4.5 stars

We Were Never Here is the latest book club pick from @reesesbookclub. I was drawn to the cover right away and then the blurb convinced me I needed to read this!

The story follows main character Emily and her friend Kristen, starting with a holiday together in Chile which takes a fatal turn.

This book had me gripped! I couldn’t believe the twists and turns throughout. I felt like I was being gaslighted myself as the story unfolded and I kept questioning where it was going to go. Towards the end of the book I was with Kirsty while I was reading it so she can testify to the numerous gasps as the narrative which had been building throughout reached its final crescendo.

I always say I want to read more thrillers and this really given me that boost to read more! Have you read this one? Or any other of the recent picks from Reese’s book club?

Emily is having the time of her life with her best friend, Kristen, in the mountains of Chile.
On the final night of their annual trip Emily finds blood on the floor of their hotel room and Kristen says she was attacked. Kristen is claiming self defense but this is scarily similar to last years trip when a backpacker died. Can this really be happening again?
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Kristen is independent, free spirited and the risk taker. Emily the polar opposite shy, obedient and has serious trust issues. Together this unlikely pairing works well and setting how there characters played out throughout kept me entertained. Think single white female for the obsession and you've got the premise for this great psychological thriller.
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This was a great quick read and the action really picks up towards the end. Thriller fans will not be disappointed.
And it's a @reesesbookclub pick... great choice.

You might've said at some point that you'd help your best friend hide a body ... even kill for them. But when it comes down to it, could you actually do it?

Emily and Kristen have been best friends for over a decade, despite Kristen moving halfway across the world. Reunited for their yearly trip, they embark on their dream trip to Chile together looking forward to wine, fun and sun. But soon enough, their dream turns into a nightmare when Emily finds herself in an unsettling familiar situation - covered in blood with a dead man at her feet.

Kristen claims she killed him in self-defence, that he was going to hurt her. She had do it.

After getting away with murder, it should be over. But Emily can't help but relive that night over and over, and she's got a feeling something even worse is coming.

"I breathed deeply. I chose to believe her. Maybe were were never here."


Wow. This story literally dove straight into the action and then somehow kept it simmering away slowly throughout the rest of the pages. I could feel the ache in shoulders from the tension I was feeling during this sinister tale. There were definitely some wordy sections that broke the flow a little bit, but it was easy to get pulled back in.

Emily and Kristen were strange characters. They were the standard introvert/extrovert pairing you've seen a million times over but with something very unique about them. While Emily was plagued with anxiety and nightmares, Kristen was the bright light in her cloudy life whether she wanted it or not. Their relationship was crafted expertly - toeing the line between loyalty and ownership, between love and toxicity - and kept my head spinning.

The blood and murder wasn't the only unsettling thing about this story - it was about friendship, about possession and obsession in it's most beautiful and dangerous forms and left me looking over my shoulder far too many times.

Twist after twist, with an ending that felt like a handbreak during a car chase, this explosive thriller will definitely leave you reeling.

We Were Never Here, Andrea Bartz

On a girls getaway with her best friend Kristen, Emily is having the time of her life. Until the final night when Emily enters the hotel room to discover it covered in blood. Kristen claims to have been attacked by a backpacker, now dead on the floor and convinces Emily to help her clear the scene.
Back home Emily tries to pretend everything is okay but a surprise visit from Kristen forces her to confront what happened and to ask herself if she can really trust her best friend.

This is the latest #ReesesBookClub pick, a gritty thriller which is crying out for an adaption.
You can immediately feel unease as you slip in between these pages, with references to infamous tales of women who travelled alone you can tell the scene that is being set. You can feel the story that is about to unfold.
Nevertheless Kristen is an ominous antagonist. She looms across every page, even those she isn’t in. Single White Female meets Jawbreaker.

We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz is a psychological thriller and actress Reese Witherspoon's bookclub pick for August.

The story kicks off in Chile, where Emily and Kristen, two American best friends on the brink of their 30's, are vacationing together. This backpacking sojourn is their reunion trip, an annual tradition they began when Kristen relocated to Australia from Wisconsin, where Emily still resides.

Readers quickly learn that something major happened to the women on their previous trip to Cambodia a year earlier. The plot, and their stay in Chile, soon takes a turn for the disturbing. Now the women are forever tethered to each other by two sinister secrets.

The book kept me up reading, even though I was frustrated by Emily's sometimes hard-to-swallow naïveté. Told from Emily's point of view, Kristen emerges as the villain early on. Or is she? And is Emily really as innocent as she lets on?

According to the author's bio, Bartz is a well-travelled journalist who has written for, amongst others, Psychology Today. In We Were Never Here, she explores psychological issues such as co-dependency, obsession and how past trauma can influence future behaviour. Tough topics handled by Bartz in an accessible way.

This book is not unlike a rollercoaster ride. While you may think you have the end in sight, it will take a few twists and could throw you for a loop along the way. We might even forgive Bartz for that one South African character...

We Were Never Here is published by Penguin Random House and will hit store shelves in South Africa in October 2021. If you're keen to read it right away, the Kindle version is out now on Amazon.com

Penguin Random House South Africa

#wewereneverhere #andreabartz #penguinrandomhousesouthafrica #netgalley

⭐️ rating: 4
📖 genre: thriller
#️⃣ pages: 320
🍾 pub date: August 18, 2021
REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK FOR AUGUST 2021

I was a bit nervous going into this one, but I’m happy to say that THE WERE NEVER HERE was a great thriller and it felt like I was reading a movie script the whole time!

All right, here are the facts: WE WERE NEVER HERE follows Emily, who is enjoying a vacation in Chile with her friend Kristen, when suddenly she finds a man dead in their room. Apparently, Kristen killed him after he tried to assault her. The worst part? It's not the first time this happens. The girls dispose of the body and return home, but Kristen becomes increasingly clingy and suffocating. Emily begins to suspect that Kristen’s obsessed with her and sabotaged her past relationships in order to keep Emily all to herself, and starts to wonder if she is safe around Kristen after all.

The story is incredibly dark and suspenseful. It gave me MAJOR Amanda Knox vibes, like many others have pointed out as well, and that was incredibly unsettling. Emily and Kristen's relationship is a twisted friendship, filled with co-dependency manipulation, and bad decisions. I didn’t see the twists around the middle and end coming and I loved Emily's development through the story, but it dragged on in the middle and therefore I don't feel like I can give the full five stars. Also if you’ve read it, can we talk about that epilogue? 😅 I don't agree with it at all, but I will say— this book would be great as a movie/series adaption.

I had seen a lot of buzz around this book after it was selected to be the August Reeses Book Club book and was very excited to be given a eARC copy thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Michael Joseph UK. Though I have a few issues with this book I couldn't put it down especially in the last quarter when SPOILER ALERT Emily and Aaron go to Phoenix END OF SPOILER.

Emily and Kristen met in college and have been firm friends since then often leaving each other cryptic clues like a secret language. Things change on holiday but a year later with Kristen living in Australia they choose to holiday again. Can history really be repeating itself? Emily returns to the states and starts to question everything. Then things begin to escalate when Kristen appears on Emily's doorstep.

We Were Never Here was well written and kept me turning the page. I especially like the device of the therapist used to make Emily and the reader think. The ending of the book left me feeling blah but I think I was coming down from the twists and turns in the previous section. Hence the 3 star rating.

Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Michael Joseph UK and Andrea Bartz for the ARC of We Were Never Here.

I have seen and heard a lot of advance praise for this thriller; including an appearance on the Reese Witherspoon Book Club Picks, so I was really excited to see what this had in store - it didn't disappoint, With some marmite reviews, I think this is the kind of book that if you take too seriously you can pick holes in, but despite being a little far fetched at times, I really enjoyed this book - a sinister, suspense building, tension filled page turner of a thriller.

Kristen and Emily have been super best friends ever since college, and despite Kristen moving to the other side of the world in Australia, the pair still meet up regularly to travel together to far flung exotic destinations. One night Kristen hooks up with a man she meets in a bar and when Emily goes to find her, she sees blood everywhere. The man attacked Kristen - she tried to fight him off and scream but she couldn't; so killed him in self defence. With no evidence of her physical attack, the pair decide to hide the body. This would be bad enough in itself, but this isn't the first time this has happened and that night brings up memories Emily had hoped she had hidden forever.

When Emily returns hope hoping to distance herself from the memories of that night and start a new relationship with recent partner Aaron, it finally feels like she can move on but then Kristen lands on her doorstep and suddenly is everywhere. This toxic and obsessive friendship then brings doubts about what really happened that night and begs the question who can Emily really trust. Can she trust her best friend - and can she trust herself?!

This book had we reading long into the night wondering what was going to happen next. A dark, compulsive and paranoid psychological thriller, this was a big hit with me! Loved it.

We Were Never here is TENSE with a capital T

Wow! Kristen is a very creepy and interesting character and it was very entertaining to see everything unravel. I had a lot of fun reading this and would recommend it!

Kristen and Emily have been BFFs since college, and although Kristen has moved overseas, they still get together on holiday. Whilst in Chile, Kristen picks up a handsome backpacker and takes him back to their hotel suite, but when Emily follows some time later, the backpacker is dead. Kristen says he attacked her and it was self defence but that who would believe them? They decide they have no choice but to clean up and dispose of the body. Back home, Emily wants to forget what happened and move on with her new boyfriend, but then Kristen appears on her doorstep and as things start to escalate, Emily wonders just how well she really knows her friend.

I thought this was a thriller with great twists and plenty of moments where your heart is in your mouth. Emily is written as a sympathetic character even though she makes some decisions that make you wonder. Definitely a recommend from me. What was that ending though!

TW: sexual assault, brief mention of dead animal

Thanks to NetGalley & publishers, Penguin Michael Joseph UK, for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Who To Trust…?
An horrific event with potentially huge consequences is central to this twisting psychological suspense. A chilling tale, well drawn protagonists, a toxic friendship and a deliberate, initial slow burn storytelling which keeps the reader on their toes from start to finish. Question everything.

I was hoping that there would be more depth to this thriller but unfortunately it wasn’t as dramatic as billed. The inevitable twists lacked finesse and instead of taking my breath away they made me deflated. I didn’t feel any connection to Emily or Kristen, in fact, I found them to be more like caricatures than actual real people that you believe in. A lot of thrillers can be outlandish but still have at it’s core a glimmer of something that seems real and so you are teetering on the edge of your seat with excitement, but this story just felt too preposterous to grab my attention.

Sadly, this didn’t shine for me.

This one didn't work for me.
Two characters I didnt like,a lot of totally unbelievable situations,and some over the top action.
Sometimes all of those things can be good.
This time I just felt it was just another crazy lady story

I'm really sorry I found this book too unbelievable to read and I didn't really like any other characters. Terribly sorry.

This had me gripped from the very off and was powerful and thought provoking. Felt like it lost its way a little bit in the middle and then had a great ending. Definitely one to think about.

Incredible. I became so invested after the first 30/40 pages I couldn’t bare to put it down until I was done! Great read and I’ve already pre ordered a copy to gift to a friend

Emily and Kristen have been best friends since college. Every year, the two women choose somewhere far flung and exotic to go on holiday. This year they are in Chile, and for the most part, the trip has been heaven - local wine, mountains, and making memories. But on their last night, Kristen takes a backpacker home with her, and when Emily gets to the hotel, she is horrified to find Kristen covered in blood and the backpacker dead. Kristen says it was self defence, that he attacked her and she had no choice. But this isn't the first time that this exact scenario has played out, and it isn't the first time the two women have had to dispose of a body...

Back home in Wisconsin, Emily tries to forget Chile by throwing herself into work and her new relationship with Aaron. But then Kristen announces she is moving back to Wisconsin, and has found an apartment just round the corner from Emily's. And suddenly Kristen is everywhere - turning up at Emily's yoga classes, hanging out with Emily's friends. And the more Emily tries to pull away, the tighter Kristen tries to hold on.

As Emily begins to feel suffocated by what they've done, and by her friend's controlling behaviour, she must ask herself if she's ever really known Kristen at all,,,and if her oldest friend is capable of cold-blooded murder...

I loved the premise of this novel, and it was deftly executed, with well written characters and a twisty plot. My biggest pet peeve in novels like this is when you just can't relate to the character and why they are making certain choices, but the author really made you empathise with Emily, so even when you disagreed with something she did, you weren't rolling your eyes and thinking AS IF, her choices were understandable in the context of her friendship and her history. I loved the ending too, and felt like everything was brought to a satisfying conclusion - loved this novel and can't wait to read more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher,who granted me a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

#WeWereNeverHere #NetGalley
If you want to read only one novel this year then make it "We Were Never Here".
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.
It's completely believable novel with a heart pounding climax.
Everyone must read it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Michael Joseph UK for giving me an advanced copy.