We Were Never Here, Andrea Bartz

I have quite mixed feelings about this book. Let’s start with - there is nothing at all wrong with it. The writing is strong, too strong at times if you will, and that may be some of my reticence about moving beyond liking to loving the book. Ms. Bartz is obviously very well-written and understands and uses unusual and unique words fluently, however, the plot did not require that type of verbiage. To me, the use of these unique and unusual words almost felt like the overuse of a thesaurus, forced, trying to “sound smart.”

The storyline was good, the concept was also good, the gaslighting from one BFF of the other for the ten-year length of their friendship, which includes, who actually killed both backpackers in two different countries on two different girls’ trips. Again, a good story, but, surprisingly, too predictable, and too forced.

The ending is a lot of story dumping to wrap up the loose ends; a telling of events. And then the last line or two was an attempted red herring.

We Were Never Here is a decent book, but do have a dictionary standing by for the zinger words.