Review: Always Forever Maybe

'' It would be easier if he were dead. ''

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

From Goodreads:
When Betts meets Aiden at the candy store where she works, their connection is like a sugar rush to the heart. Betts already knows the two of them are infinite. Inevitable. Destined to become an us.

Betts has only ever kept one secret from her best friend, Jo, but suddenly there’s a long list of things she won’t tell her, things Jo wouldn’t understand. Because Jo doesn’t see how good Aiden is for Betts. She finds him needy. Possessive. Controlling.

She’s wrong. With a love like this, nothing else matters.

Letting go of something is almost always the hardest part. 

We might not notice how deeply we are attached to something before we are forced to let go of it. And why let go of something when you are attached to it? Because we are blind sometimes. We might not see that the thing we are attached to is doing more harm than good. At least that's what happened to Betts in Always Forever Maybe.

The book is fairly quick to read. Don't let the lightness of the physical copy to fool you though. The insides are heavy. Heavy with love, heavy with sorrow, and heavy with loss. There's nothing heavier than reading about the pain that is hard to notice on another person. Abuse is hard, there's no way around it. It hurts, no matter how it is inflicted or who is inflicting it. 

Betts has always followed the rules. She never lies, never misses homework, never falls truly in love. True, she has dated in the past, but not one of those relationships was going to be always and forever. She knew it from the beginning. Meeting Aiden is like finding a piece of her that was missing all along. They began to date and the other feels like their entire world. Soon the entire the world is against them. They're saying that the one you're dating is a bad person. They're saying that you need to let go of the other. But you know. You know that the other is the one you are going to stay with Always. Forever.

Then comes the Maybe. No one expects the maybe to happen. You should be able to trust the other so much that there's no room for maybe. Betts trusted Aiden so much, that the first time it happened, she just denied it. The second time, it was a little harder to brush it off but she did it anyway. Aiden was her always and forever. The third time people around Betts began to notice. Then the maybe walked into the picture.

Always Forever Maybe is not a book to read if you're looking for intricate writing, artful plot-twists, or unrealistic high school life. This book is to read when you want to scratch the surface of an unspoken issue that happens every day all around the world. The book is not a deep dive into the subject nor does it represent all other issues promoted in it the most accurately, but it's something that discusses the issue instead of hiding it with the other skeletons.