Review: ‘Something’, ‘Nothing’ and ‘Everything’ (the ‘All the Things’ trilogy) by K. A. Last

Blurb for Something:

Katie has loved Levi, the boy next door, for as long as she can remember. He used to be her best friend, but now her heart breaks a little more every time he pretends she doesn’t exist.

He’s the popular, wealthy school captain, while she’s the poor scholarship kid. They’ve barely spoken in two years, so Katie doesn’t understand why Levi has started climbing through her bedroom window. Or why he’s telling her secrets he’s hiding from everyone else.

When the mean girls include Katie in their malicious game of truth or dare, she has a chance to get answers. To find out the real reason Levi is talking to her again. Will everything be as perfect as Katie imagined, or will the truth destroy her?

I’ve read this trilogy of novellas over the last month, and decided to post a combined review because I read them back-to-back, and because the story really is a novel in three parts, with cliff-hanger endings for the first two books. (Now, you know how I feel about that, but since I didn’t have to wait very long at all, I was all good … and now all three are out, you don’t have to wait at all!)

This trilogy is one of those stories that reminded me of how awful it is to be an introverted teenager at the bottom of the social pecking order, and I really felt for Katie on those grounds. Katie is an art nerd, the smartest kid in the class, and — worst of all, socially — attending wealthy private school on a scholarship. Her parents don’t come across as truly poor, but they are maybe lower middle class and Katie’s in a school full of rich brats.

That’s not to say Katie doesn’t have any friends at all, because she does; her bestie, Karen, is wonderful: tough, a straight talker, and willing to leap in front of a bullet (or a bully) to protect her friends. Katie’s other friends, Jessica and Stacey, spend less time on screen (and for the longest time I actually thought they were secretly dating … alas, no). Still, they are a solid posse.

On the face of it, Levi is my least favourite kind of love interest: hot but with a troubled past, secrets, and a tendancy to be rude to the leading lady. But his rudeness mostly runs to ignoring Katie, rather than being outright cruel or monstering the main character (I’m looking at you, Daemon from Obsidian), and you can see he doesn’t really mean it. It’s more that he made a bad decision when he was younger — that Katie wasn’t cool enough for him — and now isn’t quite sure how to walk it back even though he clearly wants to. And it turns out he’s actually kind of a sweetie. So I forgave him.

As well as struggling with whether to trust Levi again, Katie is also wrestling with study and that most teenage of issues: what to do after she finishes school. Her parents want her not to “waste” her scholarship and expect her to study law or medicine, but Katie is less than keen. This was one issue that I thought deserved a bit more airtime in the third book — her mother does something that I considered a truly low act (no details, because spoilers), and Katie was far more forgiving than I thought she should be.

But maybe that’s because I’m a mean old lady. 😉

There are some other minor characters that I had mixed feelings towards, all of them Levi’s friends. Veronica grew on me, but I never really got onboard with his two male friends. (See above comment about me being a mean old lady. I don’t forgive as readily as Katie does.) On the other hand, Katie’s brother is amazing.

If you want to read a story about a teen girl learning to trust and finding her feet in the world, one that is an easy read and comes in digestable chunks, then this is the story for you.

Note that I received a copy of Something in exchange for an honest review (though I bought the other two books myself).