Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Book Review: Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date by Katie Heaney

Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date
By Katie Heaney 
Release Date: January 14, 2014
Source: Borrowed from friend
Summary: So begins Katie Heaney's memoir of her years spent looking for love, but never quite finding it. By age 25, equipped with a college degree, a load of friends, and a happy family life, she still has never had a boyfriend ... and she's barely even been on a second date.

Throughout this laugh-out-loud funny book, you will meet Katie's loyal group of girlfriends, including flirtatious and outgoing Rylee, the wild child to Katie's shrinking violet, as well as a whole roster of Katie's ill-fated crushes. And you will get to know Katie herself -- a smart, modern heroine relaying truths about everything from the subtleties of a Facebook message exchange to the fact that "Everybody who works in a coffee shop is at least a little bit hot."

Funny, relatable, and inspiring, this is a memoir for anyone who has ever struggled to find love, but has also had a lot of fun in the process.


Review: When I first saw this book, I was beyond excited to read it. First off, the cover was seriously adorable. Second, I knew I would totally relate to this book after just reading the title. As a girl who hasn't been all that lucky in the romance department herself, I couldn't wait to read Katie's story about her struggle to find love.

In this memoir, Katie Heaney shares the good, the bad, and the ugly of her quest to find love. At 25, Katie has had a great education and great friends, yet she's never had a boyfriend. Reflecting from the playground crushes in elementary school to her ventures in online dating post-grad, along with every single guy who has caught her attention in between, Katie tries to understand her failures in the dating department and why she's been so unlucky in love. 

Like I said, I thought I was going to completely relate to Katie and love her funny anecdotes about her love life, or lack thereof. What ended up happening, though, was Katie rambling on about every single boy she's ever liked and not really connecting to me as a reader. A lot of her writing ended up being her commentary in long paragraphs that I ended up skimming over because I just didn't really care. I knew I could relate to her on the level that we've both had crushes on boys that we did absolutely nothing about and how clueless we are in the department of flirting and how to read guys. But her stories just fell flat to me and weren't "laugh out loud funny" like the synopsis promised. 

While I related to Katie on the dating front, I just couldn't relate to her on any other aspect of her life. She had the best of friends that she immediately made in college, had guy best friends who wanted to date her, and always went out to frat parties in college, getting drunk. Yeah, that totally isn't me. I wasn't all that interested in her getting drunk and making out with guys because she finally decided to be assertive, only to have it go nowhere. I liked the parts about her friendship with Rylee, but that didn't really come to play that big of a part until pretty much the very end. I expected so much more from this book and ended up not really caring for Katie or thinking her stories were all that funny or entertaining. While the premise was promising and really intriguing to any girl who doesn't know it all when it comes to guys, Katie's story wasn't as relatable, inspiring, or funny as I had hoped.



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