Never Never
By: Colleen Hoover & Tarryn Fisher
Publication: January 7th 2015 by Hoover Ink
140 pages
Genre: New Adult, Contemporary, Mystery, Paranormal
Source: Personal Kindle Library
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Goodreads description--Best friends since they could walk.
In love since the age of fourteen.
Complete strangers since this morning.He'll do anything to remember. She'll do anything to forget.
Oh my! What to say? What to say? I just don’t know. I’m a huge Colleen Hoover fan, right? And even though I’ve never read Tarryn Fisher before, she’s been on my TBR list for a while. So I knew I right away that Never Never was a book I’d want to read. I was disappointed in the book description they released on Goodreads. I mean it tells you nothing really, and since finishing Never Never I feel like the description makes zero sense. Granted, it is possible that this was the description meant for the standalone book and they didn’t update it once they decided to turn it into a series; therefore, I’m just missing a huge piece of the puzzle for the description to make sense.
Honestly, even though I finished Never Never several days ago (more like a week at the time of this posting), I still don’t fully know how I feel about this book. The writing was good. Smooth and flowing. I was hooked and intrigued. But I had some issues too. It’s hard to know how much information to share about Never Never because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I feel like more than the description has to be touched on to give you an accurate representation of this book.
Here’s the deal: Charlie and Silas both kind of “come to” or “wake up” or whatever at the same time in different places with zero memories of who they are, who their families are, their pasts and all that jazz. They can remember details like who the president is and how to drive a car. But the important stuff that makes up who they are is gone. They figure out that they’ve been in a relationship for four years and that whatever is happening to them is happening to both of them. Colleen Hoover writes one narration—I’m pretty sure Silas—and Tarryn Fisher writes the other narration—again, pretty sure Charlie. The more Charlie and Silas find out about their pasts selves the less I liked their past selves. It was helpful to know that neither one of them seemed to like what they were finding out either, but that still made it a bit difficult for me to connect with them.
Also, the more Charlie and Silas learn about the past the more questions come up. What happened between Charlie & Silas’s fathers? Why were they both not fully committed to their relationship and yet seem so in love at the same time? What’s happened/happening to them to make them both lose their memories? Who can they trust? I wanted to know the answers to all of these questions, but you don’t get them. The answers. To any of the questions. At least not in Never Never Part 1.
And that leads me to the “epic cliffhanger” that everyone is talking about. I wasn’t as thrilled about the cliffhanger as everyone else seems to be. I mean some people hate cliffhangers and some people don’t. I kind of enjoy them if it stirs up excitement for me to look forward to the next book. If that’s the “end of the story” then I might not be so excited. But Never Never’s cliffhanger wasn’t the best one I’ve ever read—that still belongs to Shadow Kiss (Vampire Academy, # 3) by Richelle Mead. As a matter of fact I was just kind of annoyed, not because it was a cliffhanger, but because the book just ended.
Typically a story goes through the following steps: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Resolution. Well…I felt like we got the Exposition. We got the Rising Action. But it just ended after that. I guess the cliffhanger would be considered the climax. But there was no falling action or resolution….it just ended. Just……………
Since I mentioned the writing style earlier, here are my favorite non-spoiler quotes:
-It's frightening not knowing who you are--even more frightening thinking you'll get it wrong.
-There's no protocol on how to console your girlfriend of four years who you just met this morning.
-How odd to be made of flesh, balance on bone, and filled with a soul you've never met.
Never Never definitely left me wanting more. I can see where once I have all the information included in Part 2 I might very well really enjoy this book and this series, but at this point, I still just feel so unsure about things. I don’t really feel like I can make any accurate assessments at this point except to say that I don’t know anything about this story. The more I’ve learned the more I don’t know. I guess I’d give Never Never 4 Stars, but that rating feels subject to change. Have you read Never Never? What did you think? Let me know!
I have read some reviews of this book as it kinda intrigues me, but I am still not sure if I want to read it,maybe I'll wait and ake up my mind once all 3 parts are released. The whole forget everything you are part seems scary, but original as a plot device.
ReplyDeleteIt also seems weird that when they learn about their past lives they don't like their past lives as they are still the same. Memory loss or changes is another one of those topics that also make me a bit annoying as it's so weird. I know in real life it's weird as well, but maybe it's my psychology education that tries to make sense of it based on what I learned in school.
I also wonder why they didn't just make it a standalone as it feels a bit weird to just cut it up in parts and then have those weird cliffanger like endings. I am looking forward to hear what you think of the second and third part. Great review Sandy!
Colleen wrote Silas' chapters and the last chapter (which was Silas' chapter). The last chapter was definitely my favorite.
ReplyDeleteThey had to make the book this short because of Colleen's contract with her publisher (of her other books). They didn't realize when they started writing that she wasn't allowed to make the book longer.
I would highly recommend the series that starts with The Opportunist (Tarryn Fisher). And for Colleen I would highly recommend pretty much everything she writes. She is brilliant.
I didn't realize there was going to be another book. I may just hold off reading it then since now I now it has a cliffhanger ending. :)
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't mind cliffhangers, but this one ... ugh. Yeah, it's like right when it was "getting good", it just stopped. Definitely need the next book.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even rate this book. I love Hoover and have never read Fisher. I thought the writing was just ok. I could see it was self-published, which didn't keep me from flying through it. I read it fast because I wanted to know what was going on. And in the end I still have no clue and had a terrible time trying to write a review. I know it's a cliffhanger, but I just need more. I will read the next one because, well, cliffhanger, but I really hope they give us more to go on. I feel like I read the first half of a book and then the author just stopped writing.
ReplyDeleteI just finished writing my review for this one today, though it won't post till 2/9, so I decided to come over and check out what you thought. Haha - again, somewhat similar thoughts we share, although worded slightly different. Though some of our wording is eerily similar (I think my favorite word for this comment is similar...)
ReplyDeleteYou "guess you'd give it 4 stars?" LOL Your thoughts don't shout 4 stars to me. 3, yeah. But not 4. I however, did give it 4. You'll see why in February. Loved the quotes you picked too!
I kind of think waiting--if you can do that--might be a good idea. I wasn't sure if it was going to be 2 parts or 3. I don't think I could wait myself, but if you can then I almost think the experience might be more enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteYes, you would think that they would feel the same or whatever about what they've learned about their pasts selves. They still don't know everything as of the end of Part 1, so I imagine it is possible that they could understand how they ended up where they were once they have all of the pieces to the puzzle. I definitely see what you're saying about filtering everything you read on subjects like this through the lense of what you've studied in school. I would do the same thing if I had that background.
Another commenter said that apparently one of the authors current publishing contract limits the # of pages she can publish outside of her publishing contract or something like that. I haven't gotten that directly from the author herself though.
Thanks for stopping by as always Lola!
Yes, the last chapter was definitely the best. It was just getting really good.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info on that. I follow Colleen Hoover's blog and her through Facebook and I hadn't seen that, but I'm sure I missed an occasional post here and there.
I've got that series--and other Tarryn Fisher books--in my possession. I just haven't gotten around to them. As for Colleen Hoover--yeah, I've already read everything she's published. :) She's a favorite of mine.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting Jennifer!
Yeah, I can definitely see where you'd want to hold off for the whole thing since I know how much you like being able to roll right into the next book! Thankfully it doesn't seem like we have to wait TOO long until the release of Part 2 (May I think).
ReplyDeleteExactly! Thankfully, it doesn't seem like we'll have to wait TOO long until we get Part 2. Thanks for stopping by Christy!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. Another commenter said that they ended up having to cut it short because apparently Colleen Hoover's current publishing contract won't allow her to publish a book longer than this outside of her contract with them (or something like that). I didn't get that directly from either authors, so that may or may not be true. Thanks for stopping by and commenting Brooke!
ReplyDeleteLook at you being scheduled ahead of time....SEE! :) Glad we had similar thoughts. I can see where my review might feel more 3 stars than 4, but I had a really hard time rating it because I just don't have the whole story yet. And it really all depends on how the 2nd part goes as to whether I feel like this first part was "worth it" or not, which is why I said my rating is subject to change. :) Can't wait to read your review of it!
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I don't know how all that works, but that's kind of sucky, I guess. But I also saw her talking about them not being able to finish it all in one book, that there had to be other books. So I don't know. Either way, I need the sequel now because the suspense of what happens is killing me!
ReplyDeleteHere is exactly what Colleen Hoover wrote on facebook:
ReplyDelete"I understand. I'm not a big fan of series, and if my contract allowed me to publish full-length books outside of my publisher we might have released it that way. However, I can't release anything over a certain word count. We originally planned on releasing one shorter-length novel to abide by my contract, but realized we would be short-changing the reader by trying to push this story into a particular length book. Therefore, in order to appease my contract and stay true to the story, we had to split it. We aren't finished writing part two yet, and honestly don't know if we will finish it with two or three books. We know everyone wants an answer. We know lots of people think we shouldn't have released the first in the series until the entire thing was written, but that's honestly just not how it works in this industry. The majority of authors release one book while they are in the process of writing another. And writing is a creative process, so while I can say it's the "plan" to release three, who knows what might happen? The characters might take us in a different direction that calls for fewer or more words. So yes, I understand that people wish this wasn't a series but it is literally out of my control. I wanted to write a book with Tarryn and in order to do that, I had to abide by my agreement with my publisher. I love my publisher and didn't want to piss them off, but also want to pounce when the urge to write something strikes. So that's the truth. We are doing our best to appease everyone, but that's impossible. As soon as we found out about my restrictions, we cancelled the preorder because we didn't want people charged for a series when they were told it would be a standalone. So while we are doing our best to make the majority happy, the minority want to kill us. lol. But we appreciate everyone's understanding. And apologize for the stress we've caused with this cliffhanger. But let's be honest. IT WAS AN AWESOME CLIFFHANGER!!!!"
Yeah, Jennifer (below) copied and pasted what Colleen Hoover said about it on Facebook. It definitely still stinks, but at least the reason makes sense at the same time.
ReplyDeleteTHANKS Jennifer! I was being too lazy to go hunt down what she said. I really appreciate you doing that for me. :)
ReplyDelete