Book review: Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman

Book: Nick and Charlie

Author: Alice Oseman

Publication: July 16th, 2015

Rating: 2 stars

Synopsis from Goodreads

Everyone knows that Nick and Charlie are the perfect couple – that they’re inseparable. But now Nick is leaving for university, and Charlie will be left behind at Sixth Form. Everyone’s asking if they’re staying together, which is a stupid question – they’re ‘Nick and Charlie’, for God’s sake!

But as the time to say goodbye gets inevitably closer, both Nick and Charlie question whether their love is strong enough to survive being apart. Or are they delaying the inevitable? Because everyone knows that first loves rarely last forever...

My thoughts

So yesterday I read Solitaire and was interested to read more about Nick and Charlie who were just side characters in that one. However, I think I might've enjoyed this one a bit more if I had read Heartstopper (their origin story) first...but I'm not a fan of comics/graphic novels..so yeah.. As it stands, this is the one I decided to go with and while I was curious to learn more about N&C and mildly invested in their relationship, I found myself quite often thinking to myself "Why should I be interested in these particular events in their relationship?". The drama and angst were all because of a lack of good communication. And that is my pet peeve that quite often determines whether I like a book or not. In a longer book this could be overlooked, but this novella was basically just about this one particular thing and I was just supremely annoyed by all of it. And I know that I'm partly influenced by the fact that earlier this week I read a book where the MCs communicated SO well with each other that this totally paled in comparison. Fine, I acknowledge that N&C are just teenagers whereas the other book had adult MCs, but still..not communicating is kind of a dealbreaker for me. I am still kinda interested in Heartstopper, but I don't want to buy it and there's a huge waiting list for it at my local libr...okay...I just saw that volume 1 was only 1,47$ on Kindle so I bought it. Fingers crossed that I'll like this one. ———————————— Update after a couple of hours: I devoured all three volumes of Heartstopper and am in love!! Five stars to all of them. This fact, however, does not change my opinion on Nick and Charlie.