When You Were Everything - Best Fiction for Young Adults


 





When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk is a novel about losing a friend and feeling lonliness in the world.  Cleo and Layla had been best friends for years.  However, over the summer Layla began to drift apart from Cleo.  Out of hurt, Cleo ended what was left of the friendship.  Cleo begins to form other friendships, and even a relationship with popular Dom.  However, she still finds it hard to trust in fear of what happened between her and Laylaś friendship.  Cleo wants to just forget about their friendship, but Layla becomes her tutor making it difficult.  Feeling alone, Cleo must navigate through her estranged friendship, her family falling apart, and trying to make new friendships.  Cleo has to deal with torment from Layla and her new ¨popluar¨ best friends while dealing with her parents divorce.  In the end, they forgive each other, even though their friendship is never the same.

Readers will be able to connect to the characters in When You Were Everything.  Loss of friendship, family divorce, and the struggle of making new friends are current issues that teens deal with everyday.  It´s refreshing that the book focuses on friendships rather than relationships.  It teaches the reader how important it is to make new memories with new friendships.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Image
    The Knife of Never Letting Go is a fantasy novel written by author, Patrick Ness.  The main character, Todd, is the only boy in a town full of only men.  He has grown up believing that all of other people in the world, even women, have been wiped out my original alien inhabitants.  Todd is able to hear the men's thoughts and the men can hear Toddś thoughts.  As Todd is about to become a man at the age of thirteen, he figures out that the town is hiding a terrible secret from him, that everything he has been told is a lie. Todd decides to run away with his dog, whose voice he can hear too.  While fleeing the two come across a girl, named Viola, who has crashed landed.  Todd and Viola must escape from a crazed preacher named Aaron.  They are also being pursued by the hostile army from Prentisstown.  They are chased to an empty, yet large city named Haven.  Mayor Prentiss titles Todd as the President of Haven. The novel ends with ...
Read more

Monster

Image
  Monster is a series of notes and a screenplay that character, Steve Harmon, writes in his notebook.  They are about the trial of himself and James King for killing a drugstore owner in a botched robbery. It is a recount of the eleven days of the trial and ends at the juryś verdict.  On the first day of the trial, Steve writes how the prosecuting attorney explains how Steve and James entered into the drugstore to rob it and accidentally shoots the store owne, Mr. Nesbitt, with his own gun.  Steve was just a lookout, but is still on trial and responsible for the murder.  As the book continues, witnesses are brought out to testify, including a convict who testifies in order to get his sentence reduced.  Steve reflects on his own childhood and the violent scenes he witnessed, and how he never sought out violence.  In the notes, Steve creates a violent image of jail be describing the sounds and the monstrous crimes that occur.  Steve begins to believ...
Read more

Chasing Shadows - Outstanding Books for the College Bound

Image
  Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi opens with an act of violence.  Corey and his twin sister, Holly, are shot by a stranger leaving Corey dead and Holly in a coma.  Savitri is Corey's girlfriend and Holly's best friend.  She is overcome with guilt and desire to find justice for the twins.  While in a coma, Holly dreams of a snake man character claiming Corey.  When she awakes, she can't forget her dreams.  She finds comfort in her favorite comic hero, Leopardess.  Together, Holly and Savitri try to make sense of Corey's death and try to find his killer.  Chasing Shadows is a graphic novel that focuses on grief, revenge, and friendship.  It is full of action and suspense.    Bybee, C. (2020). Chasing shadows . Center Point Large Print.
Read more