Book Review: What We Knew by Barbara StewartThree

I won this signed copy from a Twitter contest.  I love reading YA novels, so I was super excited. I loved the cover art, but didn't know anything about the book or author.  Most YA novels that I read do not deal with adult issues.  This one did.

I am not a drinker, smoker, or drugs person.  I guess that makes me very clean cut.  So I took issue knowing who this book is marketed for with all the drinking and things that went on.  However, I am not naive enough to think that this is not how most high schoolers behave.  I know they do.

For the majority of the book I felt like this book was disjointed.  It didn't seem to flow well.  It seemed like some things were very abrupt like the author didn't know how to get what she wanted into the story.

Three quarters of the way through the book I started getting anxious while reading it.  It dredged up a lot of emotions from my past that I thought I had dealt with.  So that was a bit unexpected.

The last 20 pages or so were beautifully written.  It is almost as if someone else wrote those last pages.  I really wish the whole book were written with that quality of writing.

I will say that this book does have triggers.  So if you have dealt with any of the following issues I would think twice about this book.
rape
incest
molestation
drug abuse
alcohol abuse