I Know It’s Over (review)

Nick’s world doesn’t come to an end when Sasha breaks up with him; that happens three weeks later when she tells him she’s pregnant. Even though he knows it’s over between them, and even though he knows that what she does about the pregnancy is ultimately up to her, he still feels like there is unfinished business between them that is both tied to and more than the pregnancy. Before Sasha, he had a perfectly uncomplicated relationship with a girl that was going to end up getting him laid eventually; that simplicity was what he wanted as he worked through his parents’ fresh divorce and his best friend’s coming out, but then Sasha touched his heart and made everything complicated. Without a trace of hysteria or overwrought sensibility, Nick’s layers are peeled back with unstinting honesty as he works through the seldom-explored guy’s side of first (embarrassing, fumbling) sex, a wounding breakup, and teen pregnancy. What is perhaps most poignant is the way Sasha never seems to let her guard completely down; even as she goes all the way with Nick physically, there is never the sense that she has given him her heart in the same way he has given his. Indeed, Nick’s sensitivity, newly emergent in the wake of first love, stands in bold relief against Sasha’s practical approach to their relationship; with so much to discuss, this measured but heartbreaking rendering of an all-too-common situation would be a great choice for mixed-gender book groups.