About the Book:
An annual backpacking trip has deadly consequences in a chilling new novel from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd.
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 the trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she brought back to their room 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 headfirst into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their cover-ups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can Emily outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom—even her life?
My Review:
I love that the synopsis of this book does not give too much away about the book. After a somewhat slow start, this story really took off for me and I could not wait to see what happened next!
If a psychological thriller can be categorized as fun, then this book is definitely a fun, on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller. Emily and Kristen as two best friends whose backpacking trip in Cambodia ended very dramatically and traumatically. Despite this eventful trip, the women take another backpacking trip to Chile together, which also ends in tragedy. Emily thought that Kristen was in serious danger there, and I will leave it at that for the plot description.
Emily begins to question her friendship with Kirsten after they return from Chile. It becomes clear that Kristen has serious control issues, and that Kristen and Emily’s friendship is very dysfunctional. Kristen suddenly moves almost next door to Emily, Kristen’s family begins to drop hints about her behavior to Emily, and Kristen just can’t seem to give Emily any breathing room.
Emily begins to dissect their decade-long friendship, and begins to examine Kristen’s behavior in detail. She obviously did not have Emily’s best interests at heart. I wanted to yell at Emily to just run away from Kristen! But Kristen has a hold over Emily and Emily just can’t seem to break away.
The author is great at setting up incredibly dramatic scenes between the two women and at setting the tension high. At every moment I was expecting Kristen to do something really terrible but her actions were much more devious and subtle and well, dangerous.
Kristen becomes more and more unhinged and her behavior more and more unpredictable. Emily finds her relationship with her new boyfriend in jeopardy and must decide how much she wants to reveal to him. The author played with my sympathies and the ending completely caught me off guard! The narration by Becca Tobin was perfect for this story and added just the right touch of realism and suspense.
We Were Never Here was a suspenseful and unpredictable thriller that was incredibly fun to listen to. Highly recommend!