An honest and heartfelt story of friends and family struggling to deal with mental health issues.
Dee, Matt and Misa meet in a psychiatric hospital, support each other and create a needy but wonderful friendship bond.
After Dee is booted from rehab, Matt and Misa fall in love. When the wedding invitation arrives, Dee spirals. Her attraction and love for Matt causes her to question her mental stability.
Dee’s sister, Misa’s cousin and grandmother and Matt’s best friend are all supportive of their diagnosis and difficulties.
The destination wedding is a chaotic challenge, conflicted feelings, demanding parents and medication issues force some very important conversations and decisions.
I felt the author was very respectful of the challenges of mental health and the need for supportive caring and honest family and friends. Good read!
I received a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions in this review are my own.

A story about 3 friends at a mental facility- all had attempted suicide. I don’t think I am the right audience for this book and I stopped at 35%. I just didn’t care about any of the characters.

absolutely fantastic book, not exactly a romcom as much as it is a general fiction about grief, mental health and love. thanks for the arc.

Refreshing book to enter the rom-com scene. Appreciated the more serious subject matter of mental health being woven throughout the story. Original characters and setting. Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity!

This was a 3.5 rounded up to a 4 for me. It has a very refreshing take on mental illness that affords it gravity and attention without taking on that morose tone people often use. Kudos to Leanne Toshiko Simpson for attempting the brave feat of writing a rom com where the primary relationships are formed during a psychiatric hospitalization! The main character, Dee, was well-developed and I empathized with her struggle and feeling of stuckness. How well she was written may have contributed to my disappointment in how other characters were written, though. For instance, Misa felt really distant to me. There was all this suggestion around generational trauma stemming from Japanese internment during WWII but apart from it being referenced a few times, nothing much comes from it. Likewise, I never felt like I got to know Matt apart from what he meant to Dee (though that may have been intentional). In my opinion, Dee's sister Tilley got the short end of the stick as she was instrumental in moving the plot forward while given very little opportunity to be more than the "hot mess" who clearly had some stuff going on too. There were other ways in which issues were brought up but then not followed up on, such as Dee's thoughts about the impact of tourism and the class differences on Turks and Caicos. It would come up as more than a simple observation, but then would turn out to be just that. It left me feeling a bit confused, like it was an unfinished thought. But all in all, for a rom com that seeks to address mental health, this was an enjoyable. Folks struggling with their mental health also experience romantic struggles as mundane as jealously, and their stories are worth reading too.

a cute rom com with some very heavy mental health topics (suicide attempts, bipolar, anxiety, etc).

I loved the mental illness rep in this, and how it showed real struggles and hurdles, but I couldn’t get fully into the book. Not sure if it was the plot line or the characters or what exactly, it just didn’t suck me in.

Gave me “My Best Friends Wedding” vibes, but I loved that it was so much more than girl loves guy but everybody else is just background noise. This book goes deep into friendships, sisterhood, and even parent/grandparent relationships.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam/G.P. Putnam Son’s for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a review!

This book is full of comedy and sense of humor while addressing deeper issues. Dee, Misa, and Matt met while hospitalized in the psychiatric ward. Matt and Misa are planning a wedding in Turks and Caicos, surrounded by guests who have no clue how they met. Meanwhile, Dee is secretly madly in love with Matt. Dee and her sister Tilley make the trip to the wedding and Dee plans on telling Matt exactly how she feels. Except if she does that, the only support system she has will fall apart.

Never Been Better is unlike any book I've ever read. It's sort of a romance, but not in the traditional sense. The chapters flew by. My favorite character was Tilley, she was laugh out loud funny. The themes of this book are mental health issues, love, friendship, self compassion, and setting boundaries. I also loved all the references to Japan. This is a fabulous debut novel and I would recommend!

Thanks to Netgalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Dee is devastated by the fact that her best male friend (and love of her life), Matt, is marrying another woman (Misa). Dee, Matt, and Misa met in the psych ward and forged the tightest of relationships in a very unlikely setting. Each struggles with mental illness and some have contemplated/attempted suicide. Dee boards a plane to the destination wedding of Matt & Misa with her quirky sister, Tilley, who has become her quasi-caretaker. Dee is contemplating letting Matt know of her true feelings...What could go wrong?!

I really enjoyed all aspects of this book - the main characters and their struggles, the fun bunch of side characters and their personalities, the witty banter they send back and forth, and the setting (Turks & Caicos). I especially loved that each chapter of this book has a corresponding song listed at the start and that when placed together, the book has a soundtrack to accompany it.

Mental illness is a daily (sometimes hourly) struggle and the experiences of the three main characters were delivered delicately but honestly. I was struck by two sentences in Chapter 17: "We're all just trying to make the best decisions we can, trying to drown out the loudest internal scream you could imagine. The craziest thing I've ever heard is when people tell us we're not trying hard enough." Kudos to Leanne Toshiko Simpson for writing a stellar story and, in turn, sharing some of hers.

Thank you to Penguin Group Putnam for providing an advanced copy of this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

This book tackles some really big subjects and man were they heavy. Between suicide and bipolar...but a romcom sort of setting? IT just never felt like the two meshed for me.

I liked it. The writing was really well done, I just couldn't really get into the story.

I really wanted to love this one as it deals with some heavy topics such as bipolar and suicide. However, I couldn’t connect to the story nor characters. There wasn’t much character development in my opinion. I did however like the insight in gives into mental health.

This is a cute story about friends dealing with mental health issues.
I liked it enough.

Thanks netgalley and the publisher

I really enjoyed this one! It was a quick read and kept me entertained. The cover is super cute also - bookshelf material!

Dee is in love with Matt. Matt falls in love with Misa. Dee is best friends with Matt and Misa. They all met at a psych hospital. Typical love triangle storyline? I think not.

The majority of the book takes place at the weeklong destination wedding of Matt and Misa which Dee decides to attend with her sister as her plus one where she intends to disclose her feelings for Matt.

This story had snippets of raw insight into these three characters’ experiences with mental illness and inpatient treatment. The dialogue was intelligent and insightful. And despite the potential for the topic to be depressing, the ancillary characters, in particular Dee’s sister Tilley, Matt’s childhood friend Vik and Misa’s cousin, Kei provided comedic relief throughout the story. It was a unique storytelling of a challenging topic that made this a surprisingly enjoyable read for me.

Sweet, funny, and insightful story of finding love, finding yourself, and identifying what is really important while dealing with mental illness. Love of friends and family and sorting through complex feelings made more complex while navigating treatments, meds, misconceptions, and unidentified and sometimes out of control feelings. An emotional journey for sure.

This book was wonderful! It had the full range of emotions and portrayed mental health struggles so well. I laughed, cried, and felt for these characters. I was able to picture each one as a complete person and watch their journey over a week at a destination wedding. It was a lovely story with just the right amount of snark to feel authentic. If you are looking for something to make you feel the feels and be happy to be along for the ride, this is for you.

Never Been Better, by Leanne Toshiko Simpson, is a real and raw book that focuses on family and friendships, and the challenges of living with mental illness. It touched on topics you don't often see in books, and it was refreshing to read that kind of representation. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this book!

This was well written and shined a light on mental health issues in a way I haven’t seen before. And in a good way.

My only issue is that this book is labeled as a rom-com. It’s not. I almost didn’t finish several times, just because, for someone that’s very empathetic, I was not prepared for the heaviness of this book and in the right mind set.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this book. ~I was given this book and made no commitments to leave my opinions, favorable or otherwise~

This was a great book! I think the author accurately depicted the beautiful, messy nature of bipolar disorder for those who walk with it and those who walk next to it. I was really engaged with the story and was sad when it was over. The only thing that didn't quite sit right for me was how neatly and quickly it wrapped up. I'm happy it wasn't a sad ending but honestly that's what I was expecting

This is a story about three people who meet in a mental institution and the destination wedding of Dee and Matt. Unfortunately Tilley is also in love with Matt and Dee is her best friend.

Even with the turmoil I really liked the characters. Tilley and her sister are quite funny, but Tilly does not have her mental illness under control.

I recommend this book because it is very interesting and entertaining, but I think people with mental illness could possibly be triggered.

#LeanneToshikoSimpson #PenguinGroup #Putnam #WomensFiction #Romance #NeverBeenBetter#NetGalley #ARC

This was an interesting book. To me,it was like ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ but way more drama and darker. I didn’t find this book particularly funny like the blurb suggests but it was interesting. It is extremely focused on the mental health/bipolar aspect. Not a traditional romance, but I did appreciate not being able to fully guess the ending as I was reading. There are no open/closed door scenes.

Thank you Penguin Group Putnam for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.