We Are Okay

AUTHOR: Nina LaCour

GENRE: YA, Contemporary

“It’s a dark place, not knowing.
It’s difficult to surrender to.
But I guess it’s where we live most of the time. I guess it’s where we all live, so maybe it doesn’t have to be so lonely. Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty.”

SUMMARY

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour takes us through the journey of love, loss, friendship, family, acceptance, death, and grief. After the death of her Gramps, Marin leaves everything and runs away without informing anyone. She doesn’t want to deal with anything and has zero contact with anyone from her life there. And this includes her best friend, Mabel. Despite, change in place, Marin struggles to come to terms with everything and is a ghost of the person she was before. She buried her grief, somewhere deep where it aches yet she doesn’t touch it.

And that is until the winter break where, she is forced to live a little, if only for Hannah’s kindness. And then we have Mabel, her best friend, with whom she has not been in contact since she left her place coming to visit her with her family. The unexpected visit forces Marin to bring up all the unsaid things, all the buried emotions to surface and question her loneliness.

***

“I thought that it was more likely the opposite. I must have shut grief out. Found it in books. Cried over fiction instead of the truth. The truth was unconfined, unadorned. There was no poetic language to it, no yellow butterflies, no epic floods. There wasn’t a town trapped underwater or generations of men with the same name destined to make the same mistakes. The truth was vast enough to drown in.”

MY THOUGHTS

We Are Okay talks about series of emotions that we go through in our life at least at one time. This book touches various deep topics and is an emotional roller coaster. Though I wasn’t as emotionally invested in it as I expected. I guess, I was feeling everything, seeing everything, understanding everything but in a distant kind of way. I didn’t find myself wanting to never end this book.

I loved how all the emotions were wrapped up and then one after one, they started coming out and she is forced to acknowledge them and face them. I really enjoyed the simple writing of Nina LaCour and so many soft moments. I guess I would have loved it more if I got to spend a little more time with them.

We all deal with our emotions in a different way and I guess what struck me most in We Are Okay was how different (than me) and yet how raw it was as she faced everything. Because maybe I would not have run away but her running away doesn’t make her any less human. Marin burring her emotions and being just with herself, walking a fine line between alone and loneliness made me think so many things together. There are moments when I read some lines and I knew if I wanted I could make my home within them.

We Are Okay is a controversial book in the title because after reading it, you are definitely not okay. But there is a lingering sense of hope that slowly things will be okay.

“I was okay just a moment ago. I will learn how to be okay again.”

Let’s talk about the cover of this book, please? Because I came across this cover on Pinterest and gave this book a try. This is one of the most beautiful and deep covers that I have come across.

I would definitely recommend this short story to everyone who once in a while feels that this is rock bottom for them and when there seems like no other way. We Are Okay is a reminder that not all is lost, that you will be okay. Maybe not now or tomorrow but you, I – we will be okay.

BLURB

You go through life thinking there’s so much you need…

Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend, Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit, and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

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You can read the review of Blood over Bright Haven by M.L.Wang here.