Book Summary and Reviews of We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz

Book Summary

A backpacking trip has deadly consequences in this "eerie psychological thriller ... with alluring locales, Hitchcockian tension, and possibly the best pair of female leads since Thelma and Louise" (BookPage), from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd.

Emily is having the time of her life—she's in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of the trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she brought back to their room attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year's trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can't believe it's happened again—can lightning really strike twice?

Back home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma, diving headfirst into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their cover-ups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can Emily outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom—even her life?

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Emily and Kristen have been best friends since college, ever since Emily's breakup with her high school boyfriend. What did you think of the way this breakup cemented their friendship? Do you think it was the beginning of a pattern that is followed throughout the novel? Do you have a pivotal moment in your life that you saw one way in the moment, but in an entirely new one light years later?
2. Emily notes: "In the US, 40 percent of murders go unsolved. Some arithmetic, then: That meant that detectives threw up their hands at almost 7,000 murders a year—7,000 cadavers with no origin story, no clarity around the moment they went from human to body. And that meant there were thousands, maybe millions in the aggregate, of ...