Review: Don't Ever Change by M. Beth Bloom

Title: Don't Ever Change
Author: M. Beth Bloom
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Source: HarperTeen via Edelweiss
Goodreads

Sometimes the only way to learn about yourself is to try to change everything about you.

Eva has always wanted to write a modern classic—one that actually appeals to her generation. The only problem is that she’s starting to realize she can’t “write what she knows” because she hasn’t really lived. So the summer before heading off to college, Eva is determined to live a life worth writing about.

But soon Eva’s story starts to go in unexpected directions, like growing apart from her best friends, working at a job she is completely unqualified for, and even falling for the last person she would have ever imagined. Like anyone, though, it will be up to Eva to figure out how she wants this particular chapter in her story to end.

Perfect for fans of E. Lockhart, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell, Don’t Ever Change is a witty, snarky, and thought-provoking coming-of-age novel about a teen who sets out to write better fiction and, ultimately, discovers the truth about herself.

Review by Nara

The big thing that drew me to this book was that the main character wants to be a writer. I was interested in seeing how big a role that would play in the story. Well, it ended up influencing the plot quite a bit. Just not in a good way.

I think the big place where Don't Ever Change falls is that there's an incredibly judgemental protagonist, and I'm not really sure that she really evolved at all throughout the book, despite it getting labelled as a "coming-of-age" novel. She's very arrogant and elitist, although you can see as the reader that she's basically just immature and narrow-minded. Even in the end, she's never really likeable.

On the other hand, the love interest Foster is actually really sweet and caring, and for the life of me, I couldn't tell why he liked Eva. Especially because of the way Eva treated him: basically she had two guys and was stringing them both along for the majority of the novel. While I actually quite liked Foster, I never shipped them. And the other guy, Elliott, was the typical confident bad boy and meh. Didn't ship them either.

Honestly, this book should be named "Please Change". I can't recommend it unless you're extremely tolerant of irritating characters.

It was okay

Ratings
Overall: 4/10
Plot: 3/5
Romance: 2/5
Writing: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Cover: 3.5/5