Book Review: We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman

Aaron, our main character, has lost his way. He’s not totally aware of it at the start, but he’s incredibly close-minded and pushes people away without really getting to know their true intentions. He runs a bookstore with his dad, Ira. Lately, it’s just the two of them. There used to be his brother, Sandy, and mum. But after Sandy died due to addiction, and his mum went traveling, it’s been the same old routine of feeling utterly stuck in a small town where nothing changes, and he doesn’t either. 

But after taking up an offer from one of Sandy’s old friends, Chad, to go to see a band play, Aaron meets Hannah. She’s this magnetic force that completely bewitches him. His parents always talked about the feeling of knowing they were inevitable when they met, and when Aaron meets Hannah, he feels it too. She’s all about music, fearlessly herself and makes him open up to the possibilities that he could be missing out on a lot of life by remaining stagnant. Only, Aaron has done something horrible from under Ira and the bookstore, and living with that on his conscious as local people offer to build up their store to make it disabled-friendly, building bookcases and even getting a coffee machine, makes him feel awful. He latches onto the wrong parts of his life opening up, heading for a steep downfall that I saw coming entirely, completely rooting for him to come out of it unscathed.

Overall, We Are Inevitable was a complete curveball of a book. I definitely thought I was heading into more of a romance than contemporary, but what I got was so much better and impactful. Not only was I utterly in awe of the character development that blended flawlessly with the pace, but of the inclusivity and discussions of sexuality and addictions, additions of chronic illnesses and nonbinary characters. Gayle has written something so breathtakingly captivating that I wish I could reread it over and over. It definitely had that Looking For Alaska vibe (my favourite book ever) and that made me love it even more. I feel like it was totally inevitable that this book and I would be a match made in heaven. Five stars completely.