I found myself dragging through this book. I didn’t find the writing moving and there are other suspenseful stories that are worth reading.

I have been having a hard time getting into this book. The writing is so descriptive, but it feels like it's not saying much. It just didn't work out for me.

In You Were Here, Sardar creates a suspenseful tale sure to keep readers entertained. The juxtaposition of eras in the beginning takes some getting used to, but once readers understand the rhythm this back and forth feels more natural. The characters are intriguing, Sardar does well at developing them and unfolding them at the right time to reveal just enough to hold readers attention. You Were Here is a unique read that does not disappoint.

You Were Here is a mystery that is definitely a page turner! This is a story about two time periods, both modern day and years ago, told through the voice of Abby. Abby lives in LA and keeps having a repetitive dream about her mother. She gets the idea to go back home to Minnesota to find out what is causing this same dream over and over. While she is back home, she meets a former crush, who just so happens to be a police detective that is working on the case of a rapist.

Let me start by stating that the Goodreads description of this book claims that "Readers of Kate Atkinson will delight in this suspenseful debut novel about a woman haunted by nightmares and her grandmother's role in a doomed love triangle almost seventy years before." I'm a fan of Kate Atkinson and in my opinion, this is why she doesn't write suspenseful novels. Pick one or another and commit. There was just SO MUCH DESCRIPTIVE WRITING going on that I often found myself confused or bored or indifferent. Especially in the first half of the book. BUT THEN.....

Everything picked up in the second half and everything was magnificent. I was ready to call it quits and apologize to NetGalley and the publisher and then all of a sudden WHOA! Now we're getting started here! The characters were fascinating. There were twists and turns I did NOT see coming. And the writing remains strong all the way until the end.

I tried, but just couldn't get into this one. Thank you for the opportunity to try reading.

So well written and captures the gamut of youth emotions in a way that shows how deep they go. This will be on everyone's (not just YA) to read list this summer.

I just could not get into this book. There were a lot of names thrown out and it was hard to know which names would develop into characters the reader would get to be familiar with later. Typically, I enjoy books with parallel plots and that jump from past to present. However, there were so many characters introduced in both tenses that it came off as overwhelming to me. Furthermore, I did not care for one of the main characters in the present tense, Abby. I was not sure if she was supposed to have a panic disorder, anxiety, or if her tragic theatrics are what attracted the attention of her boyfriend, a screenwriter looking for his big break. The meltdown that Abby has at a restaurant, where she just got into her hometown that she hadn't been to in a long time, with her mother and her mother's best friend about a potential serial rapist in town was what made me put the book down for good. Maybe it's because I'm a city girl and her hometown was small suburb of Minneapolis, and therefore she might have been in imminent danger. But it just did not connect for me nor did it seem realistic.

DNF at 28%, maybe some time away from the book will allow me to come back and pick it up again.


Please also note: for readers who may be triggered or offended, there were mentions of infidelity, sexual harrassment, incest, violence, murder, and rape.

This was a difficult book to get into. It was very wordy and I was not enjoying it. I was zoning out and it did not keep my interest. Thank you for the chance to read it but it is not for me.

You Were Here tells multiple stories from many viewpoints across two timelines, one shortly after World War II and another in the present day. Then and now alternate. In the present, we have Abby who is a woman in waiting, waiting for her live-in lover Robert to finally sell a script so they can marry. She supposes she should be grateful he wants to prove himself before committing himself, but she wants to start her life, too. In Minnesota, there is Aidan, whose just moved back to his hometown, unnerved by a horrific case that continues to haunt him. Small town Minnesota should be a respite from the horrors of The Cities, except it seems no place is safe as there is a serial rapist terrorizing the community. So that is now.

Then, we had William, a successful, wealthy son of privilege who was married to the oh-so-appropriate Claire who loved him more than she should. He loved Eva, a small town girl who loves him back. This double life cannot continue indefinitely, but when they converge, things so terribly wrong. Claire seeks advice and guidance from her neighbor who just happens to have been Abby’s grandmother, connecting then and now through a ring Claire gave Edith before Claire mysteriously disappeared. Abby hopes learning what happened in the past will free her of her nightmares.

Complicating things, Aidan and Abby are falling in love. Will she let her commitment to Robert deter her from true love? Then and now, obligations and love collide.



I was intrigued and wanted to know what happened. You Were Here kept my interest from beginning to end. However, the women are all victims in one way or another, every last one of them except those we only see incidentally. Claire is haunted by nightmares, so is Abby. It’s not that they don’t have agency or pluck for that matter, but they are broken, either by mysterious dreams, fears and phobias, and abused, abandoned, or betrayed. Not one woman, except the stereotyped “popular” girl from high school, seems to have reached her majority unscathed.

The mystery in the here and now was fair. The one in the past is a horror. It seems so unnecessary. Eva was my favorite character in the entire book…and she did not deserve what happened to her. I know we are supposed to like Claire, too, but she felt so entitled to everything that I could not like her. As to the neighbor, Abby’s grandmother, working out her marital problems by “helping” the neighbor is the road to hell and paved with ill intentions.

I enjoy stories set in Minnesota and this had a good sense of place. The characters, though, we underdeveloped for the most part. Aidan is pretty much the stock romance hero, so we like him and are rooting for him, but he’s not that interesting. Abby is standard romance heroine of the old-fashioned sort, petite, seemingly fragile, haunted, full of fears and in need of rescuing. Eva would be like that, except she’s got pluck. I liked her a lot. That bit of pluck made her the most interesting person in the book. So yes, the book got me interested in their lives, but I felt like a story I have heard before, not in the details, not in any sense of taking from other works, but in the characters being so much part of the genre and not being quite enough of themselves.

You Were Here will be released on May 16th. I received an e-galley to preview from the publisher through NetGalley.

I really enjoyed reading this book. And that is exactly what I did. Anything else that went on around me, (seriously?), I was absorbed and mesmerized. I loved everything about this book, well, except for a certain ending. I knew early on who was really in the nursing home, but it still did not deter me.

Abby's dreams had me stumped. Was it that she was seeing something in her future or something she had erased from her memory in the past? Not only was that mystery going on, but Abby having lived with a man for four years was wondering "is that all there is"? Meeting up with her old boyfriend put another plot twist into the story, however, for those who care, there were no sex scenes that I remember. If there were they were not detailed.

There was also several other stories going on in this book. I won't spoil them for you, but I will tell you the author did a great job going back and forth between all the stories. I was never confused and able to follow easily which provided even more additional entertainment.

Huge thanks to Penguin Group Putnam for approving me for this wonderful story and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Rather a tangle of genres with this one - gothic; romance; crime thriller ; historical. Overall the book is too heavily plotted yet it's prose is dreamy and the author's commitment to all the drama and rapture lend some conviction. A rich stew if a little indigestible.

I found the writing awkward and difficult to read. It was a struggle to read it. The words just don't flow well, the sentences don't follow one another. I read a long paragraph but it doesn't really say anything.

I started and finished this novel in one day. Riveting. Suspenseful. Atmospheric. It took me a while to figure out the chapter titles, "Then" and Now," putting us in the past, or in the present, and keeping straight all the characters we meet. Within each chapter, Point of View changes from one character to another. After a while, I was keeping everyone straight, but I'd still trip over the name Dorothy (Edith's daughter, Abby's mother; Dorothy with the monarch butterflies), and the names of Willliam's parents, and "Davis" - and Eva's sister. This is a large cast of characters. Hannah, the young wife and mother in LA. Robert, the wimpy boyfriend of Abby. Then the cases Aiden works on: the sister whose brother allegedly forged their mother's will to leave everything to him. The fisherman. The serial rapist. Minor characters that would come and go, and sometimes enough time lapsed betweeen appearances, I'd be double checking names again. Rebecca is.... oh yeah.

I had high hopes for Eddie. I was rooting for Eva. I kept wanting to see that doll who got buried dug up and returned to her owner, no matter how old the owner may have become. I wanted to see what became of the boy in the black room. I wanted to see Abby put all the pieces together and learn the story behind the diamond ring her grandma kept hidden. It doesn't look as though she'll ever find out, which is doubly sad, because her occupation is estate sales, and her specialty is knowing the stories that go with vintage engagement/wedding rings.

It takes the whole novel for us, the readers, to see this story unfold. Various clues led me to hope for one thing or another. Every hope of mine was dashed. The reality was that several adult characters behaved very badly. For good reason, secrets were kept. Well, for "bad" reasons, considering what these people had to hide.

People in real life can be so selfish, superficial, banal, ego-centric, and downright evil, I read fiction to escape that. Novels that remind us of how ignoble we can be just disappoint me, no matter how well they may be written. I see why the much-maligned Disney ending has enduring popularity.

More than once, it seemed Aiden has a resemblance to William, but apparently, that was nothing but coincidence. I was hoping he and Eva might have had a child together, or something. This is one of several examples of a red herring that seems to serve no purpose, or, some editor chopped out some page or chapter and left a few unfinished edges (threads dangling).

William is something like a draft-dodger. I hate war, hate it hate hate it, and hate how many good young men go off valiantly, only to come in in little pieces. Or intact, but in a body bag. On the one hand, I don't blame William. On the other hand, he squanders all that he has been given. I found myself wishing he'd enlisted and gotten himself blown up in Europe.

Claire. After the doll scene, I had so much empathy for her. Later, I was wishing that hive of bees in Abby's nightmare would put an end to Claire before she could sink to the level she sank to.

Abby's grandmother: she lost all my respect, sympathy, and capacity to like her or care about her. Normally I cannot stand to see protagonists getting bumped off, but this one should have been hit by a truck before she crossed the street to Claire's house one ill-fated evening.

Aiden is understandably traumatized after finding the boy in the black room (this is back story), but he just gives up, goes back home to small town Minnesota, licking his wounds, so to speak, seeking an easier life. (Little does he know the crime rate in rural Minnesota isn't what he thinks.) Handsome, popular Aiden has used a lot of women. He has some good points, sure, but overall, he needed more than just Abby's infatuation to make him worthy of a romance novel. For Abby to have some paranormal talent for dreaming things that come true is not sufficient to make me sigh and think "Ah, yes, this is true love." It just makes me wonder how Abby, who has a history of devastatingly thoughtless, heartless comments or choices, should be so sensitive as to have prophetic dreams Abby seemed insecure, envious of others, and a little self-pitying. The character arc I was hoping she'd make seemed a little flat to me.

The fact that I'm rattled enough to talk about these characters, on and on, as if they were real people, is a testament to the author's talent. She writes well. Despite some lapses into murky prose, a lot of lines just shine. I highlighted dozens of them in my Kindle, but right now, I'm too angry about the ending to say anything very nice. Maybe I'll come back to this, eventually, and point out the good stuff.

Maybe.

I'm off in search of a tale full of heroic people and happy endings. Gian Sardar has spun a riveting debut novel, with many lovely lines of memorable prose. Brutally honest and accurate, she captures people at their worst, I wish she'd found more of the *best* to focus on. So I keep wavering. Three stars,or four?

NOTE: I try to post a link to my goodreads review but keep getting a failure notice -- The CSRF token is invalid. Please try to resubmit the form. --whatever that is... https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1962104196?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

This is a mystery that jumps back and forth seamlessly from modern day police drama and a young woman's strange nightmares to her grandmother's time and a love gone wrong. Abby is having the nightmare again - the one where she feels like she is drowning in sand. Somehow she now feels like going home might help her find the answers. She travels back to Minnesota and reconnects with her old boyfriend who is a detective dealing with a repeat rapist/serial killer. Aiden wants to help Abby solve her nightmares and there might still be a spark between them that peaks his interest. Abby is going through her grandmother's things and find an old ring and note that is the key to the secret.
I loved the parallel love triangles - Abby, her current sluggish boyfriend and Aiden and the young lover's kept apart by marriage in her grandmother's time. A debut author with heart and soul - this is one to watch. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

What a captivating read!! When I first read the synopsis for You Were Here, I instantly knew I had to read it!! I am a huge romantic suspense fan and from the description alone I was hooked!

Gian Sardar does a fantastic job of telling two stories, alternating between "now" and "then" and then masterfully weaving them together seamlessly!! I am still in shock how well thought-out this storyline is!! For a good portion of the novel I couldn't figure out how the stories would be connected, but when they were my jaw literally dropped--love that!!! I have never read Gian Sardar before, but I will definitely be putting her on my "must read" list!! You Were Here is a 5 star novel that I recommend everyone read!!

“Ghosts. The usual reason for fears of basements, attics, or closets at the ends of long halls. But Abby’s never believed in ghosts. Nothing flits in the corner of her eye; her rocking chair never moved on its own. For her, the fear is suffocation, breath faster and shorter, world compressing, everything heavier and heavier til she’s gasping, an open-mouthed futile plea.”

Abby Walters has a reoccurring nightmare of being buried alive, the nightmarish terror so genuine that she can taste the dirt. Memories bite, and the terror is real but isn’t hers. So who then? Is it just a nightmare, or something darker, far more sinister? Abby loves stories, the forgotten memories of others, lost in death, in time. Maybe time is reaching out to her. The dream changes when she hears a name, a name that pulls her family’s history in. It’s time for Abby to return home, maybe pillage the place for answers. There she will reunite with her high school crush, now a detective knees deep in the violence of chasing a criminal much in the way she is chasing her family’s secrets. Leaving behind her boyfriend, a screenwriter who is not quite ready for marriage, Abby is conflicted by her feelings towards Aidan. They have a natural connection, but should she explore this attraction when she already has Robert?

Trying on a ring her grandmother owned, Abby remembers the anger her grandmother had when she tried it on as a little girl. Why such a hot reaction? What is it about this ring, what is the mystery? She finds a note, and the claws of the past grab the present. There is more than one love story, but they are entwined- everything turned ugly, gnarled, twisted. This love calls from the grave and maybe only Abby can hear it’s death knell. What we hide, the secrets we bury have an uncanny way of rising to the surface.

Not all love that blooms is healthy, some love turns when it alters and jealousy whether rightful or not, feeds on us from the inside out and threatens everything in its path. We do things we wouldn’t otherwise, only to end up wondering how we became so weak and clingy. If it’s love, it should be natural. We shouldn’t have to manipulate or ‘arrange’ anything. There is so much I want to say, but I will give the story away. I enjoyed it, and yes, it’s okay to feel bad for both women. Sigh… The novel kept me up late wondering how it would end. Such a disturbingly sad story that lives in the past and present. Strange I finished it on Valentine’s Day… but love is a strange beast. You have to wait until May to get your hands on it.

Publication Date: May 16. 2017

Penguin Group Putnam

I want to be fair, but this is not a genre I especially like. It is a mystery within an eerily supernatural tale of a woman who follows her frightening dreams back to her hometown in Minnesota. Abby has been haunted by nightmares and leaves California to return and unravel the mysteries within the dreams.

This novel is shared by William and the women he loves, Eva and Claire, all these pieces ultimately are connected by Abby's grandmother, Edith.

It also contains the stories of multiple, ever more violent rapes in the small town to be solved by Aiden Mackenzie, quite literally, the man of her dreams. Of course, Abby is saved by Aiden and we see a happy ending...but honestly, too trite and too predictable for my taste.