Review: Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzales

Perfect on Paper was so brilliant that Sophie Gonzales just had to follow it up with another hit. Never Ever Getting Back Together is the story of Maya who is determined to get her sweet revenge on her cheating ex--on live television.

Two years have passed since Maya's boyfriend, the cool and charismatic Jordy, moved to Canada and started cheating on her with Skye. Maya has done her best to put Jordy and the incident out of her mind, which isn't exactly easy, seeing as Jordy's older sister has married at European Prince and her whole family is now in a very public spotlight ... as are all of Jordy's past relationships. Jordy's solution? Star on a reality television program where he dates all six of his ex girlfriends and then pick the winner. It is just lucky that Maya can see the show--and Jordy--for what it is. And she is going to expose him. There is just one small problem. Once she starts working on the show, Maya finds herself falling in love ... with Skye.

This was a fun and entertaining read, featuring characters who are on the cusp of adulthood. The situation is delightfully over the top, providing some much needed laughs and commentary on reality television and overnight fame. Maya and Skye are opposites who fell for and were lied to by the same guy, and often have very different approaches to the situation. (While Maya can see Jordy for what he is, for Skye it takes time as she examines the facts.) Many of the chapters are told from Skye's perspective and this gives the story an extra level of depth as the reader learns what is going on in her mind. And we also see early on that each might be the person that the other truly needs, but it takes longer for both to realise it and that is a lot of fun to read.

Overall Never Ever Getting Back Together is a fun exploration of past relationships, instant fame and how looking toward one's future can be more productive than looking back at the past.

Recommended.

PS For those who are wondering, yes I did think of the Taylor Swift song every time I glanced at the cover.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more