Tag: NA

I haven’t been keeping up with my blog lately. Those who are doing the A to Z Challenge really impress me!

Reading, writing, and my day job have filled my days so I wanted to share a review for an excellent mental health read: Sometimes Never. 

Sometimes Never by Cheryl McIntyre
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Putting the Fun in Dysfunction

When I participated in the Mental Health Giveaway Hop, I asked for recommendations of favorite psychological reads. Blogger VanillaOrchid recommended this series, and I’m so glad she did! I hadn’t heard of this author but I plan on gobbling up the series based on my love for this first book. (Bookworm Brandee also recommended Reason to Breathe which I plan to review soon).

While Sometimes Never touches on sad issues like parent abandonment, parent death, sexual abuse, and self-injury, the characters address these issues in such a lighthearted manner that I often found myself cracking up. It’s rare that I love both the heroine and the hero as much as I fell for Hope and Mason.

Hope Love (yes, that’s really her name) is a high school foster kid who doesn’t believe in relationships or love (despite her last name). She’s a candy addict who plays drums for a band. She’s spunky and irreverent. Here she is typing away in an internet chat room:

ASL flashed on the computer screen. Age, sex, and location. I sat back and thought, Who do I want to be today? I never tell the truth. Seventeen, female, living in a house with seven other kids in Ohio. Like a fucked up, twenty-first century version of The Brady Bunch.
Usually when the first question has to do with your age and sex, it’s a horny, middle aged man looking to cyber. When I’m in a mood, like I was last night — sick of the world and all its bullshit — I like to put on my Fergus persona. Fergus is a fifteen year old boy, recently discovering his gay sexuality.

Priceless.

Mason is an eighteen-year-old who just moved to Hope’s town and of course he notices her right away. His dark hair and green eyes sound delicious, but what most attracted me is his personality. He also has a wonderful sense of humor:

Hope Love. What kind of name is that?
“I think I’m in love,” I say to my mom. And then I laugh because I hear some kind of pun in my statement. I play around with the words in my head. I Hope I can get in Love. I’d Love to have some Hope.
“Mason, don’t play with me,” Mom says, but I hear that little sliver of hope in her voice. Ha, I’d Love a little sliver of Hope. I could do this all day.

Hope and Mason seem to bring out the best in each other. They’re both sarcastic individuals who have been through tough times, but they actually feel happy in each other’s presence. Unfortunately, Hope is sort of dating the lead singer in her band (Park–love his name) and she has a dark secret that makes her feel unworthy of being happy. But Mason doesn’t scare away easily. Each time he unwittingly pushes Hope too hard, he gently apologizes until her panic settles down.

I like how Mason realizes he can’t “save” Hope, as much as he wants to. I love the quirky realness of the characters. The only aspects I didn’t love are the title and the reason Mason’s father died, which seemed a tad overdramatic to me.

I hear the next books in this series deal with side characters from this novel, and I can’t wait to see what this author has in store for me next! I highly recommend this series.

View all my reviews