Daniella (Reading With Daniella)'s Reviews > Everyone We've Been
Everyone We've Been
by
by
Daniella (Reading With Daniella)'s review
bookshelves: bipoc-author, owned, romance, ya-fantasy-dystopian-sci-fi, young-adult, dual-timeline, 2021-reads
Jun 22, 2021
bookshelves: bipoc-author, owned, romance, ya-fantasy-dystopian-sci-fi, young-adult, dual-timeline, 2021-reads
Click here to see this review and others on my blog Reading With Daniella
I purchased this book on a whim when I saw it for a great price on Book Outlet a few years ago, simply because I was intrigued by the synopsis and I liked the cover. It sat on my shelf for a few years, until I finally decided to give it a go, and I’m really pleased that I finally did!
I honestly don’t entirely know what I was expecting out of this, but it was somehow different, and I enjoyed it!
A large part of this book was set/based around a video store, and it evoked the nostalgia of visiting the video store to rent movies and video games. There used to be a video store in my town that would give out free rentals for the summer for each A on a report card that children would bring in from the school year. Those visits to the store to pick out all the different movies to watch and video games to try on my Wii were so much fun, and this book put me in the mood to go to one of those stores again!! Unfortunately, I don’t think those stores even exist anymore.
There was also a really cool (for me) part in which Zach was telling Addie about his pet fish, and he says, "We actually started out with him and another fish - a yellow molly called Molly. But Goldie ate him within, like, six hours of both of them being brought home."
This was super exciting for me because when I was really young, I had a yellow pet fish, Sunshine, which I think may have been a molly. Unfortunately, we got him on the same day as my sister's fish, and apparently the two types of fish we got don’t get along well. My sister’s fish nibbled on Sunshine’s fins until he died within a week! I was devastated. It’s honestly become one of my go-to childhood stories, but I’ve never heard of this happening with anybody else, fictional or real-life!
The romance in this book is really interesting and unique.
(view spoiler)
I had two main issues with this book:
I didn’t think that the characters were fleshed out enough. I understand that Addie’s character was supposed to have gaps, so to speak, since she was missing vital parts of her memory, but I still felt like she could have been rounded out a little better, and there were other characters who didn’t have as much dimension as I would have liked. This was especially true in the case of Addie’s supposed best friend, Katie, who she honestly didn’t seem that close with. I had a hard time believing that the two of them were best friends for such a long time, and I don’t think we saw enough of Katie to really understand her character or relationship with Addie. She wasn’t present for most of the ‘Before’ parts of the story because she was at camp, and she was absent in a great deal of ‘After’ chapters as well.
I don’t think we ever got a complete explanation for Addie’s hallucination of Zach. I’m still not sure of why she started seeing him, why it started at that time, or how he seemed much more real/solid than a hallucination. She could touch him, and I may not remember this correctly, but I think he also caught her or helped her from falling once?? Or did he give her his jacket when she was cold? I can’t quite remember the details, but sometimes the scenes between Addie and memory Zach seemed like more than just imagination, and I would have liked a better explanation for it.
On a totally random, different note, I really liked this quote that the doctor said toward the end of the book:
“Sometimes I’ll think about her, wonder if she looks the same. What she did after college, whether she ever thinks about me, wonders about me.” His voice gets fainter and fainter. “Where she is right now.” He pauses. “And what she’s done with her piece of my heart.”
This story reminded me a little bit of The Program trilogy by Suzanne Young. I read that series so long ago, but it was based around the idea of suicide becoming an epidemic for teenagers, so The Program was created to erase negative memories of teenagers who were depressed or suicidal. The whole premise of removing certain memories was really similar in both of these stories, except The Program is more of a dystopian novel, while Everyone We’ve Been was more of a contemporary with dystopian elements.
Overall, it was a solid book and a nice change of pace from my other recent reads.
I purchased this book on a whim when I saw it for a great price on Book Outlet a few years ago, simply because I was intrigued by the synopsis and I liked the cover. It sat on my shelf for a few years, until I finally decided to give it a go, and I’m really pleased that I finally did!
I honestly don’t entirely know what I was expecting out of this, but it was somehow different, and I enjoyed it!
A large part of this book was set/based around a video store, and it evoked the nostalgia of visiting the video store to rent movies and video games. There used to be a video store in my town that would give out free rentals for the summer for each A on a report card that children would bring in from the school year. Those visits to the store to pick out all the different movies to watch and video games to try on my Wii were so much fun, and this book put me in the mood to go to one of those stores again!! Unfortunately, I don’t think those stores even exist anymore.
There was also a really cool (for me) part in which Zach was telling Addie about his pet fish, and he says, "We actually started out with him and another fish - a yellow molly called Molly. But Goldie ate him within, like, six hours of both of them being brought home."
This was super exciting for me because when I was really young, I had a yellow pet fish, Sunshine, which I think may have been a molly. Unfortunately, we got him on the same day as my sister's fish, and apparently the two types of fish we got don’t get along well. My sister’s fish nibbled on Sunshine’s fins until he died within a week! I was devastated. It’s honestly become one of my go-to childhood stories, but I’ve never heard of this happening with anybody else, fictional or real-life!
The romance in this book is really interesting and unique.
(view spoiler)
I had two main issues with this book:
I didn’t think that the characters were fleshed out enough. I understand that Addie’s character was supposed to have gaps, so to speak, since she was missing vital parts of her memory, but I still felt like she could have been rounded out a little better, and there were other characters who didn’t have as much dimension as I would have liked. This was especially true in the case of Addie’s supposed best friend, Katie, who she honestly didn’t seem that close with. I had a hard time believing that the two of them were best friends for such a long time, and I don’t think we saw enough of Katie to really understand her character or relationship with Addie. She wasn’t present for most of the ‘Before’ parts of the story because she was at camp, and she was absent in a great deal of ‘After’ chapters as well.
I don’t think we ever got a complete explanation for Addie’s hallucination of Zach. I’m still not sure of why she started seeing him, why it started at that time, or how he seemed much more real/solid than a hallucination. She could touch him, and I may not remember this correctly, but I think he also caught her or helped her from falling once?? Or did he give her his jacket when she was cold? I can’t quite remember the details, but sometimes the scenes between Addie and memory Zach seemed like more than just imagination, and I would have liked a better explanation for it.
On a totally random, different note, I really liked this quote that the doctor said toward the end of the book:
“Sometimes I’ll think about her, wonder if she looks the same. What she did after college, whether she ever thinks about me, wonders about me.” His voice gets fainter and fainter. “Where she is right now.” He pauses. “And what she’s done with her piece of my heart.”
This story reminded me a little bit of The Program trilogy by Suzanne Young. I read that series so long ago, but it was based around the idea of suicide becoming an epidemic for teenagers, so The Program was created to erase negative memories of teenagers who were depressed or suicidal. The whole premise of removing certain memories was really similar in both of these stories, except The Program is more of a dystopian novel, while Everyone We’ve Been was more of a contemporary with dystopian elements.
Overall, it was a solid book and a nice change of pace from my other recent reads.
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Reading Progress
June 20, 2021
–
Started Reading
June 20, 2021
– Shelved
June 21, 2021
–
52.0%
"Woah! There's a part where Zach is telling Addie about his pet fish, and he says, "We actually started out with him and another fish - a yellow molly called Molly. But Goldie ate him within, like, six hours of both of them being brought home."
I had a yellow pet fish, Sunshine, which I think may have been a molly, but my sister's fish, which we got on the same day, nibbled on his fins until he died within a week!"
I had a yellow pet fish, Sunshine, which I think may have been a molly, but my sister's fish, which we got on the same day, nibbled on his fins until he died within a week!"
June 22, 2021
–
92.0%
"“Sometimes I’ll think about her, wonder if she looks the same. What she did after college, whether she ever thinks about me, wonders about me.” His voice gets fainter and fainter. “Where she is right now.” He pauses. “And what she’s done with her piece of my heart.”"
June 22, 2021
–
Finished Reading