Always Forever Maybe Review

Title: Always Forever Maybe

Author: Anica Mrose Rissi

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Trigger Warnings: domestic abuse, toxic relationships, physical abuse, gaslighting, abuse, emotional abuse

My Rating: 2 Stars

Synopsis

When Betts meets Aiden at the candy store where she works, their connection is like a sugar rush to the heart. Betts already knows the two of them are infinite. Inevitable. Destined to become an us.

Betts has only ever kept one secret from her best friend, Jo, but suddenly there’s a long list of things she won’t tell her, things Jo wouldn’t understand. Because Jo doesn’t see how good Aiden is for Betts. She finds him needy. Possessive. Controlling.

She’s wrong. With a love like this, nothing else matters.

Review

Anica's Mrose Rissi's Always Forever Maybe is about a toxic high school relationship that turns abusive. Rissi does an admirable job chronicling the relationship and the shift through the relationship to gaslighting and later to physical abuse. These transitions are well done through each stage.


The side characters also were really well created. I loved Jo and Eric in particular, but the important ones have interesting backgrounds and motivations. However, this story would have definitely been more than 2 stars if it had focused on Jo instead of Betts, focusing on a Korean Jewish pansexual with a twin brother that struggles navigating her first relationship with a girl while her best friend is in an abusive relationship.


Betts is just so plain and annoying. I understand that she is supposed to have changed while in her relationship with Aiden, but she is like that at the beginning too. I feel bad for her, but I don't care for her at all. Her character traits at the beginning are listed out but she is never actually shown to have any of these. Some of the choices she makes are realistic, but her reasoning is off in why I think most teenagers would end up making those decisions.


I also struggled with the ending, which was jumping all over the place. The few ends that were tied up did not make a whole lot of sense, and everything else was just weird. Betts' parents are demonized the entire time, even before Betts starts dating Aiden, and there is a two page attempt at the end to redeem the mother, but it just falls flat.


This book was almost a dnf for me, but honestly, I just wanted to know what ended up happening to Jo and Eric, especially between Jo and Sydney. It's not that I think Betts is too immature or anything. She just seemed flat and not as well developed as the other characters. I kept on waiting for this to get better, but it just never happened.

Honestly though, Jo and Sydney are adorable and I would read a book just about the two of them, as long as Betts was not involved at all. The discussion around domestic abuse and toxic relationships is important, especially for high schoolers, but most of the other factors of the book just fell flat and did not hit as well as I had hoped.

While this book fell short of what I wanted, it was okay I supposed. What do you do when a book fails to meet your expectations and hopes?

Thanks for reading!

Alyssa