PopSugar Reading Challenge Book 5 or An Exercise in Frustration

I finally finished Writer Under 30. I read Never Have I Ever: my life so far without a date by Katie Heaney. The title is inaccurate since she went on a few things most of us would recognize as dates but because she never let it turn into anything, it didn’t really count. As someone who was in a similar boat for a while, I sympathized until she became self-defeating.

Anyone in Heaney’s situation is there partially by choice. She may claim she’s not totally happy with her circumstances but when presented with an opportunity to change them, she never takes it. When Spruce tried to see if the was interested in dating him, she found ways to shut him down out of fear. When Heaney thought he might kiss her, she instinctively found a way to avoid it.  He never explicitly asked but she never gave him a reason to. I’ve read enough to know that part of Heaney’s problem is herself. If you don’t take the risk, you don’t get to bitch about lack of reward.

Heaney is an entertaining writer with a good wit but this particular topic made her sound incredibly juvenile. Why did we waste 45 pages on her life before elementary school? Please explain to me the point of that. When looking at past relationships, nothing before high school really matters. I didn’t have my first date until right before college so part of my sympathizes but I went off and had experiences. It was scary but in a way that rites of passage are supposed to me. Heaney talks about wanting them but is too afraid to go out and actually get them. This is very high school level stuff and after so many pages, I was over hearing about it.

I’ve seen a trend of women getting to their mid-twenties never having had a relationship or much dating experience and they’re all incredibly immature for it. They need to go out and date and learn to communicate and relate to another human being. They also need to own that part of their lack of experience is to do with them and their own choices. You can’t always make people materialize but you can control what happens when they do. I enjoyed Heaney’s writing style and I’d love to hear more of it when she grows up and has something else to say.