A review by bridge_to_narnia
It's Always Been You by Elin Annalise

Did not finish book. Stopped at 31%.
Firstly, this book starts cute; I like the characterization and while I am not often a fan of duel points of view, this is interesting insight into each love interest’s backstory. They are both fully fleshed out, with motives for their actions that make sense, and they each have different types of worries that affect their life.

Secondly, a childhood enemies to lovers story is a great cliche. I more like childhood rivals to lovers, but enemies can be good as well. So, off to a great start.

Here comes why I ended up DNF-ing it, which it’s been a little while since I read it, and I kept telling myself I would go back to it, but my library copy had to be returned and I am to lazy to put myself back on the waitlist.

While the writing is wonderful and I like the characters, there was not mention of a humiliation game in the summary and I do not like embarrassment whatsoever. Even a hint of it. This planned drawn out embarrassment immediately turned me off the story and while I did love the characters (so I kept telling myself I’d go back), I can’t handle it, especially planned harassment. The rest of this I’m going to put behind spoilers:
Courtney and Sophie were childhood rivals in a rich boarding school with Courtney having a scholarship and Sophie being ‘new money’. This meant neither of them were on the top of the totem pole. Sophie’s mean old money friend outs Courtney before she knows she is ace and accuses a teacher of being in a relationship with Courtney at the same time. Sophie know this is big time wrong and tries to retaliate against her friend, even promising Courtney she would fix it, but is browbeaten by her Dad who needs a ‘cash infusion’ to his business from old money families (while still reeling from her mother’s tragic passing a few years ago). Courtney is let down and Sophie can’t explain, rivals turn to enemies and life moves on. There is never an extreme embarrassment scene (as of the end of chapter 12) in the flashbacks, just very tragic misunderstandings. The story starts with Courtney as an adult who works on an ace help/hotline and takes the call of Sophie (freshly out of an abusive marriage to a man and in hiding away from him) who thinks she might be asexual. Courtney recognizes Sophie, but doesn’t say anything because Sophie is calling for help. This is also not the awful bit. Sophie moves in with her stepmother (who was only married to her dad for a small time before he died) to hide from her soon to be divorced from ex because he is after her. Courtney lives in the same building and doesn’t know this, vows to drive her out by, very badly, pretending there is a ghost in the building. This is have lead to a great moment where Sophie confides about her ex and her fears to Courtney and them reconciling the different traumas they went through, but instead Courtney’s friends convince her to ask Sophie to create a prank war reality tv show (because Courtney knows that Sophie always wanted to be an actress) in the hopes to get revenge on Sophie, with an agreement put in place that justifies the harassment, probably full of evil editing to make Sophie look bad and force Sophie to move as well. This is awful. I hate prank wars. I hate harassment via prank wars. 
I hate everything about the round about way this revenge is happening, especially as we the reader know that Sophie wasn’t responsible, couldn’t explain the awful pressure and is on the run an living in terror that her soon-to-be-ex might find her. I hate everything about this. Obviously, I DNFed when Courtney started filming herself for the first harassment/prank. I just couldn’t get past this.
 

This book is perfect for someone, but not me.
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