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First Published:
Sep 2020, 272 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2022, 240 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Rory L. Aronsky
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Nina LaCour delivers another emotional knockout with Watch Over Me, the much-anticipated follow-up to the Printz Award-winning 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.
From Nina LaCour the national bestselling author of We Are Okay, Watch Over Me is a modern ghost story about trauma and survival, chosen family and rebirth.
Excerpt
Watch Over Me
had we been telling the truth
On the morning of my interview I slept until eight, went downstairs to the kitchen, and poured myself the last of the coffee. I stood at the counter, watching out the window as I sipped, and then pushed up my sleeves and turned on the water to wash the breakfast dishes that Amy and Jonathan had left stacked in the sink.
In just a few days, I would leave them.
Amy had bought a crib and tucked it into the garage. A few days after that, she came home with a bag from a toy store. A stuffed bunny peeked over the side. She asked me how my English final went and I told her that I wrote about the collapse of social mores in a couple of short stories and she said it sounded great. And then she took the bag into their bedroom as though it were nothing.
She was only being kind. I knew that. They hadn't asked me to stay.
The sink was empty. I scrubbed it until it was perfectly white and then I turned off the water. I tried to breathe. I tried ...
There are so many scenes, character moments and descriptions that ache to be reread. Watch Over Me is ultimately a story about courage, explaining through Mila and Lee, Billy and Liz, and Terry and Julia, that what we have suffered in our lives, terrible as it may be, does not have to be all that defines us. It can strengthen us, or we can simply seek to let it go, but there's nothing wrong with us because of it. It's a potent message, and one well-served with Nina LaCour as its deliverer. The YA genre is fortunate to have her infinite heart...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Rory L. Aronsky).
Even amidst ghosts; a loving, family-centered farm; and the courageous Mila trying to face horrible memories from her past, Nina LaCour's description of Mendocino, California in Watch Over Me stands out when Mila gets her chance to go there as part of a farmer's market:
Mendocino greeted us with its tiny business district, its weathered fences and pristine bed-and-breakfasts, its narrow streets and wildflowers and bluffs overlooking crashing waves.
After Mila's first time working at the farmer's market, flush with her day's pay, she explores the downtown area, which boasts cafés, a toy store, a chocolate shop and a bookshop. As a California resident who mainly knows the northern part of the state as a tourist, these descriptions ...
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