Review: We Fell Apart

The storyline of We Fell Apart revolves around a fiercely independent eighteen-year-old gamer girl, Matilda, who was not only abandoned by her father before birth but has also recently been abandoned by her mother (two years prior) and her boyfriend (days prior). While deep in a funk over these setbacks, she receives a tantalizing email from the father she has never seen or corresponded with. He is inviting her to meet at his isolated and remote artist-colony-like wooden castle, Hidden Beach, on the shores of Martha’s Vineyard. Matilda readily agrees, driven by the desire to find some anchor amongst the wreckage of her fractured family. Upon arriving, she is greeted not by her father, but by an unexpected half-brother along with his mother and other property dwellers. Her father had apparently been called away at the last minute. Over the following days of her visit, which turn into weeks, a mystery builds as to the actual circumstances of her father's absence and the odd behavior of the residents of Hidden Beach. The resolution of this mystery is as convoluted, heart-wrenching, and fascinating as Matilda’s upbringing, yet the ending is hopeful and heart-warming.

In her Author’s Letter, Emily Lockhart states that We Fell Apart is a standalone book, and as I have not read the first two books in the series, We Were Liars and A Family of Liars, nor seen their screen adaptations, I happily took her at her word and dove right in, free of the baggage of prior expectations. (You’d think I would have some expectations given that she is an NYT bestseller, but I tend to ignore the bestseller lists, preferring to wander the more obscure canyons of the literary landscape. In fact, until I ran into her on NetGalley, I had never heard of E. Lockhart.)

So what did I discover? Well, I discovered that she has a well-deserved following as the quality of her writing was, overall, exceptional. That’s not to say it didn’t have some weak points, as even the best books do, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

One of the things I found exceptional about Lockhart’s writing was her delightful descriptions when framing a scene or emotion. Authors often struggle to gauge how much or how little to pump into a description, often overindulging in flowery or meticulous language. Lockhart gets it just right almost every time, utilizing creative yet spot-on analogy and simile:

“The sunlight is bright but pale, not the hot, oozy sun of California but rays that feel like lemonade in an icy glass.”

These little gems appear sparsely but at just the right time, not interrupting or sidetracking the dialog or storytelling, just enough to inject the narrative with a little sparkle.

Another aspect of her writing was the use of a literary device I can only describe as “heartbeat epiphanies” - a way of expressing a train of realizations at the same pace as they occur in your brain. These epiphanies appear in list form, almost like beat poetry. For example, when Matilda’s problems come to a head:

“I’m shaking and I throw up for what seems like forever, not just from travel and bad food but from the churning questions inside me, and the chaos and anger of the whole last year:

the jagged separation from Isadora,

the unhealed wound of Luca’s rejection,

the loss of the friends I thought I had,

the isolation,

the jolt of learning about Kingsley.”

Lockhart uses this style frequently, almost to a fault, but I found it to be a refreshing way to represent how thoughts like these are expressed in one’s head in moments of perspicacity.

Thanks to these elements, along with the authentic teen dialogue and the excellent storytelling, the first half of the book had me so engaged that it felt on track for a 4.8 rating. Alas, the second half does falter, but only slightly, as the various threads don’t quite mesh as smoothly and credibly as I’d like, but that is often the case when bringing a trilogy to a conclusion, and may be the fault of not having read the first two books. And as I mentioned earlier, as a small nit, I would have enjoyed the second half more if the “heartbeat epiphanies,” were used a little more sparsely. Despite those two minor issues, I very much enjoyed We Fell Apart and wholeheartedly recommend it as a great read for fans of YA summer mysteries.

4.6/5 stars