lberestecki 's review for:

When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk

2.0

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I’m glad friend breakups are getting their place in YA lit because it’s such a real and devastating thing that happens in high school/college. But I think it’s really difficult to write a friend breakup story well because 1) generally both parties come off pretty poorly and have blame for what happens so it can be tough to like the characters and 2) there isn’t a lot of room for developing the friendship, so the power of the “breakup” is lessened. I think my biggest problem with this book was that Layla’s motivations were never clear / we never really got to see her being a good friend or likable person?
There were some really powerful passages about grief and moving on in this book, but it just didn’t work for me as a whole.