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
( Goodreads | Amazon
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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!
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