Review of We Are Never Getting Together by Janette Rallison

I received a free eARC of this book from the author in exchange for a fair and impartial review.
This book was so fun, fast-paced, and clean.
Madeline is a rich-but-geeky theater kid; Cooper is a poor-but-popular football star. At the beginning of the book, they have an ongoing feud that’s turned into a prank war. She breaks into his gym locker and replaces his clothes with a clown suit; he has the entire football team pick up her sports car and hide it under the bleachers. When Madeline’s divorced dad and Cooper’s divorced mom are called into the principal’s office, sparks fly and Madeline and Cooper are both horrified by the idea of their parents dating. Cooper still wants his mom to get back together with her ex-husband. He and Madeleine decide the only way to keep their parents apart is to pretend to date each other.
I appreciate stories about people actually trying to make relationships work instead of just insisting they shouldn’t be together and this book delivered on that. Madeline is then the first to try and honestly be a good person, moving beyond snipping and begrudging cooperation with Cooper. She buys clothes for his little sister, Claire, after Claire’s shirt gets ruined and she’s too poor to replace it. Madeleine’s relationship with Claire was one of my favorite parts of the story. It has “Darcy helps Lydia because he’s a good person and not just because he likes Elizabeth” energy.
The only area where I found this book lacking is I wish it had more of the situational comedy and prank hijinks we got at the beginning throughout the whole story and less dad-joke banter. Janette Rallison is consistently a fantastic comedy writer and I wish we got to see more hijinks so that comedy element could shine through more. I loved the ongoing gag of Madeleine feeding the unofficial stray cat on the school grounds, how the cat becomes a through-line for her relationship with Cooper, and how the cat comes into play during the climax.