Never Have I Ever

July 22, 2013
A Judy Blume–meets–Carrie Bradshaw memoir about how, despite boys and growing up, friendship between women endures. Never mind that 25-year-old Katie Heaney and her friends’ sole topic of conversation is men: “I hope this book feels you and I are hanging out, and I am drinking too much and talking to you… for a really long time,” she writes. In this, she succeeds. The problem with writing about absence—in this case, the absence of a love life—is self-evident: waiting, longing, and miscommunication do not make for a coherent story. Heaney’s therefore bland first book seems more like a blog than a memoir, beginning (as, being so young, perhaps she must) with her manifestly normal elementary school years and progressing through grad school (we’re never told what she is studying). “There must be differences between the way a fourteen-year-old acts toward a boy she likes versus the way a twenty-five-year-old does, but I am still struggling to understand what they are supposed to be,” Heaney admits. One can’t help but wish she’d waited a decade or two before attempting memoir, or else cut a few R-rated sections and marketed it as YA. Agent: Allison Hunter, Inkwell.

Narrator Sarah Franco's droll delivery complements the self-deprecating, amused tone of Katie Heaney's memoir. Heaney is 25 years old, and though she has been out on a few dates, she's never had a boyfriend. What she does have, however, is a great sense of humor about her various foibles and missteps with the opposite sex. As she muses over her many unrequited crushes and misadventures, Franco is by turns deadpan and heartfelt, and manages to convey one of Katie's finest traits: her ability to be a caring and loyal friend. This is a lighthearted look at romance--or the lack thereof--as well as a glimpse at female friendship in the young adult years. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine