“My friends and I have tried cutting out sugar and just plain cutting, magnet stimulation, talking to empty chairs, herbal remedies, pulling out our hair on the bathroom floor, every therapy in the alphabet, and we still feel like we don’t deserve to live…We’re all just trying to make the best decisions we can, trying to drown out the loudest internal scream you could imagine. The craziest thing I’ve heard is when people tell us we’re not trying hard enough,” (Simpson 225).
A year after being discharged from the psych ward, Dee learns that her best friends Matt and Misa are getting married in Turks and Caicos. Matt, Misa, and Dee met at the psych ward and bond over their shared time there and their mental health struggles, but no one else at the wedding knows where Matt and Misa met. This makes Dee uncomfortable, as well as the fact that she’s been in love with Matt since meeting him when they were both in the hospital. With her sister Tilley in tow, Dee has a plan to attend the wedding and prove to Matt that the wedding is a mistake and that he should be with her instead. Maybe then Dee will finally feel that she’s caught up to everyone around her.
Never Been Better has been on my radar since first hearing Leanne Toshiko Simpson speak at a couple of literary festivals. Hearing her speak and read about this book, as well as honestly speak about her struggles with mental illness, made me very interested in this book and I’m glad it was gifted to me for my birthday last year!
I’ll start off by saying that this book is miscategorized as a RomCom. I understand from a marketing standpoint why this was done, I also understand how some people could see this as a romance novel, but in terms of the genre it really doesn’t fall into that category. If anything, the romance plot happens on the sidelines and is witnessed by a different character, but maybe the point of mismarketing it was to provide a twist in some way? I’m not the hugest fan of Romance novels, so the fact that this wasn’t really a Romance novel didn’t bother me.
Dee is a great character to follow and I loved her voice. Toshiko Simpson does a wonderful job of showing Dee’s struggle with her mental illness without romanticizing or diminishing it like a lot of books that try to tackle mental illness do. I liked the back and forth between Dee’s present in trying to convince Matt that she is his true love and the past when she, Matt, and Misa were all in the psych ward. Toshiko Simpson does a wonderful job of showing the variety of ways mental illness and self-sabotage can occur, as well as how hard people who struggle with mental illness work towards their wellness and how psych wards and mental health professionals have a lot of work to do in treating their patients better.
It’s a great novel, and incredibly funny. Having heard Toshiko Simpson speak this shouldn’t have been surprising to me, but the book does a great job of creating levity (including some darkly comedic ones) in a book that deals with a lot of heaviness.
Balancing heartache and hilarity, Never Been Better was well worth the wait. While I disagree with it being listed as a RomCom, if it will get people into reading this book and becoming aware of the ways neurodivergent people make their way through the world, then I’m happy for the label. I hope Toshiko Simpson keeps writing because I want to read whatever she has coming next!
Publication: March 5 2024
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Pages: 288 pages (Paperback)
Source: Owned (Thanks Meaghan!)
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Mental Health, Canadian
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.5
Summary:
Dee, Misa, and Matt were the “three musketeers” of the psych ward. A year after discharge, Dee is eager to convince everyone that she’s finally turning things around. But Matt and Misa are tying the knot in Turks and Caicos, surrounded by guests who have no idea where they met, and the secrecy isn’t sitting well with Dee, who has been hopelessly in love with Matt since before she got kicked out of the hospital.
So, when Dee arrives at the swanky resort with her high-voltage sister, Tilley, it’s now or never to confess how she feels. But disrupting her best friends’ nuptials would jeopardize the entire support system that holds the trio together. When it comes to happily ever afters, how is a girl supposed to choose between love and recovery?
Sarah O'Connor 