We’ve all been there.
Two people that we know who clearly are itching to get in each other’s
pants but who have the situation reading skills of Louis XVI (anyone? French
Revolution metaphors? Look it up). No
matter how close they get to actually going out, they get a vibe or cosmically
overanalyse and decide that the other person is giving them the romantic
stink-eye, and so they bottle it. You
just want to get them both, shove them into a room with a double bed and smooth
jazz and shout “USE YOUR WORDS!”
It is that exclamation that really sums up the predicament
of the characters in The Best Thing That
Never Happened To Me. The two main
characters Alex and Holly are childhood friends from a town in Yorkshire who had
the hots for each other but never actually got around to getting together. Each tried to make a move, but read the
tarots wrong and ended up thinking that the other was rejecting them. Holly went to London for university and never
left, while Alex (who is the worst reader of people in the history of
literature) decided to stay because he felt like the people around him needed
him. Eventually he moves to the Big
Smoke and he and Holly take up where they left off.
I won’t bother telling you more of the plot because it is as
predictable as it sounds.
Anyone who has seen literally any sitcom/rom-com involving the stock
characters above will know how this ends.
It even has the obligatory ‘race-to-the-airport-to-tell-person-that-they-love-them-but-can’t-get-there-because-of-traffic
scene’.
This story’s strength is not in originality for sure, but
then again I wasn’t expecting it to be.
The real test of a book like this is whether you engage with the
characters, in whether it made you laugh, and if it surprised you in some way –
if it transcends the trashy-ness of the genre and actually leaves you with
something that lingers beyond the final page.
The answer to these questions are: sorta, yes, and no.
Holly and Alex are moderately developed stock characters in
a book such as this: the hyper-organised woman in a boring job that yearns for
something more, and the stoic, brooding guy who finds it hard to engage with
people but opens up around friends.
These are clichés, but they are so for a reason. Their quirks and traits are fertile ground
for the book’s comedy, which rarely makes one laugh out loud, but is certainly
enough to make one read on. The writing
style is modern and dynamic, clearly written by two young-ish writers from a
journalistic background.
The central problem of the book, however, comes with the
answer to that final question. The book
is utterly unmemorable and fails to transcend cliché and average in really any
way. It has the same feeling as a Bella
Italia pizza – it’s nice enough, but it’s pretty much the same as one that you
have had a million times at home on your sofa.
It never totally emerges from the huddled mass of similar books.
That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy reading The Best Thing That Never Happened To Me
– it’s just that even whilst I was reading it I was fully aware that this book
was not original and not special. It was
comfortable and unchallenging – and if that is the sort of thing that you’re in
the mood for then this is as good as any.
6/10
I'd like to thank Transworld Publishers for giving me a free copy of this book through Net Galley
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