Never Evers

Offering a first chance of parent-free living, opportunities to bond with friends, and first romantic encounters, school trips can provide memories to last a lifetime, and some of the defining moments of our teenage years. Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison capture all of that in their sweet and funny story of teenagers whose relationship develops, despite the requisite obstacles, on the ski and snow-board slopes of a school trip to France.

As is the fashion in YA novels, young would-be lovers Mouse and Jack narrate the story in alternate chapters, though their supporting cast of friends are just as important, and just as well described. Both Mouse (real name Matilda) and Jack lack confidence. Mouse is a would-be ballet dancer who has lost her coveted place at ballet school for ‘not fulfilling her promise’ and so is back with her old friends at regular secondary school. There are tensions between her and fellow-dancer Lauren of the kind sadly familiar to all adolescent girls and as Lauren seems to brim with confidence, she finds lots of ways to hurt Mouse. The boys’ relationships are more straightforward, and Max, self-appointed leader of Jack’s friendship group, has one aim for them – that they will all get off with a girl on the trip. Jack is more or less willing to go along with that, though he’s as self-conscious as Mouse in his way. In true rom-com style, the situation gets complicated when Jack falls for Mouse, but manages to annoy her friends and catch the eye of Lauren too. The arrival of a gorgeous French teen pop star tangles things further and raises the scope for some broad comedy (as indeed does a smuggled hamster in a wardrobe) and for what the teen magazines I used to read described with pinpoint accuracy as ‘cringe-worthy’ moments.

Beneath all the high drama and glamour added by pop star sub-plots, this remains a true and genuinely touching story that deals lightly and honestly with emotions we all experience and that its intended readers will understand very well indeed.