Things We Never Got Over | Review

⭐️⭐️

2/5 ⭐️

The best feeling Things We Never Got Over gave me was the accomplishment when I finally finished it after it held me captive for about two weeks, if not longer.

I was so excited to read this book! I know we shouldn’t judge books by their cover, but the baby blue, little daisies, and faded blue paint lines of the letters on the cover fooled me. I also noticed on Goodreads that it was part of a series, and all three book covers looked gorgeous, pretty sure one of them is lilac too so I was sold. I just kept thinking how nice it would be to own all three books and see them sit nicely on my bookcase. Well, safe to say I won’t be buying the other two.

Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh. Lucy Score, if you’re reading this, I promise I don’t hate your book. I’m just a little disappointed it didn’t live up to the hype for me, personally.

Spoiler alert, duh. This probably won’t make much sense to you unless you’ve read the book anyway.

Things We Never Got Over is set in a (I’m guessing fictional?) town in the US called Knockemout. That name itself was already kind of questionable, but I let it slide. The story starts with an insufferable runaway bride entering a cafe and making a huge deal over coffee. Although I do agree about the wonderful feeling it is to being handed a cup of coffee, I could tell Naomi’s personality wasn’t going to progress all that much from this. The only other trait of Naomi’s, if it hadn’t been made clear enough in the book (it was mentioned by every character at least twice), was her tendency to take care of others but not of herself. Lovely.

We are introduced to the love interest, Knox. The point of view jumps back and forth between him and Naomi, and I think the writer must have had a bit too much fun writing in first person as a man. Probably thought, let’s take all the stereotypes of a single, grumpy man and attribute them to Knox, why not. So he shall piss in his garden, love nothing in the world except his dog, make comments about women’s bodies unprovoked, and of course… own a truck. Don’t get me wrong, I love the grumpy love interest trope as much as the next person, but for some reason I just didn’t connect with Knox, I constantly felt as if I couldn’t fully trust him, and he was hiding more. He turned into a complete softie by the end, and I just… didn’t believe it. But if we’re talking ‘unrealistic,’ Knox had also… won the lottery…?

One of the biggest disappointments for me is that Knox and Naomi were depicted to not get along since the first moment, but despite that, Knox was still willing to help her in ways that no one would ever do with a stranger. And no, it’s not just small town mentality - he spent the entire day driving Naomi around, getting his cop brother he didn’t speak to anymore to help, giving her a place to stay, a job, then eventually a new phone, a whole shopping haul for her new-found niece… All this while they were meant to be ‘enemies.’ I think the attempt was there, but there wasn’t much of a reason for them to be enemies, and it didn’t last long anyway.

There’s two burning questions I have. First - why would Knox help Naomi so much out of his own heart and generosity when he’s meant to be mean and grumpy and selfish? The only justification for this was that he was naturally drawn to her, although he had to make it clear she wasn’t his type or whatever. Personally, I think it would have made so much more sense (and would have been more intriguing) if Knox had supported Naomi because he had history with Tina (Naomi’s twin sister), and either was part of Tina’s plan to get Naomi to Knockemout, or felt compassion for Naomi because he knew what Tina was up to as he’d been personally affected by her shenanigans as well. All we knew about Tina is that she was ‘trouble,’ but it was always kept so painfully vague until the end, and it still wasn’t quite clear then.

My second burning question is, why the hell wasn’t there a love triangle (or I guess a love angle) between Naomi, Knox, and Nash (Knox’s brother)?? I guess it would have been predictable, in fact I expected this to happen. But it would have been so much more entertaining, especially since Nash genuinely seemed quite likeable without the whole ‘mysterious grumpy man’ façade. I guess the author was setting Nash up to be the leading man for the next book, but I still would have liked him to be more involved.

Anyway, there’s many more things I didn’t enjoy in this book. From the way it jumped from one event to the other, I would have expected the pacing to be much faster and easier to get through, but no. The repetition of things that are already quite obvious and okay being left unsaid drags this story on so much. Not to mention the queer stereotypes - I’ve started to expect them in every book, but this one felt like a quick Google search for ‘generic gay best friend traits’ and boom, Stef was created.

Overall, it was all a bit too wishy-washy for me. Extremely surface-level characters - and so many of them, too. Random turnouts of events - sure, let’s all move to this town we’ve never seen before. Naomi, Mum, Dad, and Stef too, why not. Cringy sex scenes with try-hard metaphors. Next.

Since I feel like I’ve been a massive hater throughout this review, let me actually mention the things I did enjoy. I thought Naomi’s niece, Waylay, was probably the best written character out of everyone. I appreciate that because I struggle to write children or young characters, but she was pretty spot on, I just wish she’d been slightly more rebellious, given the way she was raised. I liked the setting, I’m from a small town too and could relate to certain aspects of this fictional place, and I could visualise it pretty well; the bar, the barber shop, the pizza place, and even Liza J’s house by the creek. And there were dogs. That’s always nice.

Unfortunately I won’t be reading the next two books in the Knockemout series. I’m glad I now know what all the fuss was about though. Maybe I should stop reading books that I see recommended on TikTok, as they always disappoint me one way or another.