Title: Watch Over Me

Author: Nina LaCour

Series: Standalone

Publish Date: January 18, 2022 (Originally published September 15, 2020)

Publisher: Rocky Pond Books

Format: Paperback

Goodreads Summary:

A modern ghost story about trauma and survival, Watch Over Me is the much-anticipated new novel from the Printz Award-winning author of We Are Okay

Mila is used to being alone.

Maybe that’s why she said yes. Yes to a second chance in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.

But she hadn’t known about the ghosts.

Newly graduated from high school, Mila has aged out of the foster care system. So when she’s offered a teaching job and a place to live on an isolated part of the Northern California coast, she immediately accepts. Maybe she will finally find a new home–a real home. The farm is a refuge, but it’s also haunted by the past. And Mila’s own memories are starting to rise to the surface.

Nina LaCour, the Printz Award-winning author of We Are Okay, delivers another emotional knockout with Watch Over Me about trauma and survival, chosen family and rebirth.

Review: I feel conflicted.

On one hand, the book delivered on exactly what was described in the summary. On the other, I’m walking away feeling dissatisfied.

Unlike Ms. LaCour’s previous novel, We Are Okay, I struggled to stay engaged in this novel. It’s not that it was poorly written, because it wasn’t. The writing style was exactly what I remember from the previous novel. No, it was that I found the story… boring. Or, in another word, uninspiring. Like I’ve read this story before.

I knew going in that this would be a book dealing with trauma and healing. After all, our main character, Mila, had a traumatic moment in her past that sticks with her years later. But the climax of Mila overcoming that trauma comes late into the book, and it just didn’t hit me. Mila also came off the page as bland, going through the motions, with bursts of movement that felt disjointed from her narration.

Besides Lee, the young boy that Mila is in charge of, I had trouble distinguishing a majority of the characters. I got confused for a bit because I couldn’t tell apart the other two interns from the couple that is running the farm. I wanted to know more about all the characters, and for the most part we just got a line or two of backstory and that’s it.

In a way, this book felt like one of those artsy indie films you might see at a small independent theater. It tells a story, and it does okay with what time it has, but unless you are immediately caught by the plot, you are just left watching flashing pictures on the screen. In this case, I totally understood what I was supposed to get, but I just set the book down completed and moved on.

This won’t turn me away from reading other books by Ms. LaCour, because as I said I did enjoy her previous book. I am just reminded that maybe this one just didn’t do it for me. And that’s okay.

Rating: 3/5

Goodreads Goal 10/52