Now I Tell You Everything

Author: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Release Date:   October 15th, 2013

Publisher:  Atheneum Books for Young Readers 

Genre(s): YA Contemporary 

Pages: 517

*Final (!!) book of a series*

~SPOILER FREE~

Summary (Goodreads): 

Alice McKinley is going to college! And everything, from her room to her classes to her friends, is about to change. Stoically, nervously, Alice puts her best foot forward…and steps into the rest of her life.

Just how crazy will her college life get? Will Alice’s dream of becoming a psychologist come true? Are she and her BFFs destined to remain BFFs? And with so many miles between them, will Alice and Patrick stay together…or is there a hot, mysterious stranger in her future? As Alice well knows, life isn’t always so predictable, and there are more than a few curveballs waiting to be thrown her way.

This is it. The grand finale. You’ve loved her, you’ve learned with her, you’ve watched her grow up through twenty-eight books. And now everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Alice McKinley will be revealed!

Review:

(I wish they kept the original title: Always Alice. :( )

In a word? Nostalgic!

The thing about this book is that if you’ve grown up with this series (like me!), then despite all its flaws (not saying you can ignore them, but just that they’re kinda nagging at the back of your mind), the nostalgia will overwhelm you.  If you’re just jumping in now or decided one day to binge read this entire series, then instead, the flaws will overwhelm you.  Obviously for me, it was the former. ;)

This book was by no means great, but it did have its sweet moments.  The biggest thing for me about this book was that it was so rushed, that Alice’s voice was lost.  This book did not sound like Alice.  I HATED that because it was Alice’s voice that made this whole series so wonderful.  I guess it’s inevitable that a book loses its voice when it’s covering so much ground, but still. >.<

Was this book satisfying?  I can’t give a definite yes or a no.  It was satisfying in that I wanted to know what happened at the end, and I did like the ending. The little moments in between where we do hear Alice and see how much she’s grown up from the first book till now was so nostalgic!  But at the same time, it was so rushed! I wish the book had been split up into smaller books and that we had spent more time with Alice as she grew from a young adult to an adult. 

Final thoughts:  Despite it all, I will miss Alice, with all her sweet moments and crazy antics, very much. This series was a joy to read, and it will always have a special place in my heart. ;)

Thanks for reading! :) 

Rating: 2.5 out of 5