We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz

Emily and her best friend from college, Kristen are on their annual girl’s getaway. This year they are in Chile, drinking, hiking and enjoying each other’s company. With Kristen now living in Australia for work, this is their only chance to play catch-up in person.

But, on the last night of their vacation, Kristen is charmed by a backpacker she met. She decides to take him back to their room. As Emily relaxes at the bar, she gets a frantic call from Kristen saying something went terribly wrong and she has to come back to the hotel room. There she finds blood and the backpacker dead. Kristen says he tried to get physical with her and she did not know what to do. Emily and Kristen decide they must get rid of the body. But what makes this situation worse is it is a repeat of what happened during last year’s girl’s getaway. Only it happened to Emily when she was violently attacked in their room and Kristen killed him.

During last year’s trip Emily brought someone back to their room and he became physical. Kristen came back to the room and saw what was happening and killed him. It was decided that they should dispose of his body in a remote area and wipe out any existence of themselves being in this area so it would look like they were never there.

So they once again attempt to discard the body and make it look as if they were never there. But Emily can’t believe this has happened again. She also cannot believe Kristen’s attitude toward the murder. She seems calm and collected. During the past year after the other murder, Emily was so traumatized she began having panic attacks. It was with Kristen’s help that she was able to get through the year.

As Emily returns home, back to her life and her new relationship, something she was hesitant to tell Kristen about as she always seemed to point out faults in her boyfriends which Emily would always agree with and end up breaking up with them. But she felt this relationship could be different and did not want Kristen’s input just yet. But as Emily is preoccupied with what happened while they were away, Kristen it seems is quite unfazed. Emily begins to wonder about her best friend.

And then Kristen suddenly shows up. She decided to leave her job and come back to be with Emily and her own family, her grandparents. Her parents had both died in a housefire when she was young. She begins to insert herself into Emily’s life and relationship. Emily starts to look at her best friend in a very different light and begins to dig into Kristen’s background, something she never imagined she would ever do.

Emily begins to discover Kristen has many secrets. She is not the person she thought she was and quite frankly could be very dangerous. But Emily has a bigger problem. She cannot tell anyone about Kristen because Kristen holds Emily’s murderous secrets. Emily is thrown deeper into Kristen’s craziness, while trying to pretend there is nothing wrong. She also is trying to protect her boyfriend from harm. But what may be even worse is Kristen starts to notice a difference in Emily’s behavior, and faced with the fact that she could be losing her best friend begins to go off the deep end. It seems Kristen will use everything in her arsenal to keep her obsessive relationship with her best friend…perhaps even kill again!

The old adage of keep your friends close and your enemies closer collide in We Were Never Here, a nail biter of a read with shocking twists and turns no one could ever see coming. The ending, an explosion of turmoil!

Thank you #NetGalley #BallentineBooks #WeWereNeverHere #AndreaBartz for the advanced copy. The book will be out in early August.