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Title: Never Said
Author: Carol Lynch Williams
Narrator: Elise Arsenault
Format: Unabridged
Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
Language: English
Release date: 08-25-15
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Ratings: 1.5 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
For as long as she can remember, Sarah's family life has revolved around her twin sister, Annie - the pretty one, the social one, the girl who can do anything. She's the person everyone seems to wish Sarah - with her crippling shyness - could simply become.
When Annie suddenly chops off her hair, quits beauty pageants, and gains weight, the focus changes - Annie is still the star of the family, but for all the wrong reasons. Sarah knows something has happened, but she too is caught in her own spiral after her boyfriend breaks up with her and starts hanging out with one of Annie's old friends.
Annie is intent on keeping her painful secret safe. But when she and Sarah start spending time together again for the first time in years, walls start to break on both sides...and words that had been left unsaid could change everything.
Members Reviews:
Compelling premise, meh execution
Grade: C
Sarah, who suffers from social anxiety exists behind the shadow of her beauty pageant queen twin. Now Annie no longer competes and is happily overweight, much to the chagrin of their mother. Sarah knows something with her sister is different, but for once the loquacious Annie isn't talking.
Told in prose by Sarah and verse by Annie NEVER SAID is a quick read about a serious issues. I'm often frustrated by the easy answers in Carol Lynch Williams' books. She writes about such topical, important subjects, pens overly simplistic resolutions and the characters often don't show their troubles in an an authentic manner. With Sarah, her social anxiety feels flat. I didn't feel any of the tension jumping of the pages. I felt like Williams googled the condition and plugged in some symptoms, instead of doing actual research. Annie's situation was too cerebral, and unemotional. Williams has excellent plot ideas, but let's me down with the execution.
I enjoyed reading NEVER SAID, but wished it had more substance. I think Annie's chapters might have been better told in prose. The free verse never felt metaphorically poetic, instead read like thoughts in incomplete sentences. On some level this worked to convey Annie's disjointed thinking, although it kept me from knowing her and feeling like she was a complex character.
THEMES: social anxiety, twins, sisters, siblings, family, eating disorders, sexual abuse, rape, parents
NEVER SAID, a compelling story, glosses over complicated issues with easy answers.
The Twins Who Are So Different
Annie was once thin and popular, but now she's overweight. Food seems to be her only friend. Her twin sister, Sarah, has never been popular. She gets nervous around people, but that doesn't keep her from having a boyfriend. But now, she and he are no longer together. Why is Annie eating so much? And can Sarah stop thinking about her ex long enough to give her sister the help she needs?
The first thing that caught my eye was the nice cover, and then I noticed the author's name. I've read two books by Carol Lynch Williams, so I figured I'd like this one. I'm okay with poetry, but I don't read it often. I've enjoyed one or two verse novels, but this is the first time I've seen a story written in verse (Annie's voice) and first person point of view (Sarah's voice). This took a little while to get used to. Once I did, I stopped feeling like the story was choppy. It was just creatively different .
Social Anxiety.
