You Were Here - Cori McCarthy

You Were Here – Cori McCarthy

(4.5 / 5)

Wow. This book totally took me by surprise! I love when I get taken by surprise!

Jaycee is still dealing with the death of her big brother 5 years ago, albeit not very well depending on how you look at it. On each anniversary of his death she breaks into an abandoned insane asylum, which was one of her brothers favourite places to do dangerous stunts. Accompanied with one of his old friends, selective mute Mik, and this year joined by some other friends with their own issues, Jaycee must start to move forward.

I absolutely adored the format of this book. Each chapter was from one of the characters perspectives, and it was not all words. One of the characters chapters consisted entirely of graffiti, another’s chapters of a graphic novel, and my goodness, it really worked for me!

Straight away I was caught up in the emotion of the story, it was gritty but not in a bad way. There is gritty and there is depressing, the latter this novel is certainly not. The grief subject matter is raw yes, but it is written in such a good way that you can’t help but become immersed in it and keep turning the pages!

Every one of the characters were so well written. Each of them had such depth to them, funny enough – especially Mik, who was my favourite character. Each character brought something special to the story and made me pine for the days back at that stage of my life, where everything was starting out and changing, and nothing was ever going to be the same.

A fantastic coming of age, dealing with issues Young Adult story with a touching story, a passionate romance, and more than a few laughs! All leading to an ultimately extremely satisfying conclusion.