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3.47 AVERAGE
3.47 AVERAGE
I really enjoyed this - in so many ways it felt like reading about myself growing up and I laughed and facepalmed accordingly because I was that girl who wrote embarrassingly in her diary about boys she would never speak to, or who found herself gravitating towards the 'bad girls' in the hope that they would pull her good girl self along with them, or who would make an excuse not to go to parties, etc, etc. It was amusing and also comforting to think 'actually, maybe I wasn't that weird growing up.'
There's a lot of funny moments, and some moments where you want to cringe in embarrassment but the author was very likeable and even when you think 'but there's more out there than finding a boyfriend!!!' you realise that she gets that - she does and that keeps it from being a book where you want to reach through the pages and strangle her.
The style is very conversational and that worked for me, but I think some people will find it irritating. It jumps around a wee bit, but again, that didn't bother me and although I did find that it did drag a little towards the end, there are a lot of good moments and a lot of really nice insights. I think most women would enjoy it as a light read - whether you're a lighthouse or a Bermuda Triangle in the dating world.
There's a lot of funny moments, and some moments where you want to cringe in embarrassment but the author was very likeable and even when you think 'but there's more out there than finding a boyfriend!!!' you realise that she gets that - she does and that keeps it from being a book where you want to reach through the pages and strangle her.
The style is very conversational and that worked for me, but I think some people will find it irritating. It jumps around a wee bit, but again, that didn't bother me and although I did find that it did drag a little towards the end, there are a lot of good moments and a lot of really nice insights. I think most women would enjoy it as a light read - whether you're a lighthouse or a Bermuda Triangle in the dating world.
I was immediately drawn to this book for two reasons:
1. I am 23 years old, and for approximately 21 of those years, I was single.
2. I despise the game Never Have I Ever, and I assumed that the author hated it, too.
And that was that.
Since I listened to the audiobook, I have less to say about her writing style than I do about Katie's stories and her sense of humor. I related to her on so many levels--her anxiety about boys and fierce loyalty towards her friends, for starters. I also can't tell when boys are flirting with me and almost broke down when my celebrity crush cut their hair. I've never been much of an audiobook fan, but I think this was an excellent decision; I felt like I was talking to one of my best friends. When she claimed that baristas were always at least a little bit hot, I yelled, "OH MY GOD, I KNOW," and then I realized I was in a car by myself.
This book is just as insightful as it is hilarious. Katie Heaney is herself, and she doesn't apologize for it--she even says that she loves herself. This book could have easily been a list of why she will never get a boyfriend. And while this book is about Katie's quest for love, I never got the sense that she needed a boyfriend to make her happy (because, believe it or not, single people can be happy, too).
I wish I had this book earlier in life. I desperately needed someone to tell me that I wasn't weird, and that my happiness didn't depend on some hypothetical boyfriend. For anyone who struggles (or struggled in the past) with singleness, this book will make you feel less alone.
1. I am 23 years old, and for approximately 21 of those years, I was single.
2. I despise the game Never Have I Ever, and I assumed that the author hated it, too.
And that was that.
Since I listened to the audiobook, I have less to say about her writing style than I do about Katie's stories and her sense of humor. I related to her on so many levels--her anxiety about boys and fierce loyalty towards her friends, for starters. I also can't tell when boys are flirting with me and almost broke down when my celebrity crush cut their hair. I've never been much of an audiobook fan, but I think this was an excellent decision; I felt like I was talking to one of my best friends. When she claimed that baristas were always at least a little bit hot, I yelled, "OH MY GOD, I KNOW," and then I realized I was in a car by myself.
This book is just as insightful as it is hilarious. Katie Heaney is herself, and she doesn't apologize for it--she even says that she loves herself. This book could have easily been a list of why she will never get a boyfriend. And while this book is about Katie's quest for love, I never got the sense that she needed a boyfriend to make her happy (because, believe it or not, single people can be happy, too).
I wish I had this book earlier in life. I desperately needed someone to tell me that I wasn't weird, and that my happiness didn't depend on some hypothetical boyfriend. For anyone who struggles (or struggled in the past) with singleness, this book will make you feel less alone.
I expected a fun, humerous book about a nerdy girl like me with a similar love life, but instead all I got was a far-too-lengthy "memoir" of a 26 year old's boy obsessions.
I think this book may have been more interesting if Katie talked more about herself as a person and not just her past boyfriends. The title reads "My Life Growing Up Without a Date" but all she talked about was literally the dates she did go on (I was told there were no dates?) without really introducing us to her as a person. I didn't know who she was when I bought the book and here I am, 252 pages later - still clueless.
On the other hand, and the reason I gave this book two stars instead of one, is that I liked some of the things she had to say about love. That's it. There were a few interesting quotes in there, but all in all, it was pretty damn boring.
Call me frustrated, but I'm tired of spending $20 on books only to be disappointed by a lack of substance. *sigh*
I think this book may have been more interesting if Katie talked more about herself as a person and not just her past boyfriends. The title reads "My Life Growing Up Without a Date" but all she talked about was literally the dates she did go on (I was told there were no dates?) without really introducing us to her as a person. I didn't know who she was when I bought the book and here I am, 252 pages later - still clueless.
On the other hand, and the reason I gave this book two stars instead of one, is that I liked some of the things she had to say about love. That's it. There were a few interesting quotes in there, but all in all, it was pretty damn boring.
Call me frustrated, but I'm tired of spending $20 on books only to be disappointed by a lack of substance. *sigh*
Since I first saw this book pop up on Amazon, I have been intrigued by the premise: a 25-year-old woman who has never had a boyfriend, who may have been on a few dates (but it's hard to say), and who has been single all her life.
Did I write this? Hang on ... I need to see what I've been doing the last few years. Okay, whew no, but to my delight, this book was 80% TERRI. As it relates to guys, so much of our thoughts processes and immediate reactions are the same. She's always got a crush, which I always did as a pre-teen/teen and do currently. Throughout the book, her tone is so delightfully snarky and simultaneously self-deprecating that I couldn't help but fall in love with the book straightaway. Her entire experience of feeling awkward and running away or moving away when a guy gets too close and you don't know how to handle this possible overture at kissing is SO RELATABLE. It's so great being awkward and uncomfortable, y'all. You who have relatively normal love lives would not survive a day in my or Katie's brains. We would make you crazy. We make ourselves crazy on an hourly basis.
Before I was even done reading this book, I texted my bestie Emily and said "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS. IT'S US."
Some excellent quotes:
Story of my life:
And:
Katie Heaney's book is downright hilarious. Those are just the quotes I pulled off GoodReads because I didn't have the presence of mind to write down quotes before returning it to the library.
In addition to loving it because it was hilarious, I just loved reading a book that I could relate to so thoroughly. Even in a lot of fiction where there's someone like me who isn't interested in dating unless the person is someone they really, really like already, that YA heroine usually finds their true love or their first love or at least gets their first kiss and starts to feel ready. For once, this is a heroine I understand! I get it! Why bother with someone you are only meh about?
She talks frankly about being "the only one like her left that she knows" because everyone else in their mid-late twenties is getting married and having kids. Second kids. THIRD KIDS. While I absolutely don't begrudge my friends their great relationships/marriages/kids and I'm completely happy for them, it's lonely being "the perpetually single one." Never Have I Ever was self-deprecating, but it was never pathetic. Katie Heaney isn't desperately chasing any man who moves. She's not throwing herself at guys and doodling wedding plans in her notebooks. She's simply hanging out with friends, doing her job, and living her life, and it happens not to have romance in it, but maybe one day it will.
HELLO RELATABLE.
Do I need to talk it up more? If you too live in the land of perpetual singledom, this will make you laugh out loud. If you don't, and everything I've just said makes no sense to you, your odds are about 50-50 of liking it. Maybe you want to learn about our mindset, maybe you think we're crazy loners! But you'll probably still think it's funny because Katie is crazy and I would like to formally submit this blog as an application for being her new friend.
This review for "Never Have I Ever" first appeared on ReadingbyStarlight.com.
Did I write this? Hang on ... I need to see what I've been doing the last few years. Okay, whew no, but to my delight, this book was 80% TERRI. As it relates to guys, so much of our thoughts processes and immediate reactions are the same. She's always got a crush, which I always did as a pre-teen/teen and do currently. Throughout the book, her tone is so delightfully snarky and simultaneously self-deprecating that I couldn't help but fall in love with the book straightaway. Her entire experience of feeling awkward and running away or moving away when a guy gets too close and you don't know how to handle this possible overture at kissing is SO RELATABLE. It's so great being awkward and uncomfortable, y'all. You who have relatively normal love lives would not survive a day in my or Katie's brains. We would make you crazy. We make ourselves crazy on an hourly basis.
Before I was even done reading this book, I texted my bestie Emily and said "YOU HAVE TO READ THIS. IT'S US."
Some excellent quotes:
“In fact, I think that’s probably what the Bermuda Triangle is up to. It doesn’t mean to do any harm, and it’s actually pretty nice once you get to know it. It’s just that Bermuda doesn’t know how to handle itself when somebody sails into its territory, because that hardly ever happens. It hasn’t had much chance to practice, and it’s used to things going a certain way. So if a sailor DOES come around, it gets a little nervous, freaks the **** out, and creates hurricane-like devastation in every direction around it. And then it gets embarrassed and sad and calls its friends.”
Story of my life:
“If you only ever like people you don't know and who don't know you, the ball is perpetually in their court. Only they don't realize that you think they're playing basketball with you. They are not actually at the court. You think you're there. But really you're not there, either.”
And:
“One of the great divides, I think, between people who date a lot and people who date never is that people who date never don’t understand putting up with “fine.” I can’t begin to conceive of why anybody would voluntarily spend great chunks of her free time dedicated to someone she doesn’t adore, because I never do that. My dater friends, on the other hand, do this all the time. I know this because I’m the one they meet up with after, and I’m the one who has to try to understand why my otherwise brilliant friends keep hanging out with people about whom they only have bad (or very, very mediocre) things to say. A person who has spent her life planning her free time based only on herself, and the friends she knows she loves, can’t understand this. Why would I want to go out to dinner and a movie with someone I’m not completely crazy about when I already know how much I like eating dinner and watching a movie by myself, or with Rylee? Getting someone else involved means I have to put on a nicer outfit and stress out about the way I look chewing my food. If I’m going to have to consider my chewing face, I only want to do it for someone I think I might be able to really like. I know that might make it harder for me. I know there is a possibility—a very little one, though, that I have a hard time really believing in—that chemistry can grow where there wasn’t any to begin with. I know that if I don’t put myself out there, I won’t just answer my door someday to find my perfect spouse waiting on the other side of the stoop. AND I know that if that did happen, I should probably call the police.”
Katie Heaney's book is downright hilarious. Those are just the quotes I pulled off GoodReads because I didn't have the presence of mind to write down quotes before returning it to the library.
In addition to loving it because it was hilarious, I just loved reading a book that I could relate to so thoroughly. Even in a lot of fiction where there's someone like me who isn't interested in dating unless the person is someone they really, really like already, that YA heroine usually finds their true love or their first love or at least gets their first kiss and starts to feel ready. For once, this is a heroine I understand! I get it! Why bother with someone you are only meh about?
She talks frankly about being "the only one like her left that she knows" because everyone else in their mid-late twenties is getting married and having kids. Second kids. THIRD KIDS. While I absolutely don't begrudge my friends their great relationships/marriages/kids and I'm completely happy for them, it's lonely being "the perpetually single one." Never Have I Ever was self-deprecating, but it was never pathetic. Katie Heaney isn't desperately chasing any man who moves. She's not throwing herself at guys and doodling wedding plans in her notebooks. She's simply hanging out with friends, doing her job, and living her life, and it happens not to have romance in it, but maybe one day it will.
HELLO RELATABLE.
Do I need to talk it up more? If you too live in the land of perpetual singledom, this will make you laugh out loud. If you don't, and everything I've just said makes no sense to you, your odds are about 50-50 of liking it. Maybe you want to learn about our mindset, maybe you think we're crazy loners! But you'll probably still think it's funny because Katie is crazy and I would like to formally submit this blog as an application for being her new friend.
This review for "Never Have I Ever" first appeared on ReadingbyStarlight.com.
I needed a light read. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Katie is a writer whom is relatable, entertaining, funny. While I'm married, I enjoyed her honesty and insight about friends and relationsips.
- I really enjoyed this book because I can relate .
- I loved the interaction between Rylee and Katie when Rylee says every time she meets a guy she evaluates if he's into her and Katie says she's never thought to do that and it was a major breakthrough. I'm in Katie's camp - I always just assume they're not into me.
- Even though I believe everything Katie says about her dating life (that she's comfortable with not having much experience, that she really values how much time and love she could put into her other relationships with friends and family) when it comes to myself, it's nice hearing someone else say it. It feels like Katie and I are on the same team.
- I loved the interaction between Rylee and Katie when Rylee says every time she meets a guy she evaluates if he's into her and Katie says she's never thought to do that and it was a major breakthrough. I'm in Katie's camp - I always just assume they're not into me.
- Even though I believe everything Katie says about her dating life (that she's comfortable with not having much experience, that she really values how much time and love she could put into her other relationships with friends and family) when it comes to myself, it's nice hearing someone else say it. It feels like Katie and I are on the same team.
seriously, is this about my life?
katie is ridiculously funny, self-deprecating, and generously open about her relationships (or lack thereof)
katie is ridiculously funny, self-deprecating, and generously open about her relationships (or lack thereof)
Laugh-out-loud funny and well-written, this was a great read even though it was cringeworthy at times. She never matures (romantically) beyond age 11 and lives in a fantasy world well into her adult years; it's concerning. That said, she freely admits she's far from normal. Readers get to laugh at and with her.
this is the exact book i needed to read at this point in my life. it was relatable, funny, and left me with an incredible warm feeling in my chest. thank you, katie heaney. thank u thank u THANK U!!