Book Review | Never Have I Ever

Spoilers ahead. You have been warned.

Rating: ⭐

What the fuck did I just read?

The Goodreads' blurb was so very promising. I do not read a whole lot of fiction, so it takes something pretty unique to grab my attention. A mysterious new mom breezes into town with her son in tow, blackmails the main character, worlds collide, secrets could be exposed...riveting, right?

Right, Except not.

Here is a better summary:

A Suburban Mom who used to be overweight and her bff (both were social outcasts in high school) were high and drunk at 3 AM and get into a car accident, killing a young mother, with her two children in the car. She's kept this secret for decades and even though she was a hot mess back then, she straightened up her act, stalked the kids of the woman she accidentally killed in order to take care of them and all their financial needs, while doing the same for her former bff who went to jail for three years as he was the one actually driving. Or maybe he wasn't, maybe she was, we never really get confirmation either way.

Anyway, in comes this Skanky Mom to the neighborhood who somehow knows Suburban Mom's secret about the accident and threatens to tell everyone, unless Suburban Mom pays her the money that she has been using to take care of the kiddos who are now grown, who lost their mom in that accident. Suburban Mom thinks she might have been the one driving the car and is worries about going to jail, but feels guilt of her former bff going to jail for it. Basically then it is just page after page of the two trying to outdo each other, Skanky Mom being a raging be-yotch and Suburban Mom being surprisingly good at outwitting her.

Then comes the end, where it turns out Skanky Mom is actually a child molester and the boy with her is not her son, but a 14 year old she is "in love with" and whom she has kidnapped from his mom and abusive dad in Seattle. His real mom had left his monster of a dad and has been looking for him. We find out that Skanky Mom is a child molester because of what Suburban Mom saw through the window as she was sneaking around outside the house. Suburban Mom goes in to save the boy, Skanky Mom grabs a gun, Suburban Mom somehow gets the gun (I skimmed a while after the yuck scene involving Skanky Mom and the 14 year old. Definitely was not necessary) and shoots Skanky Mom. The end.

I had heard some really good things about this book, but it was so boring, until the end with the scene with Roux (Skanky Mom) and Ezra (14 year old boy). It was wholly unnecessary and served no purpose except to get the dumbass Amy (Suburban Mom) to go into the house to stop it, and to start the final confrontation. And even had that short scene not been in the book, the book would still be terrible because it was so booooooooorrrrrrrring. It's just a couple hundred pages of  Amy and Roux outwitting each other and bargaining and all kinds of nonsense.

Hard pass.