If you haven’t seen this beautiful, colorful cover all over the place yet, what rock have you been under lately. Andrea Bartz’s psychological thriller, We Were Never Here is one of those Reese Witherspoon book club picks that is taking over Instagram and Facebook book groups. I think it’s partly for the cover and partly because we’re all suckers for a female-led suspense story.

We Were Never Here is the story of two women who have been best friends since college, Emily and Kristen. They have a tradition of going on trips together to exotic locations. The story joins them in Chile, but Emily shares flashbacks to their trip to Cambodia.

In Cambodia, a backpacker attacked Emily during an attempted hookup, and Kristen came to the rescue. By ‘came to the rescue’, I mean she killed the guy and they hid the body out of distrust that foreign police would believe a couple of Americans. If that sounds like Amanda Knox’s story, you’d be correct in assuming it is referenced a few times on these pages. Now in Chile, they find themselves in a nearly identical situation.

I don’t want to say too much and ruin the plot for you, but I do want to warn you that the middle can be triggering to some people. It really puts the ‘psychological’ in psychological thriller. There’s a lot of gaslighting, manipulation, and emotional abuse in this one, so be careful about picking it up if that could bring up dark flashbacks of your own.

I enjoyed the first and last thirds of We Were Never Here, but the middle chunk was tougher to read. It’s a slower pace as the author twists the tension tighter, and just a lot of annoying things going on in there. Like, come on! Grow a backbone, woman! Ugh. However, the ending is a fun payoff that is worth it if you can make it through without it getting to you too much.

I will note that I did this one on audiobook and the narrator felt incredibly flat to me. I’d recommend picking up a physical or digital copy of We Were Never Here instead of audio if you are able.

Overall, We Were Never Here is a decent novel. I don’t think it quite reaches the level of hype it generated, but that is most definitely the Reese Witherspoon effect.