Publisher: Flux
Paperback
360 pages
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Cassandra fears rocking the family boat. Instead, she sinks it. Assigned by her English teacher to write a poem that reveals her true self, Cassandra Randall is stuck. Her family's religion is so overbearing, she can NEVER write about who she truly is. So Cass does what any self-respecting high school girl would do: she secretly begins writing a tarot-inspired advice blog. When Drew Godfrey, an awkward outcast with unwashed hair, writes to her, the situation spirals into what the school calls "a cyberbullying crisis" and what the church calls "sorcery." Cass wants to be the kind of person who sticks up for the persecuted, who protects the victims the way she tries to protect her brother from the homophobes in her church. But what if she's just another bully? What will it take for her to step up and tell the truth?
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Within the first twenty pages of the novel, Cassandra says,
(and I’m going to paraphrase because I don’t know whether words or page numbers
changed during final edits) she’s ‘going to find herself, even if the cliché of
doing so kills her’. Unfortunately, while I didn’t find the action clichéd, I
did find the attempt clichéd. Sometimes
Never, Sometimes Always is really the story about a girl who doesn’t know
how to stand up for herself and her beliefs. She knows who she is. She knows
what she believes. She’s just afraid of vocalizing those things. I wish that I
could say I connected with Cassandra’s story, but while reading I found myself wishing
she would just own up to what she thinks and feels, and stop acting like jerk
to everyone, because I was sure ready to move the story along.
