You Again? – Nick Spalding
When I started reading this book, I thought it was going to be contrived, cringey and trying too hard to be funny. But I’m glad to say this was not the case and I actually found it to be a clever novel and great bit of story-telling. The alternating viewpoints were different to what most authors do. Both perspectives weren’t just re-telling the others, but offering more insights as to who they are as people, and proving that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
Joel and Amy start off as juvenile, pathetic people who, as a reader, you feel close to hating. But their character arcs are fascinating – Spalding writes intelligently and is insightful, particularly as he writes from both perspectives. He navigates through the emotions of both genders with integrity and emotively. This is important to the story as it would be easy to show a more favourable side to only one of the protagonists. For the first half of the book, Spalding does a brilliant job of playing the characters off against each other and I felt myself switching allegiances more than once. But what I thought was going to be some cheesy, rom-com book, turned out to be a sophisticated, honourable piece of writing. One of the secondary characters also turns out to be the best one – once you have read it, you will know who I mean!
Romances are difficult to write and harder to judge. When we choose to indulge in this genre, we expect certain things: a whimsical romance, a bump in the road, a tragedy, then almost a heroic reunion which ultimately ends in marriage. Not to give anything away but it was a lovely surprise to see something different, something that went against the tide. I expected this novel to be a typical holiday read, a comfort and something familiar. However, I was pleasantly surprised. The writing style showed greater depth and a maturity that I feel a lot of authors from this genre could and should learn from. I, for one, will definitely read more by this author and I’m so glad I was torn away from my preferred genres.