by Andrea Bartz
SYNOPSIS
YOUR BEST FRIEND KILLED A MAN.
NOW SHE NEEDS YOUR HELP . . .
BUT CAN YOU REALLY TRUST HER MOTIVES?
On holiday in Chile with her best friend Kristen, Emily is having the time of her life.
Until one night, she finds their hotel suite covered in blood.
Kristen claims a backpacker attacked her. She shouted, but no-one heard. She struggled, but he was too strong.
She had no option but to kill him.
With no evidence of the assault, Emily must help her hide the body. . .
Back home, Emily tries to forget what happened, but a surprise visit from Kristen forces her to confront the events of that night.
As the walls close in, Emily asks herself: can her closest friend be trusted?
REVIEW
We Were Never Here starts off as a pretty normal story following two friends, Kristin and Emily, as they travel around Chile. Their holiday seemed so uneventful that I was wondering when the action was going to start, and then all of a sudden it went off with a bang and didn't stop throughout the remainder of the story!
After Kristen invites another backpacker to their hotel room, Emily returns to their suite a while later to find a scene of utter destruction - Kristen is covered in blood, and the backpacker is dead on the floor. Her best friend claimed that she was attacked by him, he had become violent and that she had to fight back in self-defence. Worried about how the Police in a foreign country would deal with this kind of incident, the pair decide that the only way out is to bury the body. This whole day brings back horrific memories for Emily after she was attacked on a previous holiday to Cambodia with Kristen in similar circumstances.
After arriving back home, Emily tries to return to normal, knowing that this is their best chance to get away with what they had done. As Kristin had been living in Australia, keeping some distance between herself and her friend seems like a good idea, until Kristin turns up on her doorstep unannounced, to tell Emily that she has decided to move back home. Tension begins to build between the two friends as neither believes that they can trust each other with such an important secret, and the toxic nature of their friendship starts to show as the Kristin's erratic behaviour takes its toll on Emily.
A fantastic exploration of gaslighting, manipulation and toxic relationships, We Were Never Here is the perfect choice for an end of summer read. Fast-paced, twisty and falling just on the edge of believable, this book was a fresh and entertaining thriller!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Bartz is a Brooklyn-based journalist and the author of the forthcoming WE WERE NEVER HERE. Her second thriller, THE HERD, was named a best book of 2020 by Real Simple, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, CrimeReads, and other outlets. Her LA-Times bestselling debut, THE LOST NIGHT, was optioned for TV development by Mila Kunis. It was named a best book of the year by Real Simple, Glamour, Marie Claire, Library Journal, Crime Reads, Popsugar, She Reads, and other publications. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Women's Health, Martha Stewart Living, Elle, and many other outlets, and she's held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self, among other titles.
Thanks to @michaeljbooks and @andibartz for the opportunity to read and review.
Fiction: Thriller / Psychological Thriller / Contemporary Fiction
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-0241559239
Pages: 320 pp
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