(Blog Tour) Book Review: We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz

Welcome today to my stop on the blog tour for this amazing thriller We Were Never Here which was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick!  This is a brilliant and twisty thriller and you can see more about my thoughts in the review below in a moment, but first I’d like to say a big thank you to Penguin Michael Joseph for the opportunity to read this book and to be a part of this tour.  Now let’s find out why I enjoyed this book so much! 😀 …

Title: We Were Never Here
Author: Andrea Bartz
Publisher: Michael Joseph
Genre: Thriller – psychological
Book format: Pre-publication didital copy
Sweet Strawberries:

Description:  Emily is on holiday with her best friend, Kristen, in the stunning mountains of Chile. They’re having the time of their lives until, on the last night of the trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find it 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 on their cover-up, Emily asks herself: can she really trust her closest friend?

*Free copy provided by publisher for review…

Review:  This is an interesting and twisty story that got more and more exciting the more I read on.  Best friends Emily and Kirsten are spending a holiday in Chile together when Kirsten gets attacked.  Emily comes back to their hotel room to find Kirsten in tears having been attacked by a backpacker she met at a bar, but the man is now dead on the floor, after Kirsten acted in self-defence, and Kirsten and Emily decide to bury the body to avoid the conflict of being arrested abroad.  But Emily is troubled when she returns to Milwaukee and cannot relax after everything that happened.  And when she does finally begin to deal with her emotions and starts to enjoy her life again, Kirsten moves back to Milwaukee too, making Emily feel uncomfortable again.  Something isn’t right between the two friends, it’s more than just what happened in Chile, and Emily can’t help but feel that Kirsten is not the good friend she thought she was.

Although it took a bit of time for me to really get into this story, I loved reading this and can’t believe how twisty it got, especially towards the end!  Emily is haunted by something that happened in her past in Cambodia, and when Kirsten gets attacked and acts in self-defence, it brings up a lot of memories and emotions for Emily.  The story begins with the two friends enjoying their time in a small town in Chile.  From the start I loved the descriptions of the place, the details of the scenery, the beautiful buildings and nature, it really made me feel like I was there experiencing the country for myself.  But as the story moves on and Kirsten gets attacked, the mood changes and the real thrilling part of the novel begins.

I really enjoyed how this story unfolds.  While Emily can’t cope with what happens, Kirsten seems to cope better.  There is a dynamic between the two that is interesting and I like what happens when Kirsten returns to Milwaukee.  Emily’s life is going well but as we learn more about Kirsten and the two spend more time together it’s clear that something isn’t right with Kirsten.  I like how this story, which at first seems straight forward, actually turns out to be quite the twisty psychological thriller.  While Kirsten seems to be the troubled character at first, things start to happen that make you question what happened and which character is really the one to blame for everything.

The story gets more and more exciting and interesting that after a while I just couldn’t put this down, losing some sleep as I desperately wanted to find out what happened!  The story becomes very twisty towards the end with some very dramatic moments and a great build up to an ending which was good, but although the story has this good conclusion, I did feel that this last chapter which detailed a lot of what happened afterwards, felt a little like an anti-climax to all that had happened and I’m not sure why.  The story overall is a good one though, and one which really messes with your mind as you try to work out just who did what and why near the end, although it does take some time to get to this very twisty part, it does have an eerie feel to it and it does keep you guessing as to what is up with Kirsten and Emily and wondering just when something inevitable will happen.

The book has just a few uses of the s and f swear words and some descriptions of deaths which might upset some people.  The descriptions aren’t too graphic or gory though they are brought up in memories more than once.  Overall this is a brilliant thriller and I’m glad I stuck with it even though I wasn’t sure at the beginning whether I’d like this book or not as it felt like a bit of a slow start.  It feels like a straight forward thriller at first, but becomes so psychological towards the end and it really keeps you guessing until those very last chapters.  I do love it and would recommend it to anyone who likes a good thriller with some great eerie moments too.

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About the Author

Andrea Bartz, a Brooklyn-based journalist, is the author of The Lost Night and The Herd.  Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Martha Stewart Living, Redbook, Elle, and many other outlets, and she’s held editorial positions at Glamour, Psychology Today, and Self, among other publications.

Visit author’s website    Visit author on Twitter    Visit author on Facebook    Visit author on Instagram

I hope you’ve enjoyed my stop on this blog tour and if you like the sound of this book do get yourself a copy.  Don’t forget to check out the other stops on the blog tour for this book which has been going for a long time (and yes I know my blog twitter handle is missing a T on the banner but first I didn’t get the banner until the tour already started and then when I finally did I forgot to check it and didn’t notice until it was way, way too late!🤦‍♀️lol)

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What do you think of this book?  Do you enjoy thrillers or books with lots of twists?  Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂

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