We Were Never Here, by Andrea Bartz {Book Review}

Today I’m reviewing a ‘Reese’s Book Club‘ pick! Let me tell you, I was super excited to get my hands on a copy of We Were Never Here. Imagine going on vacation with your bestie and a guy ends up dead. Now imagine going on a vacation with same bestie a year later, and another guy ends up dead!! Um coincidence??? Do you and bestie have serial killer tendencies??? Well in ‘We Were Never Here’, this is Emily’s life and she’s starting to wonder the same thing!

What is We Were Never Here about?

Emily is having the time of her life–she’s in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of their trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she’d been flirting with attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year’s trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can’t believe it’s happened again–can lightning really strike twice?

Back home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma, diving head-first into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her friend’s motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their coverups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can she outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom–even her life?

My Thoughts

The plot for We Were Never Here is really very intriguing I have to say. After reading the first few chapters, I was hooked! The story starts out really strong and I think I was guessing we’d have some sort of Gone Girl moment….. I was wrong. Once Kristen shows up on Emily’s doorstep….the manipulation and gaslighting starts and that just remains the theme for about 150 pages. We also spend so much time investigating Kristen’s past, and it was really just not interesting enough. I struggled to eventually finish this book, because I was just over the repetitiveness.

The main issue I had with this book, was that if you read the synopsis, you actually knew what the whole book was about. The book didn’t add any new information….it was incredibly predictable in my opinion. The ending is really all sorts of crazy and then the final paragraph, I didn’t really know what to make of it. On the flip side, with some tweaks, I think this would make a great movie!  That crazy ending was made for the big screen 🙂

Some previous Reese’s Book Club picks that I’ve reviewed:

– Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens {Book Review}

– Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid {#ReesesBookClub pick}

Disclaimer: We Were Never Here was sent to me by Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.