Things We Never Got Over

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. How did you respond when Tina absconded with Naomi Witt’s car and money? How did this plot point upend your expectations of the narrative world and of Naomi’s relationship with her sister? 

2. Naomi’s relationship with Tina’s daughter, Waylay, is featured prominently throughout the novel. What aspects of this relationship are reminiscent of your own familial connections? Have you had to assume a similar caretaking role? If so, how did your experience compare to Naomi’s? 

3. Discuss the evolution of Naomi and Knox Morgan’s relationship. How does their complex dynamic compare and contrast with your own romantic experiences?

4. The majority of the novel is set in the town of Knockemout. How does small-town life influence the main characters? How does the Knockemout culture compare with your own communal settings?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, historical events, or cultural themes.

1. The novel explores complex family dynamics via Naomi and Knox’s storylines. How do the protagonists’ personal histories offer expansive representations of family life? What does the new family that Naomi and Knox create suggest about unconventional family structures?

2. Things We Never Got Over is a contemporary romance novel. How does Score subvert and/or reinforce key tropes of the genre? What plot points and relationships deepen Naomi and Knox’s romance? How do their encounters with loss and trauma complicate their dynamic?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. The novel is told from Naomi’s and Knox’s alternating first-person perspectives. Discuss the narrative and thematic significance of this formal choice. How does this access to Naomi and Knox’s interior worlds create narrative tension and deepen Score’s themes?

2. Compare and contrast Naomi and Tina. What is the archetypal and thematic significance of their similarities and differences?

3. How does the Knockemout setting dictate the novel’s overarching mood? How would the narrative atmosphere and the characters’ development differ if they were living in a different location?

4. Discuss how Naomi and Knox help each other find the courage to love. What role does sexual and emotional intimacy play in their respective transformations? Do other characters encourage them to take risks, too?

5. Analyze Noami and Knox’s respective relationships with the past. How do they regard their personal histories, and how does their perspective the past affect them in the present? Be sure to consider Knox’s relationship with his dad, as well as his life before winning the lottery. Also, consider Naomi’s former tendencies towards conformity, and her relationship with her ex-fiancé.