December 24, 2014

(Never) Again by Theresa Paolo


Just when she had finally moved on…

…He moved back.

When college freshman Liz Wagner hears her ex's voice for the first time since he moved clear across the freaking country, she does what any respectable girl would do: Dive into the girls' bathroom.

Zach Roberts—the Zach Roberts—is back. And he’s everywhere Liz looks—infiltrating her friend group, buddy-buddy with her brother. It’s enough to ruin college altogether. But what choice does she have but to put on a happy face and pretend he didn't leave her vulnerable and alone in a pile of emotional wreckage?

Pretending works, until tragedy strikes and the only person available for comfort is the one person she wants to stay away from. When Zach turns out not to be the jerk she convinced herself he was, but the boy she used to love, Liz needs to decide whether to open her heart again to the boy who tore it out.


(Never) Again is available for purchase:
   

Lizzie and Zach are a great couple but they just didn't do it for me. I think it may have been because Zach's reasons for leaving Lizzie high and dry just didn't make any sense to me in the end (and it bugged me to no end that we had no real clues as to why he did what he did all throughout the novel).  He seems like a decent enough sort of guy and he does seem to genuinely care for Lizzie but how he treated her confounded me from the beginning of the novel and since there was no real redemption or explanation to his behaviour until the very end, I felt that he was a bit harder to love. Though, really, given the choice, it was Zach > Joe any day. 

As much as I hated Joe for being an asshat, I sort of felt like Lizzie deserved it for being so oblivious (I get that he was a rebound guy) to his asshat-ness. He repeatedly prioritized any and everything he could ahead of Lizzie time and time again. I'm sorry, but if you let yourself be a doormat--you can't really blame the other person when they walk all over you, know what I mean?

This was still a sweet novel, don't get me wrong. It definitely had some goodness to it but it just lacked an oomph for me. The family aspect to it was very touching and I could totally relate to it but there was just that disconnect that I had with the characters that threw me a bit off.

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