When We Were Infinite by Kelly Loy Gilbert has many topics all presented in one story. High achieving students, mental health issues, family relationships, future planning and more. High schoolers will like this story. Thank you NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not giving this book 5 stars because I found the first third to be predictable/derivative/nothing special. I kept thinking I had read a very similar book before. But sometime in the second half, it just caught me.

What Gilbert does so well here in write a passive character and still make you care. Beth is so afraid to want, to ask, to act for fear of rejection that it would be easy to find her voice boring. It's hard to center a story around a character like that. But I felt Beth's desires, I understood her passive-aggression and general passivity in her own life as the active choice it was, and I was compelled by her internal monologue. The story doesn't go for what's easy but what feels emotionally honest.

I could see including this book in my shelf because I think it's important for students to have windows and mirrors into their and other cultures. As such, a book centered around a group of Asian-American teens is important. Kudos, especially, to Gilbert's exploration of what being biracial means to Beth, and how it affects her. However, I just can't get behind Beth as a character. She is basically a human anchor, trying to hold all of her friends down. Her attempts to hold on to what she has in high school feel pathetic, and while she eventually grows beyond, it's exceptionally selfish of her, which becomes annoying.

Well written, I feel like this would be a great book to share with some of my older students. The topics are heavy but handled well in the way that Kelly Loy Gilbert wrote the story. I liked the pacing and the characters. I felt like she worked in some difficult topics in a way that would lend themselves to good, open discussion with my students. Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

When We Were Infinite by Kelly Loy Gilbert is an amazing view into a group of high-achieving Asian-American teenagers. This book tackles mental health, suicidal ideation, friendships, relationships, family concerns, the process of applying to college and admissions decisions, and identity. I highly recommend this book! The way it approached these teenager's lives felt very "real", and the character's voices were unique. 5/5 stars.

I have previously read Kelly Loy Gilbert, so I had high expectations for this book. Set in the landscape of a highly competitive high school, the story centers on Beth, an Asian-American senior. She and her tight group of friends, including her secret love interest, navigate an intense personal tragedy and its aftermath. Gilbert sets the tone early, warning you that things are going to completely fall apart. I spent the first quarter of the book with a general feeling of impending doom, so much so that I was relieved when it finally happened.

Beth has a lot of complex feelings about her mother, with their dynamic growing increasingly more complicated as the story line progresses. It was frustrating how little she appreciated her mother and highlighted how annoyingly easy it is to find fault in the people that care the most about you. It is obvious that this is elevated by the fact that Beth is young and don’t grasp the experience to really understand her parents and their choices. There is a painful dichotomy between how much Beth is prepared to give her friends versus her mother who has literally built a life around her.

Beth was a difficult protagonist to love because she was so uncomfortable with herself. It was tough to relate to her romantic relationship, or to cheer for it, because it felt so problematic, but the end of the story is redemption for this book. Beth evolves and discovers her worth and as a result all of relationships growth. Beth gains some depth that seemed to be missing and Gilbert cultivates a super satisfying resolution to a story that was somewhat difficult to read.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing and ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Beth's story -- the story of a high school student and her best friends navigating their time together through trauma -- was a mix of breathtaking highs and lows. Gilbert created a character I felt I knew by the end of the book. Her words were powerful and her emotions were raw. I felt like Beth was with me, and I was living through some of her experiences as well.

Dealing with trauma, especially attempted suicide and depression, is never easy to read; however, Gilbert navigated this well. The book was equal parts challenging, emotional, and brilliantly deep. Beth spends so much of her time accommodating others -- something so many can relate to. At times, it was difficult to read. Beth was so involved in her own world that I felt pulled into her emotional trials and tribulations, wishing she could see things from the outside.

Although this book is not appropriate for my middle grades readers, I plan to share it with advanced 8th graders and high schoolers.

I really wanted to like this more than I did. I enjoy reading about other cultures, being taught about them, etc. But I couldn't get past the insipid writing. Plus some of the things didn't make sense, like when the mom didn't even notice her daughter had a new necklace. Or that in the morning you would never see the things from a plane on the ground that the main characters saw.

The author did what she set out to do. She described the culture and the background behind it and how things are changing and not changing. But I just never got involved in the story, and I didn't care so much about the characters like I wanted to. I couldn't decide if the inability for the characters to act was because of cultural differences or poor writing, and that's why this didn't fly for me.

I really liked the summary of this book and had high hopes for it. Though I couldn’t get into it. I though some of the characters were a bit annoying and I couldn’t connect with any of them.

A book that questions how we mourn and what the tole of doing so is. Very affecting and certainly written.

When We Were Infinite by Kelly Loy Gilbert ****1/2

This is the first book I’ve read with Asian Americans as primary characters and set in the US. And of course, being familiar with the Bay Area, the primary setting of the story, reading the realistic description of place and space at times made me feel like I was reading a memoir rather than fiction. Wow, this story will have to sit in my brain for a while. It’s emotionally wrenching at times and at the same time authentically captures that crazy last year of high school and the tight friendships that you wish would stay forever. This is told from a first person perspective of Beth who is the only one in the group who is biracial and so, all at once in and not quite in the tight-knitted group of friends.
SPOILER sentence: I’m so glad KLG did not go the easy way out with Beth choosing to follow what Jason did.

But I must say, Beth was beginning to get on my nerves...so self-absorbed, so aggrieved, and actually selfish (maybe I’m a bit harsh here). What has she done for anyone besides Jason? And really, all that was for herself. She didn’t want to be alone, she didn’t want to be left. So she’d do anything to be small, quiet, unobtrusive, inoffensive.
Her mother turned out to be my favorite minor character in the book, maybe because I can identify with her rather than her spoiled, overprivileged daughter. And music and its power is so much like another character in the story.
Hot topic buttons: racism, anti-Asian sentiment, stereotypes, suicide, trauma, domestic violence, divorce, cultural and generational rifts
Best for: high school reader and older.

Thanks to #NetGalley for ARC of #WhenWeWereInfinite.

I loved the idea of this book, 5 best friends, seniors in high school, a tragic event, but it just didn’t work. I really disliked the main character and I don’t think she grew enough. It was so long, but then then sped through 2 years of the kids in college in no time. It seemed like 2 unnecessary epilogues but this was the impetus for change for the MC. Just too much and not enough at once.

“A story about the deepest bonds of an adamant friendship When We Were Infinite is a timely novel that gives us the shape and sound of grief, loss, and love.”

Cecelia Beckman, Sheaf & Ink

The Story
Beth Claire, a high school senior, only wants one thing, for her four friends to be together for a lifetime. She’s desperate to keep them all together. She is the glue to the puzzle that is their friendship. And after witnessing one friend being abused by his father followed by the unthinkable happening, Beth will do anything to stop the glue from weakening. Even at the cost of her future happiness.

My Review: When We Were Infinite
Have you ever read a book and felt a myriad of different emotions?

I’m still trying to recover and process the emotions that I went through after reading When We Were Infinite:

Pain.

Anger.

Frustration.

Joy.

Sadness.

Fear.

Sorrow.

Hope.

Like an expert surgeon, Kelly Loy Gilbert’s words were razor sharp, cutting through my emotions as though they were tissue paper, leaving me an emotional wreck. Everything Beth experiences the reader equally feels. Gilbert masterfully depicts a teenager in crisis. She does not shy away from topics of abuse, anger, anxiety, depression, grief, panic attacks, suicide, and neglect. Each of these topics, like iridescent and enduring threads, are woven together with persuasion and eloquence. The narrative never feels artificial or written without care.

Gilbert also addresses the pressures of being an Asian American teen. The high expectations, the educational demands, the language and culture and the juxtaposition of those who are biracial, like Beth. And we see and feel how being biracial or mixed affects Beth so acutely. She feels as though she will never be enough. That she is lacking in some way. Fully aware that because of her mixed heritage she is somehow seen as an outsider to the Asian culture.

There are many triumphs in this novel, the biggest one for me is the music. From the opening pages you could feel and see the tempo. The varying cadence, rhythm and sound of the story ever changing from a crushing deluge to a relative calm. But always that sense of unease ever present, like the airy scratchy sound of a violin. This frequent unease comes from Beth. How her character expects so much of herself, wanting to be this perfect ideal which leads to her declining mental health.

Further, the music carried Beth through each phase of this novel buoying her like a life jacket in the eye of the storm. Each moment and each experience comes back to the idea of limitlessness. And like music, the novel brilliantly shows how the infiniteness reflects in ourselves, our choices, and who we call friends. Gilbert beautifully wraps this incredible novel with a ribbon of hope. She reminds us of the bonds of our friendships and how that shapes who were are as adults. When We Were Infinite is a narrative that you experience and come away changed by the enormity of what you just read.


Happy Reading ̴ Cece

Sarah has a support system of best friends; in fact, they're the reason she wakes up each day. She can't imagine a world without them. But this is senior year; they're all expected to go to college. Then a tragedy happens that tests their friendship, causes Sarah to reexamine how she lives in this world, how she evaluates friendship and, most importantly, herself..

When We Were Infinite by Kelly Loy Gilbert, was a beautifully written coming of age story about the binds of friendship, growing up, and the struggles of high school life.

Narrator, Beth, is a senior at a high profile high school with a core group of friends that she is not looking forward to leaving behind when they all graduate. After an act of violence witnessed on one of their friends, Jason, Beth proposes that they'll all stay together through college to make sure they can continue taking care of each other. But, will the decisions that Jason makes end up tearing them apart instead of keeping them together?

This novel made me feel so bad for the class of 2020 who left school before Spring Break and never returned. It also made me long for the kind of friendships we experience in High School. I've yet to make a group of friends that are truly THERE for you, like my school friends have always been. This book was beautifully written. I loved Beth's voice, her struggles as an Asian American including the struggles and prejudices encountered as a community, and her insistence on being such an incredible friend.

I loved this book and will definitely recommend it for my classroom.

Beth intensely values her close friendship group formed from years of youth symphony. She's distraught at the idea of them splitting apart for college next year and at the idea that things might possibly change for them.

Entwined with this story of friendship are abuse, a suicide attempt, the stresses of college application/acceptance, and coupling/uncoupling.

As When We Were Infinite will not be published until next year, I'm withholding a full review. The story includes elements of teenage high school life, mental health, and romance-light layered on to broader social issues of relationship, societal expectations, and more. There are some trigger warnings for topics, but overall it is an accessible and engaging text for YA. Thank you to #NetGalley and the publishers for the advanced copy.

This wasn’t an easy book to read. At times it was so effective in conveying Beth’s quiet, clawing desperation to bring about some semblance of normalcy that it was hard to enjoy. It was heavy, uncertain, often a little despairing. It put its characters through hell and barely brought them back.

But I haven’t read a book this powerful in years.

I can’t say that it was a perfect book or that I loved every minute of it, but “When We Were Infinite” was a beautifully written and supremely effective look into the weight that rests on those who reach a crossroads.

When we were Infinite is narrated by Beth and tells the story of her intense friendship with Jason, Brandon, Grace and Sunny who also play classical music with her in a regional youth symphony. A very readable young adult novel. The group stays strong through a variety of stressors (including child abuse, a suicide attempt, some coupling and uncoupling).

When We Were Infinite is my first book by Kelly Loy Gilbert. The story is about Beth, a high school senior, and her 4 best friends. At the beginning of the story, a tragedy is alluded. When that tragedy occurs, the friends and their group dynamic changes. While reading this book, I had to think of myself as a high school senior and what I would do if faced with some of the same situations as the characters. It was hard for me to accept that none of the characters tried to do more which made it frustrating for me to read at times. I do think that there will be readers who do enjoy this character, the plot, and all the twists.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars