Mia Graydon’s life seems perfect; she has the house, her loving husband, and dreams of starting a family. But she has other dreams too — unexplained, recurring ones starring the same man. Still, she doesn’t think much of them, until a relocation to small-town Pennsylvania brings her face to face with the stranger she has been dreaming about for years. And this man harbors a jaw-dropping secret of his own—he’s been dreaming of her too. Determined to understand, Mia and this not-so-stranger search for answers. But when diving into their pasts begins to unravel her life in the present, Mia emerges with a single question—what if? review: You Were There Too touches on the many complicated aspects of life, love and fate. Truthfully, I wanted to like this book more than I did. I didn’t feel a real emotional pull to any of the characters and with the story being mainly about love and relationships the lack of romantic emotion between the characters really bothered me. I kept hoping to feel something, anything but never really did until towards the end. The first half the book was very lackluster, which surprised me because the premise was so unique! I do need to mention that this book does have triggers including multiple miscarriages and death. rating: 3 out of 5 ⭐️

I have so many feels about this book. I have been so anxious to read this book since I first heard about it. It's a mix of mystery and romance which is my two favorite things combined. The twists, the relationships, the thrill!! I can't take my mind off this book. These characters are really likable and you become so invested into them. Loved this!

**Thank you to Berkley for the free copy!**

“Maybe instead of wondering why we’re all connected, what’s important - the only thing that’s important - is to know that we are.” ⁣

YOU WERE THERE TOO is the first novel I’ve read by author Colleen Oakley, but it will not be my last. In fact, I’m definitely going to check out some of her backlist titles. ⁣
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If you’re a fan of Taylor Jenkins Reid, this novel reminds me a bit of MAYBE IN ANOTHER LIFE (one of my faves), and I think you’d enjoy this one, as well! ⁣
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It seems like for months I had You Were There Too on my TBR. The description seemed like an interesting concept that I hadn’t read before. I like the idea of being connected to someone but not knowing why. But for some strange reason I kept putting it off. Until I finally just read it and man was it a rollercoaster of emotions. When I was 50% done I was uncertain if I was going to enjoy the rest of the book. I really liked Mia and Harrison but I didn’t 100% love how Mia was behaving. I understood it to an extent but it still wasn’t sitting right. And then I hit about 70% and I was hooked. The last part of the book was so emotionally draining and I loved every minute of it. These characters I had gotten to know and enjoy all clicked into the places they were supposed to be and it was book reading magic. Would I recommend You Were There Too? Yup. But I would do so with a warning that it is not a romance. It is a love story of sort but definitely not a romance. Be prepared and have the tissues handy. This one will hurt.

What an incredibly emotional and powerful book! Colleen Oakley really made these characters sympathetic and memorable. Fertility struggles embody such strong, powerful emotions, and those emotions are unforgettable. I really felt for Mia and Harrison. This book is easy to read in one sitting because of how gripping and real it is. It is the kind of book that leaves you thinking about it for a long time after. This would be an excellent read for a book club!

Thank you to NetGalley for the digital ARC and the chance to review this book!

Unfortunately, this was not the book for me. I tried very hard to read it, but I had to DNF it.

I don't feel like I can accurately review this book as I did not finish it. So I kept this as neutral as I could. And rated it 3 stars.

Thank you for allowing me the chance to read it.

Such a well,thought,out,story of chance, fate, love and choices. This is one of those rare novels that is well done and so thought provoking that it stays with you after you’re done.

Wow this was an intense read that gave me all the feelings, with a shocker of an ending that had me in tears. This was a quick read, that I absolutely devoured because I just needed to know what everything meant, much like the main character. This book definitely made me think of the choices I make and how life could be completely different if I had made a different decision. It even made me revisit some dreams I recently had that I thought were odd, trying to figure out what exactly they were trying to tell me.

All her life Mia dreamed of being a mother, of having a child of her own, having just suffered her third miscarriage and finding out that her husband, Harrison, genetically are uncompatible to conceive might mean her dream never comes true. That's not all she's dreamed about, she's dreamed about a man she's never met, at various places and she feels such a strong connection to him. Until one day she sees him in real life, but how is this possible and what does it all mean. As if this couldn't possibly get anymore weird, Mia finds out Oliver also dreamed of her, nightmares to be excate where most of the time Mia dies. As Mia tries to come to terms with what meeting Oliver means, and her husband proclaiming he no longer wants a baby. She comes to a crossroads stay with her husband or experience life with Oliver. Mia makes her decision and sticks by it, and then right infront of her eyes the scene from her dream appears, the day that will forever change her life.

Wow is all I can say! This book is perfect for those who enjoyed Jill Santopolo and Josie Silver. I found myself quickly reading this one to see how their dreams would eventually come together and the ending just stays with you.

If you love romance novels and books that Oprah recommends you will love this. I also would recommend if to watchers of Hallmark Christmas movies and the Lifetime movie channel.

“You Were There Too” by Colleen Oakley: Oakley’s previous novel “Close enough to Touch,” dealt with the question of choice vs. fate. In her new book, “You Were There Too,” Mia Graydon’s life seems like absolute perfection: a house, a loving husband and the dream of starting a family. But Mia frequently dreams of another man who is not her husband, a man who she’s never met. She dismisses the dreams as a fluke, until by chance, she encounters the very man she’s been dreaming about. And this man has been dreaming of her too.
Oakley enchants with this story of love and fate, weighing whether anything is really "meant to be."

I still plan on reading a final copy of YOU WERE THERE TOO, but unfortunately I was unable to review the eARC before it was archived.

If you've ever pondered with the question of "what if", then this book is for you. Haven't we all? Through this mesmerizing tale of extremely well-developed characters and a surprising, keeps you on your toes, cannot put the book down for FOMO, Oakley is sure to knock it out of the park in this beautiful novel for you. This unforgettable love story follows Mia Graydon as we navigate her life of balancing what is real and what only occurs in dreams. Could the two possibly collide? Will she or won't she cheat? These are questions that you will find yourself pondering over in various scenarios and capacities as you plow through this story. Per the book summary, considering your best life is one led by your heart, this heart wrenching story takes us into a life that looks perfect down to details from the outside. However, the reoccurring dreams that appear almost magical to Mia question an alternate life lived with a stranger. This was the first book I have read from Oakley and I have already added her to my favorites list. This is sure to be a bang-up hit in the coming year and if you miss it, you will certainly regret having done so!

Full of potential but the execution did not work for me. The salvation of this book was the unexpected and riveting ending. I wish the remaining 90% had gripped me in the same way.

2.5 stars

I absolutely loved this book. It has been a long time since a book made me so emotional it brought me to tears, but You Were There Too did just that. Mia's life seems to be perfect--she has everything she has ever wanted. But she keeps having dreams involving another man she has never met. Then she and her husband move, and she comes face to face with the man from her recurring dreams. They come to realize that he has been dreaming about her, too. As they search to figure out what exactly is happening, Mia's perfect life begins to fall apart, and she's left wondering what if she had chosen differently? You Were There Too sent me on such an emotional roller coaster, you would think I was one of the characters!

This was a unique story that kept me guessing until the very end. At times, I felt like it was taking too long to get to the explanation, but the book was compelling and kept me interested. I liked the three main characters and found myself rooting for all of them equally. Looking forward to reading more from this author.

Do you believe that your dreams have meaning? What would you do if you dreamt about someone you don’t know, and then met that person in real life?

In Colleen Oakley’s You Were There Too, a woman meets a man literally from her dreams. But the problem is, she is already married. Heart-wrenching and thought-provoking, You Were There Too brings up the questions of fate and how much choice we bear in the way our lives unfold.

This book is not entirely what I expected—in a good way! With these sorts of stories, I always expect the current relationship to be unhappy, leaving a gap for the new (or in this case, dream) relationship to grab footing and traction. However, life isn’t that simple, and neither is this story. Almost nothing that I expected to happened panned out, and that meant that the book was full of surprises and took a direction I couldn’t have guessed.

Mia’s husband Harrison moved from Philadelphia to a small town a few hours away from the city. Harrison wanted a different pace for work after a tough case at his previous role, and Mia is hoping to heal from the pain of several miscarriages. It’s hard to tell if she and Harrison are even on the same page anymore.

But when Mia sees a man in the grocery store who she has been having dreams about for years, her world is shaken. How can it be? As their lives become intertwined in the small town, and she and Harrison work through their pain over the miscarriages, things get more complicated. What if Mia ended up with the wrong man? What if even a small moment years prior had set her on the wrong course in her life? And is there time to correct it and live the life she may have been meant to live?

A main theme of this book is the notion of fate, and how much we are an agent in choosing our fate. In the case of Mia’s dreams about Oliver, how she chooses to interpret them means a lot. Are they a prediction of the future? Or is she just wanting them to be that and so she is an agent in moving that to fruition? We learn a lot more about both Mia and Oliver’s pasts as well, and I found that to add so much complexity to the story. The small moments they may have intersected without consciously realizing it. And the moments that we can always choose to put weight on or not put weight on—those end up telling us more than assuming everything is random.

The entire ending is so unique and had a lot of really heart-wrenching moments. I was surprised by how emotional this book is! The ending itself is more ambiguous than I thought it would be, and the way everything unfolds is surprising and fitting at the same time. A beautiful story that definitely will make you think!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing for my copy. Opinions are my own.

You Were There Too was a novel that I stopped and started over the course of several months--I think it took me so long because I knew it was going to hurt at some point...and it did, at several points. To be quite honest, there were points when I wanted to throw in the towel on this novel and this couple, they were in some ways so frustratingly real that I felt too much about their lives and yet there was that hint of being fictional that kept me wanting to read to see how it was all going to be resolved.



I realize I'm not selling this as hard as it deserves--it's well written and packs an emotional punch. For a reader who likes realistic-ish romance, a touch of something magical, and an emotional release, this novel is a prime choice.

Mia has had recurring dreams for years involving the same man, a man she has never met. One day while shopping she looks up and there is he. Soon she finds out that the dreams aren't only she had, but he also has been dreaming of her for years. They both try to find the meaning behind the dreams and how that will affect their separate lives and the life they might be destined for together.

You Were There Too is a lovely, emotionally rich story. At the outset, Mia Graydon and her handsome surgeon husband, Harrison, have moved from Philadelphia to a small Pennsylvania town on a whim. Harrison had been working long hours and recently lost an eight-year-old boy during an emergency appendectomy. Mia could tell it affected him, even though he didn't talk about it. So when he said, "Let's get out of here," they agreed to move to Hope Springs. To Mia, the name of the town seemed like an omen. And the house they purchased not only had white picket fencing but a detached one-garage car that serves as her art studio. She dreams of having a successful art show. And being able to have a child. She recently suffered her second miscarriage, but is pregnant again.

Since she was in high school, the same man has been periodically appearing in her dreams and he shows up more frequently during periods of major changes in her life. Lately, she's been dreaming about him every night. And she is further along in her current pregnancy than either of her previous pregnancies.

Oakley immediately draws viewers into the lives of Mia and Harrison by fully developing her characters. They are believable, multi-dimensional, and flawed but deeply empathetic. Everything changes when Mia encounters <em>him</em> at the local market. And again shortly thereafter. She learns his name is Oliver and it's as though finding out his name releases "some treasure trove of stored dreams that I assumed had been lost forever, dissolved like sugar in water by the morning light."

Through her characters' lives, Oakley deftly contemplates whether anything is a coincidence or if, rather, lives unfold in accordance with a predetermined plan. Is there such a thing as fate? Are certain people meant to be part of our lives, entering our sphere at the precise moment intended? Mia's inner struggle to understand what is happening in her life and how events unfolding are impacting her marriage is authentically, movingly depicted. Mia finds herself drawn to Oliver, even as Harrison seems to be slipping away from her. Mia's questioning and confusion is palpable, relatable, and heart-wrenching.

Oakley injects surprising plot twists and never allows the book's pace to drag, expertly ramping up the tension and tenor as the story begins to race to an explosive conclusion. Indeed, she so skillfully and compassionately relates Mia's struggle, the ending of the story comes as a surprise, the prologue's foreshadowing all but forgotten.

You Were There Too is a tender examination of chance versus fate, choices versus predetermination, and how much power we actually have to shape our own futures. It is a clever and touching exploration of the old cliche that everything happens for a reason. And at it's core, You Were There Too is a thoughtful love story -- heart-breaking, yet affirming.