We Are Okay

A gorgeous, gut-wrenching story of loss, loneliness, and learning to let other people in. Although WE ARE OKAY doesn't have much of a plot, I was captivated regardless by both the delicate specificity of the prose and by Marin's journey toward recovery. Once the flashbacks were introduced I found my footing in a hurry, and when I reached the final page I couldn't help wishing that I had more time with these characters. Watching them grow into their new lives and new selves was a joy, even when it was extraordinarily painful. Nina LaCour is one of my favorite contemporary YA authors, and she can break my freaking heart anytime she wants.

Beautiful story. LaCour has the most wonderful writing style who harnesses simplicity and the simplest things to give things an insurmountable number of complexities. The story takes place in such a short window that there isn't much to say on the plot or characters because even though the main character goes through quite the epiphany, we do not see much of her before keeping her stagnant. None the less, this short read is defiantly worth the time.

This is such a slow, deep, lovely story. Marin, the main character, is so deeply lonely and sad that it practically weeps off the page (or maybe those were my tears saturating the page...*sniffles* *dabs eyes*). If you wear mascara, make sure you wipe it off before reading because it's going to be gone anyway, after reading. However deeply sad this story is, it's also a story filled with hope. It helps that it's beautifully written, too. Satisfying story.

My daughter, who enjoys sad stories, loved this book and declared it as “one of my favorite books”. She summed it up with “it’s about change and confronting feelings”. We Are Okay provides an interesting view of relationships and the conflicts that accompany grief and loss. The protagonist finds herself in a lonely place after leaving for college. She then confronts her best friend who has come to visit. A sad backstory ensues and the dynamic between the two characters is packed with emotion, providing a compelling story for my daughter.

~ Kort

Book #37 Read in 2017
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Marin is spending Christmas break at the dorm. She is trying to avoid going home at all costs. Her best friend, Mabel, comes to visit and try to convince Marin to come back home with her. But Mabel does not know the whole story of why Marin left and Marin is reluctant to tell her. Will she? Will doing so help her to begin to heal? This was a decent quick read and the characters were interesting but the plot, to me, was not fully developed. I received this book from the store Vine in exchange for a honest review.

"And I think of how time passes so differently for different people."

This book is heartbreaking from start to finish.

Beautifully written prose and packed with emotional development and twists. It so accurately captures the pain that often comes with friendship and the struggles to bridge gaps of time once they've happened.

This story is about loss and is told in such an intimate way. It's hard not to get sucked in and feel for the characters.

This is a wonderful story about sadness.

In We Are Okay Marin loses the only family member she has left, her grandfather who she has lived with since her mother died. The grief is so great it causes her to reject her surrogate family and best friend by moving from California to the west coast to go to college. Marin ignores all the emails and text messages Mabel sends her. Despite the rejection , Mabel comes to visit her in her dorm room. The two of them reconnect as they rehash the past and get caught in a winter storm.
This is a coming of age story. Marin explores her sexuality, tries to come to terms with her grandfather's death and why he acted so strangely, and sorts out her friendship with Mabel and her family, the people who love her dearly. I found the story touching, heartfelt, and real. It would appeal to young women in high school and college. LaCour writes the story in first person, present tense from Marin's point of view (tough to write). I sometimes heard I, Yi, Yi as I read it and there were a few times I had to sort out whether the scene described was a flashback or not, but all in all, I enjoyed the book.

I didn’t know what to expect with this one? I’ve seen plenty of positive reviews but an equal amount of unimpressed. I really loved it though. I read this short book in one day and the emotions were so vivid and real in the way LaCour expresses them. The book is pretty sad, as the main character Marin deals with depression and trauma after a difficult loss, but by the end, the book was infused with hope. It’s a small book but it packs a punch!

This is how I felt about this novel, I loved the story but I didn’t care for Marin. Okay, I said it. It’s a weird combination because Marin really makes up the whole story but that is how I felt after reading it. The story flashes back and forth between the current time period and the end of her senior year. I enjoyed this small flip of the clock as I really got to see the full picture.

In the present time, Marin is living in her college dorm, alone, as everyone else has left for holiday break. Flashing back, we see Marin living with her Gramps before heading off to college. This novel is heavy with emotion, the words drawing themselves out slowly across the pages, and each relationship was vital and significant. I thought Marin’s relationship with her Gramps was strange: they got along great, he tried to instill life’s lessons on her, but their house seemed to be divided and there were issues that were never addressed. I had to wonder if Gramps was really okay, was there more problems that were not addressed. Marin felt like an island to me, she felt distinct and aloof, even with her own Gramps. As the novel became more emotional, it became all about Marin and nothing about the larger picture which I thought include many other individuals. I thought she was quick to blame others when she should have had been looking in the mirror. I also thought, she was running from herself on many levels. I did enjoy the relationship between Marin and Mable, it might have been too as Mable wanted her part in it but it takes two to make it work. Marin sees this relationship having many fronts but again I think Marin thought only of herself. Marin, Marin, Marin, the world is bigger than you.

While this book has a good plot that will make you want to keep reading (really two plots: present and past), it is very much about the characters more than what "happens." The characters become so real as this story unravels and the loneliness and grief are just so palpable.

This book is about loss, grief, loneliness, heartache, and maybe even despair. But it's also about the staying power of true friendship, the beauty and excitement of romantic love, and family, for better or for worse.

This story of grief, relationships - in all forms - is raw, complex, and beautifully written.

After a bit of a meandering start, We Are Okay picks up steam and delivers an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

This was my first book by LaCour and my fellow reader friends were spot on in recommending her to me. This won't be my last book bu this author.

This is my first book by this author. Her writing is fluid and beautiful. She created an identifiable POV character for me, despite how different this character and I are. I found this novel to be emotional, eye-opening, and hopeful and really enjoyed the secondary characters, especially the adult parents who were created by this author to love and interact with their children and not just be a wallet or hotel manager.

There are books that make you feel like you are sitting with friends listening to them tell you the day to day events of their lives rather than reading about fictional characters and their stories. This book was that kind of story for me. I felt like I knew the characters deeply, and connected with them on a more personal level. A story about family, friendship, loss and truth, this is one that will stay with me for a long time.

It was very easy to find yourself immersed in the background mystery yet it never overshadows the focus of the story, which centers on the young teenage protagonist in her journey, learning how to grieve the bygone days of our naive younger self. The most beautiful part of the story is the emphasis on of the beauty of, and the privilege enjoyed by children, of being able to be naive, carefree and innocent. And why that is okay and why that past should be treasured.

We Are Okay is all about Marin dealing with life after her grandfather (who also was her guardian). The book takes place at Christmastime when Marin stays in her dorm by herself. Her best friend, Mabel, comes to visit and things are a bit awkward between them. As Mabel's stay goes on, secrets are revealed.

For me, I thought the book was okay. The overall mood of the novel is very heavy and depressing, so it makes it hard to get into the book because you feel your mood dragging down with the book. The novel is well-written but I couldn't always connect with Marin and the story. Even though the book is short, it took me awhile to read it and in fact, picked up another book to read before I came back to finish this book. Because I have some sadness in my life right now, it was hard to want to read a book that is quite heavy in sadness. But the ending made me happy.

Beautiful writing and story! It reads like a memoir, though it is a novel. By that I mean that the characters seem so real you expect to bump into them at the corner store. Well fleshed out, layered story.

I truly enjoyed this YA book even though I am 43. I wouldn't have known it was classified as such if someone hadn't told me.

The story, while somewhat interesting at times, fell flat when it came to the secrets behind Gramps' unusual life. Did I miss something, or did the author never give us any closure to what was going on with him? For me, the mystery was the most interesting part of the story, but alas, the secrets were never revealed.

No one does emotional destruction like Nina LaCour.

If you're looking for a well written, quietly powerful, emotionally intense and choke-sobbing read - THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU. Clear a couple of yours and grab a box of kleenex.

Marin had successfully avoided her past until her best-friend pushes her way back into Marin's life over their first college Christmas break. This story is beautiful. Really, really beautiful. I laughed, I cried, and I think my heart broke a little bit. This is a quick read packed with a ton power. Put this one on your reading list. You won't regret it. 

A warm, tightly-written, and emotionally-charged story about the ways girls can have relationships, both romantic and platonic, as well as the ways that grief can impact us and isolate us. Moving, powerful stuff.

So this a book which shows us how one girl deals with overwhelming grief.

As such, it's melancholy, contemplative, and, yes, a bit depressing. While any YA reader who has dealt with grief will relate to Marin, I don't know that this will give a teen reader anything but that I've been there feeling. I really didn't feel like there was much of any light in the darkness here.

The book is well written. The author has a lyric quality to her prose. I think, though, that sometimes I needed more raw feeling (and more edge) and less pretty.

Not for me, though many readers will likely love this and find it resonates with them.

Like many other reviewers, JUST READ IT! It is one of the best books I've read in 2017, and that's saying a lot. It's a tragically beautiful story, packed with emotion, and the language is gorgeous. Just read it, you won't regret it.

I loved this book so much. There were several quotes that stood out for me. Yeah, Marin is a little self-absorbed but I challenge you to find a teenager that isn't...at least a little bit. The book was poignant and touching with a twist.

An emotional, heart wrenching read that will be passed on to anyone who will listen to my review. This book was so beautifully written and I hate to use the term "tug at the heartstrings" but this book does just that. Definitely a read that I could connect with. Please read this book!

Honestly, I would have liked We Are Okay more if the author had never gone into the complexities of the relationship between Marin and Mabel. Marin's story was compelling, with regards to her life and her background. When Marin walked away from her best friend and her former life, in an attempt to dispel the grief that threatened to engulf her, her motivation was strong enough to carry the book, without any extra entanglements. We Are Okay was a good book, but its abrupt ending and lack of plot development keep it from being great.

Nina LaCour knocks another one out of the park. This book is so emotional and real. You can't help but fall in love with Marin and Mable. You grieve with them and cheer for them. Definitely recommend reading this book with a box of tissues nearby. You'll need them!

This is a very moody, morose story of a young woman rootless with grief and her best friend's efforts to reach her.I liked it but there is no real feel good here. The story switches back and forth in time. There is a dark sweetness to the relationship and the kinship ties with the family. Super depressing which never really let up.

Sometimes you happen across a book at exactly the right time in your life. A book that feels less like a bundle of words on pages and more like a mirror, as though someone else has managed to chart your swirling thoughts and feelings the way astronomers chart the stars.

We Are Okay was one of those stories for me.

I bought this on impulse as a sort of end-of-summer present for myself back in August, reasoning that 1) it was small, so it would fit in my suitcase, 2) it had an absolutely stunning cover, so even if I didn’t like it I could enjoy staring at it on my shelf, and 3) I’ve been meaning to finally read one of Nina LaCour’s books for ages now.

So when I moved into my dorm room this semester, when I unpacked my single suitcase and did my best to make the bare shelves and blank walls look full, I propped this book up on a shelf. I meant to read it right away, but I got sucked into the cycle of busyness and stress that is college in China. When I did finally pick it up, it was a chilly November afternoon and I REALLY should have been working on assignments……but something about the writing seemed to surgically insert itself into this place in my heart that didn’t realize just how much I needed this book until that moment and I. Just. Couldn’t. Stop.

This book is a lot of things, but above all, the word I’d use to describe it is quiet. It’s snow falling through the night, it’s lying in bed and staring at the tiny cracks in your ceiling, it’s sitting in comfortable silence with a friend and feeling completely understood.

I don’t even want to discuss the plot here, because I think this book works its magic best without any expectations or assumptions getting in the way. I have seen a few other reviews that claim this book is boring, and while I don’t want to say that anyone who felt that way is wrong……I think perhaps they may not have been able to understand and connect with what it was really about. This is NOT by any means a plot-driven book. It’s a softer, more emotional portrait of isolation and grief and loneliness and grappling with the realization that maybe you’re not the person you used to be, and maybe you never were in the first place.

Marin’s story is split between her current life—alone at college in New York, and her previous life—living with her grandfather in California. I loved the juxtaposition of these two environments, the way her past is given time to unravel and settle, and especially the way her friendship and romance with Mabel were written.

I also want to note that although there is a f/f relationship, this is not by any means a romance. This is the kind of book that starts off strong but still mostly unassuming, tiptoeing around you so gently that you don’t realize just how wrapped up in it you are until it’s 11pm and you’re crying in your room and your friends are knocking on your door asking if you’re going to be able to get over your book feels in time to go clubbing with them.

So yeah, I really loved this one.

Content warnings: depression, death of a parental figure

This book had me feeling some type of way: I had a nightmare the first night that I started reading the book AND it was the first book to make me cry in quite some time, so maybe my liquid emotions and anxiety dreams can speak for my feelings about the book? They'll have to do.

We Are Okay, a novel that weaves a tangle of grief/becoming an orphan, desperately wishing for familial closeness that is lacking and desiring the loving families of your closest friends, was riveting in its details of the narrator, Marin, coming to terms with her new life and losses. While the story was beautifully constructed, I marveled at how well LaCour described Marin's basic daily life, giving space to the minute actions and emotions one does as they navigate new life circumstances. The book hit close to home for me and rattled a lot of closed doors that live inside my body. Chapters 26 and 27 wrecked me in the best way. We Are Okay was good. Would the novel be good to someone who didn't strongly identify with its contents? I don't know. Would it hurt as much to read for someone who didn't strongly identify? Hopefully not.

We Are Okay was gentle and brutal and beautiful simultaneously. I hope you give it a shot.

"I wonder if there's a secret current that connects people who have lost something. Not in the way that everyone loses something, but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face it isn't yours anymore." (p. 68)

"The most innocent things can call back the most terrible." (p. 65)

This book really wasn't what I was expecting it to be. I think I was expecting a much more angsty, issue based read but what I got was beautiful and poetic, dealing with someones issues, yes, but in no way the issues I thought we would be dealing with! The summary of this book says that it deals with grief, but this book deals with grief in a way you wouldn't imagine unless you had lived it and at first I was a little wary of this, but having had time to think about it, this is an extremely clever plot and something which I think is completely unique in the market!

The characters in this book are very interesting too and don't necessary conform to the norms that you might imagine, two girls from the west coast in a university dorm room in New York City might be. I loved that about them. I'm beginning to think that the term 'diverse characters' is getting over used but the characters and the storyline really are diverse in this case.

I listened to this book on audiobook and would really like to see it written down because the writing really was beautiful and poetic, you find yourself forgetting about the storyline sometimes because you are listening to the prose and losing yourself in the description of the settings and the feelings of the characters. The setting description is wonderful, of course, and you can definitely picture yourself walking in Merin's shoes.

The book features time shifts and flashbacks and I think this definitely would have been easier to follow had I been reading this as a physical book and no and audiobook, this was the only part I found difficult, but when Merin is talking about her Grandfather, generally that was in the past and so it was easy to manage by remembering that. I definitely enjoyed this book, given that it was so completely different from my expectations. I think if you are looking for something like the kind of thing Nina LaCour writes with David Levithan, then you will be disappointed, but if you think of this as a unique story in its own rights then this will be a pleasurable read for you.

'I wonder if there’s a secret current that connects people who have lost something. Not in the way that everyone loses something, but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face it isn’t yours anymore."

I imagine the times when you feel hollowed out by grief and loss. When we have to come to terms with moving on and looking into our past for answers to the present. This book captures loss and grief and it captures the aspects of grief so perfectly you are left feeling like you have walked back into a time where you yourself felt these things. This book made me nostalgic for days gone by and I loved all the ways in which she captured emotions so distinctly.

This book is told from the perspective of Marin, who is in her first semester at a university just before Christmas. She is alone and she is grieving. But she is expecting a visit from Mable, who was someone she crushed on while she was in high school. This book deals with Marin's present emotional state and flashes back to her senior year of high school and all the things that were happening to her that resulted in the girl we are first introduced who is now a freshman in college.

Marin lived with her "Gramps" for a good portion of her life, having already lost her mother and father. Her Gramps had a pen-pal named birdie he relied on for companionship and he always received letters from her. Marin having already experienced a lot of loss, relies on her friends (including Mable) for companionship. But Marin's Gramps isn't being completely honest with her, and he has many secrets that we find the answers to scattered through out this book.

This book was mostly about loss, but it was also about finding our family in the people that are left. About finding peace when you have braved the currents of adversity and becoming a new person from your experiences.

This was a novel that I did not want to put down until the end, well almost the end. The story development captured me instantly. I really wanted to know what happened. The mystery of past events unfolded skillfully between dialog and flashback. But then, I felt the story took a twist, and while unexpected, led to a disappointing ending. I would have preferred a total cliffhanger with no resolution. Very good story even with the disappointment at the end.

WE ARE OKAY is a heartfelt book about depression, loneliness, and grief. While I read this book, I was enraptured by how the author described Marin’s pain at losing her grandfather, the grief and confusion she tries to subdue. How she fled her previous life and friends in the hopes of starting entirely anew, a different Marin than the one before her grandfather’s death.

I liked the current friendship/previous romantic relationship between Marin and Mabel. I quite liked what we learned about them, and how Mabel and her family were determined to be there for Marin.

The ending was a little too … hopeful for me. Marin’s grief is so consuming and so life changing that I can’t believe she changed her mind so quickly. Looking back, I would’ve preferred just a little more explanation on a few plot points. I know real life isn’t always so tidy, but the author did a good job with everything else that I felt those unexplained plot points dragged the book down.

I read We Are Okay by Nina LaCour in one sitting. It is enthralling and emotional. This book takes place over a three day visit between Marin and her best friend Mabel, who is coming to visit her at her college in New York over Winter Break. This book jumps before and after to show what caused Marin to leave and never go home. I felt so sad with Marin but also hopeful for her future, this book really connected you with the emotions of Marin. Despite how sad it made me I loved reading this book.