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Published May 2017
384 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Readers of Kate Atkinson will delight in this suspenseful debut novel about a woman haunted by nightmares and her grandmother's role in a doomed love triangle almost seventy years before.
What if the past is never buried?
Death, accidental and early, has always been Abby Walters's preoccupation. Now thirty-three and eager to settle down with her commitment-shy boyfriend, a recurring dream from her past returns: a paralyzing nightmare of being buried alive, the taste of dirt in her mouth cloying and real. But this time the dream reveals a name from her family's past.
Looking for answers, Abby returns home to small-town Minnesota for the first time in fourteen years, where she reconnects with her high school crush, now a police detective on the trail of a violent criminal. When Abby tries on her grandmother's mesmerizing diamond ring, a ring she always dreamed would be hers, she discovers a cryptic note long hidden beneath the box's velvet lining. What secret was her grandmother hiding? And could this be the key to what's haunting Abby? As she begins to uncover the traces of a love triangle gone shockingly wrong nearly seventy years before, we, too, see that the layers of our lives may echo a past we've never known.
With mesmerizing twists and a long-buried secret that may finally rise to light, You Were Here weaves together two worlds separated by decades, asking if the mistakes made in past lives can ever be corrected in the future, and if some souls are meant to find one another time and time again.
"[An] intricately plotted first novel ... Sardar keeps the tension high to the very end." - Publishers Weekly
"[B]eautifully written ... Despite a few flaws, this first novel will appeal to readers of Christina Schwarz and Diane Chamberlain" - Library Journal
"An impressive if flawed debut with a touch of the otherworldly." - Kirkus
"Artfully weaving the past and present together, You Were Here is a stunning tapestry of a novel full of dreams, nightmares, horrific crimes and long-buried secrets." - Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Sister
"Prepare to be dazzled by hauntingly masterful storytelling! Packed with delicious prose and page-turning intrigue, You Were Here is a remarkable and unforgettable debut." - Susan Meissner, author of Secrets of a Charmed Life
"You Were Here is a beautiful puzzle box of a book - a page-turner that manages to also be strikingly poetic. I was gripped from the very first page, and moved by the time I made it to the last." - Janelle Brown, bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
"Gian Sardar has confidently and seamlessly woven all these genres into a novel that is completely original and relentlessly engaging. You Were Here is a bravura, genre-busting performance." - Valerie Martin, award-winning author of Mary Reilly and Property
"Modern and timeless, part thrilling detective story, part ghost story, part love story, Sardar's debut is an evocative literary cocktail. I couldn't put it down!" - Sari Wilson, author of Girl Through Glass
"You Were Here is a terrific debut ... Gian Sardar is a writer to watch." - Carla Buckley, author of The Good Goodbye and The Things That Keep Us Here
This information about You Were Here was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gian Sardar studied creative writing at Loyola Marymount University and is the coauthor of the book Psychic Junkie. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and insane dog. You Were Here is her debut novel.
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