Nexis by A.L. Davroe

In the domed city of Evanescence, appearance is everything. A Natural Born amongst genetically-altered Aristocrats, all Ella ever wanted was to be like everyone else. Augmented, sparkling, and perfect. Then…the crash. Devastated by her father’s death and struggling with her new physical limitations, Ella is terrified to learn she is not just alone, but little more than a prisoner.

Her only escape is to lose herself in Nexis, the hugely popular virtual reality game her father created. In Nexis she meets Guster, a senior player who guides Ella through the strange and compelling new world she now inhabits. He offers Ella guidance, friendship…and something more. Something that allows her to forget about the “real” world, and makes her feel whole again.

But Nexis isn’t quite the game everyone thinks it is.

And it’s been waiting for Ella.

Rating: 3/5 Stars

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was pleasantly surprised by Nexis and the world the author created.

In the future people live in the virtual world called Nexis, an invention of Ella’s father that she uses to interact with other people. As she is the only “Natural Born “amongst genetically altered aristocrats, Ella spent her time in this virtual world as a way of living and staying away from real human contact.

I liked the main character, she tended to dwell a bit in her sad situation yes, but once it was time to act she took matters into her own hands and went for it.

The side characters were alright, though I wished they had been developed a bit more. They seemed more like stereotypes than real people.

One thing that bothered me to the point where I started considering to stop reading it was the pace. It would start super-fast and action packed, only to get to a snail pace out of the sudden with little action going through each chapter, and then it would pick up again. It was like a roller coaster but I wished the transition had been made a little smoother instead of providing this sharp contrast.

To sum up, Nexis is a creative story with likeable characters and an interesting plot. I’d recommend it to anybody who is into futuristic tales.

Angels of Moirai by Nicole Salmond

Since man first walked the earth, the Angels of Moirai have watched over them. Born human, they are taught never to feel, never to become attached, and never to become emotionally compromised. 

Eighteen-year-old Lila Kingston is haunted by dreams of a mysterious angel. Suddenly the dramas of her broken family and the snobby rich kids at her school fail in comparison to the challenges she must face. 

Hailing from the Angels of Moirai, James Taylor has been entrusted with the fate of lives from around the world for over a thousand years. His sole purpose is to ensure every mortal follows their designated path, but when Lila puts that very purpose at risk, he must make a choice—a choice that ultimately leads to the devastating consequences of a love never meant to exist. 

The choice was never easy. Those kind of choices never are…


Rating: 1/5 Stars


I was kindly provided with a copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


                                     

It's been a long time since I've experienced Twilight nostalgia, and frankly I've kind of missed it, especially these memes, they were the shit back in the days. I loved how people always came up with ridiculous and over-the-top ideas to make new weird-ass jokes.

Angels of Moirai reminded me of a meme similar to this but regarding Fifty Shades which said "And you can't even use "Better love story that Twilight" with this one." (Sorry, I can't seem to find the original one!).

The similarities came from the fact that this reads pretty much like Twilight fanfiction but with more slut-shaming, girls going against girls for no reason at all other than sexism, and abundant dozes of teenage drama that makes me wonder if I was ever as annoying as these guys when I was their age.

The story is as follows; the main character, Lila, starts the book crying inside a pool because her life is miserable. She's a beautiful eighteen year old with loaded parents who give her and her sister all the freedom and money they could ever desire so, clearly, Lila is devastated by her crappy life.

Nobody understands her and honestly, I don't blame them. Lila could have everything and yet there always something "missing", my guess is a brain and common sense, but this is YA so, of course that what is missing is a brooding and mysterious guy who has a unique connection to the MC, and who she’ll fall in love with after two encounters... BUT! He will immediately turn cold on her to cause drama and she'll desperately worry about their super-special love being lost forever, and her life totally ruined.

I was honestly surprised by the Twilight similarities, there were just too many to be a simple wink at the Twilight culture. From the meeting with the love interest, to the full obsession caused after sharing one conversation and her idea that, after they talked, the guy was somehow so affected that he stopped going to school, only to return and be cold and indifferent to her, much like Edward with Bella.

Lila was a character I could not connect with. Maybe I'm getting too old for Young Adult, or maybe the characters are getting more stupid and over the top with each book, or both, but for the life of me I could not understand this girl’s problems!

Her parents work hard to provide for her and her sister so they could have a nice life, and Lila never appreciated the sacrifice that they made. She could only think of what she wanted and whined over why her parents wouldn't just put everything on hold to please her every whim. She even goes as far as to demand her parents to quit their jobs on the spot so "they would prove they care about her" and when they, thankfully, don't Lila turns into a mess and is absolutely convinced that her parents don't love her and resents them for it.

I didn't really care about the plot since I felt like I had read it a thousand times before. All you need to know is that there is a hot and mysterious dude who cares about Lila and Lila only... even though he treats her like crap. Every girl besides her friend is a "slut" (which is baaaaaad, say it like a sheep would) and that even includes her little sister... yikes.

“No matter how strict the school uniform was, there would always be those girls who found a way to make it sexy somehow. Unfortunately, my sister happened to be one of those girls.”

There is a mean girl who wants to have the hot and brooding James all by herself (why the hell would she, I wonder?), so she's of course threatened by our MC with no personality or remarkable traits. 

Then, it turns out the hot guy doesn't even like her after all? 

“I looked straight at him, wondering if his return meant something, and also feeling some sense of relief that he was ok, but he looked at me like I was nothing… like I was no-one.”

Unbelievable! they spoke three motherfucking times!!! 

But then, he does like her? Funny how he shows interest in her again when another guy shows up in Lila’s life...

 

And more drama! Fated to be but somehow not because it’s forbidden... ish.

I would recommend Angels of Moirai to Hardcore Twilight fans or hardcore angel lovers, that is probably the intended demographic instead of me, who would be more than happy to have Lila's financial estability and loving environment. 

Sue me.

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park in this exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.
 Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
 
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
 
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
 
Rating: 2/5 Stars

I tend to avoid books that deal with depression because I don’t want to be reminded of my own (though the bastard still comes, no matter what I do but hey, I’ll do what I can). But I think they are extremely important for people to understand this crappy disease, and all it entails.

So I went into All The Bright Places expecting to be punched in the gut. I could already see myself nodding along to the story, identifying myself with the characters and what they were going through and yet…

I felt nothing. This book, even though it deals with something that I’m very familiar with did not ring true to me. I couldn’t connect with the characters or the story, and I was honestly a bit bored up until 70% of my reading.

The characters dealing with their depression was nothing like what it was with me in high school. Not to say that it was wrong, I’m just saying it to show how I did not connect with it.

Rather than believing that depression made me more interesting, darker and better than other people like Violet and Finch did, I spent most of my days wondering “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be like everybody else?” I can’t explain what it was like to watch my classmates playing, laughing and making friends. It was so distant to me, their happiness was… strange. I wanted that, I wanted to be with them and be friends with them instead of feeling that way, like everything was too much.

So I couldn’t relate to Violet and Finch, who made depression seem like a quirky little thing to have that made them “special” somehow, that connected them as the only two people who understood each other since everybody at their homes was too busy with each themselves to care about their kids. And it was this treatment that diminished my enjoyment of the book, because every time it tried to bring out the seriousness of the issue, I wouldn’t buy it. Not after romanticizing it as if it were something cool.

Moreover, and this brings the question that I make every time I read about this stuff on books in the US. Is the society really like this?

Violet and Finch were always ignored and ridiculed for having depression. Students were constantly making jokes at school and, even though everybody knew that Finch had suicidal thoughts, nobody gave two craps about it. In fact, at one point in the novel some assholes release a “newspaper” detailing the top ten kids with depression at school (who the hell let that thing get published?) and the authorities did nothing, in fact they seemed to blame the kids that were on the magazine rather than the insensitive idiots who wrote it!

I just don’t buy it, I may not know a great deal about North American culture but I know that more than one parent would have filed a lawsuit against the school, and rightfully so.

It seemed like everybody was against this duo, just to make their situation even crappier. You are telling me there was no other decent person in that town?

I did not appreciate the amount of slut-shaming in this book. Violet is a virgin, and for some deranged reason, she believes that makes her superior to other girls… What is this mentality? And even after Violet has sex herself, she thinks she’s a slut.

 What the hell is a slut, can somebody tell me? Because I fail to see how having fun without hurting anybody makes you worthy of such a disgusting insult.

However, there were many great things about this book, little ideas here and there that I could identify with, like feeling guilty over having those thoughts, as if it were their fault but mostly, and despite All The Bright Places dealing with something close to me, I thought it’s only strength laid in the fact that it was a book about depression and suicide, albeit it dealt with it rather lightly.

Now, I know that depression is different for everybody and I’m not going to say “This book isn’t about depression!” Simply because I didn’t identify with it, a lot of people have and will, and that’s amazing! But I was looking forward to somethig different, and I often felt like the author was romanticizing a disease to make the main characters seem “cooler”.

Touch of Power by Maria V. Snyder

Laying hands upon the injured and dying, Avry of Kazan assumes their wounds and diseases into herself. But rather than being honoured for her skills, she is hunted. Healers like Avry are accused of spreading the plague that has decimated the Territories, leaving the survivors in a state of chaos.

Stressed and tired from hiding, Avry is abducted by a band of rogues who, shockingly, value her gift above the golden bounty offered for her capture. Their leader an enigmatic captor-protector with powers of his own is unequivocal in his demands: Avry must heal a plague-stricken prince, the leader of a campaign against her people.

As they traverse the daunting Nine Mountains, beset by mercenaries and magical dangers, Avry must decide who is worth healing and what is worth dying for.


Rating: 1/5 Stars


I... I don't know what happened.

I loved Poison Study, and when I read about Touch of Power I was in love.

I mean a story by an author that I loved with that amazing premise?? Bring it!

But as soon as I began reading, I knew that there was something off about the story. We meet the main character yes, and we are told about her story, how she's a healer but has to hide it or she'll be executed... But it was all so rushed! The writing style was simple, there was no depth, no passion in it.

It felt a little like reading My Immortal.

Right off the bat, Avry heals a dying little girl and because she's consumed by the desease she can't run away and hide, so she's caught by the law inforcement after the girl's parents rat her out.

The monologue is so infantile I can't even form a coherent review!!!

When the girl's father confronts her, you know what he says?

"I don't care that you saved my daughter. You are a healer and you deserve to die." Like, what??

And Avry is like "Yeah I know, I totally deserve it!" *Hides face for being such a monster*

By chapter two, she's already rescued and the plot develops with no subtlety or grace, it's like the action starts there and then… that's it.

I didn't like it. At all. Avry wasn't a character, I don't know what the hell she was, a machine that nodded, felt sorry for herself and was for some unexplained reason super in love with a guy that hated her and who would rather she died instead of his friends?

No, no, NO.

Terrible, that's all I'll right about it. I'm gonna pretend this book never existed.

The Winner's Crime by Marie Rutkoski

Book two of the dazzling Winner's Trilogy is a fight to the death as Kestrel risks betrayal of country for love.

The engagement of Lady Kestrel to Valoria’s crown prince means one celebration after another. But to Kestrel it means living in a cage of her own making. As the wedding approaches, she aches to tell Arin the truth about her engagement... if she could only trust him. Yet can she even trust herself? For—unknown to Arin—Kestrel is becoming a skilled practitioner of deceit: an anonymous spy passing information to Herran, and close to uncovering a shocking secret.

As Arin enlists dangerous allies in the struggle to keep his country’s freedom, he can’t fight the suspicion that Kestrel knows more than she shows. In the end, it might not be a dagger in the dark that cuts him open, but the truth. And when that happens, Kestrel and Arin learn just how much their crimes will cost them.

Rating: 2.5/5 Stars


“If you won’t be my friend, you’ll regret being my enemy.” 

If I had to describe this book in one word, it would have to be unnecessary.

Probably because I don’t think annoying as hell would count as one word, so I’m sticking with that.

The Winner’s Crime suffers from what I call “The middle book Syndrome” and that is the second book in a trilogy that adds little to the overall plot, and it’s clearly a set up for the third and last instalment.

The problem with this is, even if you write a book and want the majority of the action to happen in the third instalment, that’s perfectly fine! But in this sequel, the actual story happens in about twenty pages, and the rest is filled with absurd drama, forced tension and predictable plots that weren’t even exciting to read about.

I’m sounding a bit hard here, but can you blame me after banging my head against the wall during the entire read?

The story starts shortly after the end of The Winner’s Curse with Kestrel at court, after she accepted the engagement to Valora’s crown prince to save Arin and his people. We see her navigate her way through the palace and her conflicted relationship to the King, who see her as the cunning heir his son could never be.

I still love the author's capacity to make me believe in this world. There were elements in it that I ahd to think twice on whether they existed or not, because she managed to execute them so naturally that it made me believe it!

I liked Kestrel’s relationship to the King, at first. It was compelling to read how much the two of them seemed to resemble each other, both cunning and ruthless. Here we started to see another side of Kestrel, not so much the innocent girl she had been in the first book as she is forced to make hard decision after hard decision.

Perhaps my problem was that, for all the efforts the author put into making Kestrel a smart and decisive character, she fell flat. You know all those hard decisions she had to make? Well, they were a result of her own stupidity, and it was painful to see her try and fix the mistakes she made while not realizing she had been the one who had gotten herself into that situation.

Instead of being smart and work from the shadows, Kestrel makes it very clear that she is against the King and working with Arin as she works as a “spy” for his Kingdom. Sure, she tried to disguise herself as a “secret” informant for Arin through his friend, but the only one who was fooled was Arin himself. I cringed reading about how “cleverly” she allegedly hid herself and lied to her friends, when it was very clear that those excuses were far-fetched, and that her friends and companions were picking up on the not-so-subtle clues she left behind.

Her relationship with Arin was annoying in the sequel, unlike how exciting and fun it had been in The Winner’s Crime. Their interactions consisted of Kestrel pushing Arin away, Arin not believing her and desperately trying to make her confess she loved him, but when he started to let go, Kestrel would despair and try and win him back, telling him that everything she did, she did it for him, though not wanting to explain what she was doing “because of reasons”.

No no no, I hate that. Really, this book should have been twenty pages long, because that’s the time the real plot takes, the rest is Arin and Kestrel going back and forth in an annoying dance that none could win.

Besides, Arin guesses why it is that Kestrel is behaving this way and confronts her about it at the very beginning. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just go “Well shit, yeah dude you’ve got me there. I really do love you and I’m doing this to protect you and your people.”

But instead she just tell him that, despite having been completely in love with him in book 1, she suddenly fell out of love and is doing the very same thing she said she didn’t want to do, to marry the prince. How does that make sense?? It doesn’t.

These two should have sat down, had a long conversation and settle this matter straight away. Then everybody would have been happy!

Arin was, by far, the most annoying thing in this book. He was more than willing to damn everything for Kestrel, even though she begged him to think of his people and what his actions would cause.

He wasn’t thinking about what he would cause if he kept chasing Kestrel, what that would mean for his people and the fragile peace they now had with Valoria. He just wanted Kestrel, like a spoiled child who fancied a shiny toy. Screw the rest!

The end was the cherry on the cake for his character. Although I will admit that it was interesting how the tables turned, I now do not care for him. I do not want him to succeed in any way, just… go.

I loved the prince, he was clearly smarter than Kestrel and his father, and I really wished Kestrel had listened to him. Everything could have worked out just fine if she had.

Overall, the only thing that made the reading worth it for me was the ending, now I just want to get to the end and see how everything plays out!!!!! But, and I know I’m in the minority here, I don’t want Kestrel to end up with Arin. As much as I felt for him in the first book, he transformed himself into an idiot in this sequel, and I really believe that this girl deserves better.

Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios

Forced to obey her master.
Compelled to help her enemy.
Determined to free herself. 

Nalia is a jinni of tremendous ancient power, the only survivor of a coup that killed nearly everyone she loved. Stuffed into a bottle and sold by a slave trader, she’s now in hiding on the dark caravan, the lucrative jinni slave trade between Arjinna and Earth, where jinn are forced to grant wishes and obey their human masters’ every command. She’d give almost anything to be free of the golden shackles that bind her to Malek, her handsome, cruel master, and his lavish Hollywood lifestyle.

Enter Raif, the enigmatic leader of Arjinna’s revolution and Nalia’s sworn enemy. He promises to free Nalia from her master so that she can return to her ravaged homeland and free her imprisoned brother—all for an unbearably high price. Nalia’s not sure she can trust him, but Raif’s her only hope of escape. With her enemies on the hunt, Earth has become more perilous than ever for Nalia. There’s just one catch: for Raif’s unbinding magic to work, Nalia must gain possession of her bottle…and convince the dangerously persuasive Malek that she truly loves him. Battling a dark past and harboring a terrible secret, Nalia soon realizes her freedom may come at a price too terrible to pay: but how far is she willing to go for it?

Inspired by Arabian Nights, EXQUISITE CAPTIVE brings to life a deliciously seductive world where a wish can be a curse and shadows are sometimes safer than the light.


Rating: 2/5 Stars

“She’d never break a vow to the Gods to save her own skin, but Nalia would sell out the entire jinn race in order to rescue her brother.”

Exquisite Captive is pretty much everything you would expect from a book titled “Exquisite Captive”, we have skin described as food, an abusive romantic relationship between a slave and her master, an abusive relationship between a slave and her rescuer, and an idiot MC.

Ok, the last one is not so predictable but it’s still there.

Nalia is a Ghan Asouri, the last of the most powerful of the Jinn races. This kind, only female, was believed to be Gods’ descendants thanks to their connection with all four elements, air, fire, earth and water instead of just one like the other Jinn races. They ruled over the Jinns with an iron fist, until they all rebelled against them and Nalia, a guard back then, managed to escape but was later captured and put inside a bottle, forced to obey the master that bought her, Malek.

First I’m going to say what I did like about this book before I get into the negative stuff:

• I liked the writing style of the author, it was a bit purple-prose yes, but it helped set the mood for this fantasy tale.
• The world-building was fantastic, I could picture perfectly and I loved the background the author provided for this world, it really showed that she had put a lot of thought into it.
• I liked how the author said that Nalia had experimented sexually with other girls. It was natural (especially considering how all girls lived together) and, although the author didn’t go into too many details it’s something that most writers tend to avoid, so I’m glad she showed it!

Now, onto the problems:

Story:

As far as plot goes, well I’m still not sure what that was. Nalia wants to escape her sadistic and beautiful master, Malek (because bad guys must always be hot, otherwise his behaviour would be automatically catalogued as creepy, instead of sexy) and get back to her homeland so she can rescue her brother from a life as a slave.

The problem is, to be free Malek has to make his third wish or die. He won’t do the first and, thanks to a wish he forced from Nalia, he can’t do the second either. So that leaves Nalia with only one choice, help Raif the leader of the revolution that killed her kind.

Probably one of the major problems with the plot is that it doesn’t show itself up to 30% of the book, and after that nothing really happens. We end the book pretty much the same way we started it, with a few changes here and there.

Exquisite Captive focus too much on the romance, a sin most YA books commit these days. No that there is anything wrong with romance, but when it starts out of nowhere and it leaves only a few sentences for the real action it overpowers the plot. Mostly Nalia spent her days missing her homeland, being scared/confused to Malek and her attraction to him, being pissed off/attracted to Raif and telling us constantly how she was the Ghan Asouri, the most powerful of the Jinn races, but never living up to her words because she always had to be rescued by some guy.

The lack of consistency:

At first we are told that Ghan Asouris can be born from other of their kind (Nalia’s mother was one as well) or they could be born randomly in other Jinn races. When identified by their eye color, violet, they are taken away and trained with the rest.

So I just don’t understand why Nalia being the only Ghan Asouri left meant that it was the end of the race! Couldn’t just more of them be born into other families like it had been happening since the beginning of time???

The author completely ignores this!

At the beginning of the book, Nalia said just how close she was with her “sisters”, how they understood each other and were a family she dearly missed. Then she goes on and tell us how this new friend she has on Earth is probably the only real friend she has ever had, because she was “different” from the other Ghan Asouri (she was against violence and shit, even though at the beginning she said she loved it) so she kept to herself. And THEN she tells us how her only real friend had been another Jinn back in her homeland.

Make up your fricken mind!

The Characters:

I’m the sort of person who focuses a lot in character. The plot could be fine and the writing decent, but if the characters are dull or annoying that will kill a book for me. Something of the sort happened here.

Nalia:

Aggg, Nalia! You could have been amazing, gurl! I was excited to see her character play out. As a Ghan Asouri, Nalia had been part of the oppressing regime, instead of being the one who rebelled against it. It was a nice change, because this time the man character was “the bad guy”.

Unfortunately, her character fell flat. We were remained again and again how she was so powerful and she shouldn’t be overpowered by someone lower than her, and yet she spent all of her time having her ass kicked by lower Jinns and even humans!

Moreover, the author didn’t seem to settle on what Nalia was supposed to be. Was she a fierce warrior, ready to take revenge on those who murdered her family? Or was she someone who hated to make other people suffer, even if they had hurt her? Was she a dictator, believing to be oppressing as the right thing? Or was she the only “good” Ghan Asouri, the one who realized what they were doing was wrong?

It was like the author wanted for Nalia to be strong, but not too strong so that she wouldn’t need a guy to come and rescue her. She wanted the girl to be different, but not different to the point where she had an interesting personality. Nalia was only so powerful in the past so that Raif, one of the love interest, would have a reason for hating her (because it’s sooo romantic when a guy hates your guts!) but not too bad so that there couldn’t be romance between them. Meh.

I got bored, Nalia started as a vindictive woman, and rightfully so! But then she turned out to be this person who begged people not to do stupid things instead of simply stopping them. She wasn’t as active as I wished she had been, she let a lot of stuff go by simply so that the problem could resurface later on and that’s a plot device that annoys me, because it’s clear that if you ruin someone’s life they’ll most likely want to get revenge on you.

Malek:

The creepy master was, surprisingly, the best character in the book. Even though I hated what he did, how abusive he was toward Nalia and everybody around him, the guy was compelling. I cared about his story and how he would turn out. He was like a weird and worse version of the Darkling from The Grisha.

That being said, he’s a freaking asshole.

Raif:

The stupid revolutionary and the “good” guy. Ugh.

The romance between him and Nalia was annoying as hell. Raif was supposed to be a good guy, but his behaviour toward Nalia pissed me off. Yes, she was a Ghan Asouri and had been in the cup, but she had also been fifteen years old at the time, a child. And yet Raif kept saying how he didn’t care that she was probably being forced to sleep with her master, that she deserved it.

Fuck you Raif. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

His plan to win the rebellion is one of the dumbest I’ve ever heard of. He wants to find a magical object that will give him the power to control all Jinn but instead of using it, he says he just wants to show it to the enemy and scare them.

Like, what?? First, everybody thinks that object is nothing but fairy tales so showing it it’s not going to do nothing, you have to use it to scare them.

Second, if you just show it but won’t use it, then there is a 100% chance that the enemy will try to take it from you, and that enemy far outnumbered Raif’s entire resistance (they are winning for a reason).

Third, Raif had no training whatsoever and yet he thought he could keep the object from making him evil (kinda a la Lord of The Rings) by sheer force of will, right.

I really wished it had been his sister the one who was in charge of the revolution instead of him, she was far smarter and level-headed.

Skin as food, skin as food, SKIN AS FOOD!:

I don't think I have to explain why it's wrong to describe skin as cinnamon, right? Right.

Overall, Exquisite Captive showed promise, but the execution was poorly done. 

Two out of five stars.

Never Never by Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher

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.











Rating: 4/5 Stars

This book is… something.

I know, I know. I couldn’t have chosen a more vague way of describing it but Never Never really is something. Something weird, something new and everything in between.

The book is a mystery in itself. It starts with Charlie at school looking at some books she accidentally dropped. She doesn’t remember who she is, where she’s at, what time it is. Nothing.

Her entire life is blank up until that moment.

The book is told in two points of view, Charlie’s and her boyfriend Silas who has also lost his memories.

(This is completely irrelevant, but was I the only one who thought of this guy while reading about Silas? 

No, just me? Alright…)

There was something compelling about watching these two figuring out who they were and what was happening to them. Their relationship, although seemingly perfect to the outside world, was incredibly flawed and it makes you want to see why Charlie and Silas, although clearly in love, would go to such lengths to hurt one another (I can’t reveal much because it would be a spoiler).

If I had to point out any problems within this book, it would be the lack of communication to elongate the drama/plot. After reading Confess, also by Colleen Hoover, I see that this is a common team of her. In Never Never Charlie and Silas don’t tell anybody that they have lost their memories because “people would think they are crazy” and, although I can understand at first why they would be reluctant to share this, at some point it becomes annoying.

There is no real reason to drag out the confession for so long, especially when they could have gotten much needed help, instead of doing it all by themselves. Their argument that other people would think they are crazy for not remembering becomes useless after being used for so long; maybe they are not “insane” but I wouldn’t call losing your entire memories being ok, either.

If anything Never Never most surprising achievement is, in my opinion, the creation of a plausible instalove.

Charlie and Silas team up the second they realize they are both going through the same thing, and fall in love in a matter of days. Usually by this point in a novel I would be fuming, but the authors show you their relationship in a way that it’s believable. Even though they have issues and their relationship before the memory loss was almost ruined, you want for these two people to keep trying and find a way back to one another.

The book itself was short, and it didn’t help that the mystery had me devouring its pages, making it last even less.

To sum up, even though Never Never is not without its flaws, it’s certainly worth a read.