Date: February 28, 2025
Author: Joshilyn Jackson
Title: Never Have I Ever
I’m confused. I’m just past the 100-page-college-try and I don’t understand how in the pivotal scene that sets the tone for the rest of the story that Amy, the main character, could be tricked into thinking the new, edgy neighbor, Roux, could be the little-girl-all-grown-up-now from the horrific accident that changed Amy’s life so many years ago? The accident Amy no longer talks about?
As a young, drunk and high teenager, Amy had been involved in a terrible wreck that took the life of a little girl’s mom. The big secret was that Amy believes she was actually the one that had been driving, yet she let her best friend take the fall and serve what was rightfully her time. Amy was thrown off, apparently believing this woman could truly be that little girl, all grown up now. Yet only a few scenes later Amy confronts Roux calling her bluff stating she knew Roux couldn’t be that little girl from the accident because Amy knew for a fact that little girl died as a child. So, now, how could the grown-up version exist if the child version died? How could Amy have been so bamboozled as to believe for even a second this woman could have possibly been an eyewitness to Amy’s guilt? Freaking out and admitting to said guilt while Roux secretly recorded the confession.
Not only that but Mz. Jackson establishes that Roux only found out about Amy’s smallish inheritance by happenstance through a lawyer in another totally different city. So why a few pages prior does the author make it sound like Roux was from Amy’s childhood neighborhood? It just doesn’t seem consistent so I must pass.