Never always sometimes

Never date your best friend! Always be original! The rules are sometimes meant to be broken. Dave and Julia are friends. From the very beginning of high school, they were determined to never become stenciled students. They even wrote their own list — the list of never — of everything they didn’t want to do in high school under any color. Most rules are easy to follow, such as 5: never dye your hair to the hue found in the colors of the rainbow, or 7: never filter the juice with a teacher. However, Dave keeps a secret: he doesn’t follow rule 8: we never bile silently after someone all the way through high school. Otherwise, it would violate rule 10 that we never date our best friend. So when the beautiful, savage and sudden-natured Julia suggests they do everything on the never-before-ever list, Dave is happy to get into the game. She is even willing to dye her hair a horrible shade of green. It’s a joke to start with, but then something weird happens: Dave and Julia discover that they’ve actually missed the whole of high school by ignoring the templates. Even maybe love. "Alsaid perfectly captures the beauties of school leavers at graduation, a time when graduating students are bored and excited at the same time, mourning the past and yet weeping back. In those few weeks, anything is possible, even making up for lost moments." Kirkus Reviews "The author deftly presents Dave's complicated feelings that the boy has been nurturing for Julia for a long time. The year of the two good friends and the hair-splitting emotional attunement make the novel worthwhile." Booklist "The book takes a really fun look at the question that romantic comedies tend to strike over and over again: can a man and a woman remain just friends ..." School Library Journal "A thought-provoking and extremely dazzling reflection on love and friendship and of all that is between the two. " Nicola Yoon, author of Everything, "The Never, Always, Sometimes Bloody Novel of Friendship and Tender Emotions Defying Commonplaces. It takes readers off their feet with its fun contemplations and eternal truths." Publishers Weekly