Jeff Raymond's Reviews > We Are Okay

This came to me fairly highly recommended, and I think I can see why. Sort of an emotional journey through teenagedom as things slowly unravel that our heroine is fairly incapable of stopping, I was ultimately impressed by the core of this story and the way it was presented. While it is really reliant on a lot of standard and typical tropes (in many regards, I could hear the checkboxes being filled in as I read), it stands out because of what felt like some serious realism across the board.

Where I struggled was that the narrative did ultimately feel detached from the story being told. I wanted more from this and wanted to care more about what was happening, and the plot was instead a lot quieter and relied perhaps too heavily on those emotional notes in favor of a plot that didn’t truly gear up until the second half. By then, a lot of my investment in the tale was among the missing, but it came around.

This won’t be for everyone, and people with a LOT of YA experience might see this as more of the same, but there’s enough here to make this stand out. Closer to a 3.5.