but that's really just because once I get started on a feminist rant, there's no going back. Despite these issues, I really loved Let's Get Lost. I loved getting insight into each of these people's lives that are connected in such a random way, and even though we only get to read about them for such a short time, all the characters have depth and are very memorable. If you like roadtrip books, there's no way you won't love Let's Get Lost because these adventures are more ridiculous and entertaining than any other roadtrip book I've read. With the perfect balance of humorous, random road trip adventures and the honest exploration of these characters'  inspiring struggles, Let's Get Lost is the perfect summer read. I can't wait to see what Adi Alsaid writes next!