Eulabee and her teenage friends are living a privileged life in a San Francisco's neighborhood. They are young, beautiful and invincible. Eulabee and Maria Fabiola share everything. Their lives, their crushes and their secrets. And they always agree. Until they disagree about a confusing episode that happened one morning on their way to school. That is when Eulabee realizes that maybe Maria Fabiola is not how she thinks she is. And who she thinks she is. From that day on things start to go awry. Their friendship strains and their lives seem to go in opposite directions. Sexual awakening, a possible kidnapping and the loss of innocence are the main issues in this girls lives, all told from Eulabee point of view in a narration that sometimes seems to lack affection and sounds flat for a passionate teenage girl. But I guess that she is not like any other teenage girl.
The book is a page turner. Highly entertaining, fun and beautifully written. I read it in one day.
For me is a 🌟🌟🌟🌟 4 Stars reading.

We Run the Tides left me wanting more. The premise seemed intriguing and I was led to believe this would be a thrilling, introspective tale centered on female friendship. Instead, it was focused on Eulabee's life with twists that left me more confused than excited. Each turn felt like a dead end and I was left wondering their purpose. Eulabee's friend, Maria Fabiola, was given little characterization until later in the book, and while Eulabee was given plenty it didn't intrigue me as much as I hoped. A breezy, well written read with a fantastic ending, but its scope left me puzzled.

Thank you NetGalley and Ecco for the advanced copy!

Set in a wealthy San Francisco neighborhood in the 1980’s, the story of private school friends takes us into the minds of school girls where the world centers around them. When the friends start disappearing, Eulabee tries to figure out what happen. The story is light up until a classic white car shows up in the neighborhood. The mystery is never solved. In 2019 a chance meeting sheds new light on what could have happened forty years ago. It’s the story of a dissolving friendship that begins when Eulabee says she didn’t see the man in the white car fondling himself as her three friend contend happen. Labeled both a traitor and a slut, Eulabee feels isolated and even more so she wants to figure out what happened. This is a quick and engaging story.

I’m judging a 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“Then there are the Prospero boys, the sons of a doctor, who lived in my house before my family bought it. Thye are legendary” This sentence struck out to me because of the way Vida pointed to it, a long list of all that we know, the litany of details of this neighborhood in the Bay area and then boom we zeroed in on the Prospero boys, right when my reader’s attention was hunting for a place to land.

"We Run the Tides" by Vendela Vida was an amazing Coming-of-age story!

'We are thirteen, almost fourteen, and these streets of Sea Cliff are our own.'

Eulabee and her friend Maria Fabiola have been BFF's since kindergarten. Their four person clique also includes Julia & Faith. They all live in the wealthy Sea Cliff neighborhood in San Francisco, California, high above China Beach, overlooking the ocean, with perfect views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County.

They attend an upscale all-girls school and it seems to be a condition of their friendships to walk to school together every day. They are good girls when alone, but they become bold, brash and unapologetic in their behavior when together.

It's the 1984-1985 school year of 8th Grade and something big is about to happen on the way to school. Their friendships are based on having each other's backs, unquestionable loyalty, even when untruths are told. When a question is asked by one of them to the other three girls, one girl boldly disagrees. That's when everything changes!

Eulabee is the protagonist in this story. She is bright, observant, articulate and now she's been ostracized by her three closest friends. She's shocked by this sudden change and crushed that Maria Fabiola, her BFF, is the one directing the harsh treatment toward her.

Although now alone, Eulabee remains focused and strong but lonely and sad. She continues to make choices through the years. Some choices are good, some are not so good. But, she embraces her future and carries on.

How do you cope when something like this happens to you? Do you always remember how it felt? What do you say if you cross paths with one of these 'friends' many years later?

A little dark, occasionally humorous, sometimes a bit weird and yet this was a very engaging read! I don't believe I've ever read a book quite like this one! It brought back memories of my teenage years and how tenuous some friendships were, while others were unyielding and substantial and remain so to this day. Truly one of life's greatest gifts is the gift of unconditional friendship!

My favorite characters were Eulabee and Maria Fabiola. The author did an amazing job pairing off BFF's so dissimilar, with contrasts in personalities that created so much drama to this story. The development of both characters was deep and spoke to the fickleness of their age with boy craziness and constantly pushing boundaries.

I loved how the author's writing nailed the dialog of the 13 year-old characters during their conversations and this is also true of Eulabee's first person narrative. There were a few laugh-out-loud scenarios for me while reading Eulabee's POV and I had to stop to savor each one! Oh, how I enjoyed those moments!

I am rating this book 4.5 stars and bumping it up to 5 stars because I loved this story and the fond memories it stirred in me of growing up in the SF Bay Area.

I highly recommend this book to those who love Coming-of-age stories or just enjoy a really good book.
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Thank you to NetGalley, Ecco and Vendela Vida for a free ARC copy of this book. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Four teen girls living in a wealthy neighborhood in San Francisco in the 80’s. They attend private school and have been friends since kindergarten. Eulabee is the main character and the storyteller. Her family isn’t as rich as the others, but her best friend Maria Fabiola comes from a very wealthy family and she is very popular and lives for drama and attention. One day while they’re walking to school, an incident happens that changes their friendship forever. When they disagree about what really happened, eulabee is shunned from the group because she dared to contradict Maria Fabiola. Then a few days later, Maria Fabiola goes missing and everyone in town is panicked except Eulabee, who knows the Maria Fabiola will do anything for all eyes to be on her. Maria is found and comes up with a wild story that everyone believes, except Eulabee, who confronts her but Maria tries to convince her to go along with it.
The story picks up 30 years later and Eulabee is working in Europe and she happens to run into Maria Fabiola and they reminisce about their lives, and Eulabee finds out that some things and some people never change.

I enjoyed the writing style and I liked the dark humor of Eulabee. It’s definitely got a “Mean Girls” kinda vibe.
Thanks to netgalley and Harper Collins for this arc in exchange for my review.

We Run the Times had so much potential, but ultimately the storytelling was too choppy for me. I didn't have any empathy for the characters, and the kidnapping felt like an overused trope, with no real resolution or consequence.

Just wow. Five stars for a remarkable coming-of-age story set in San Francisco and told in the voice of a teenage girl: one of the most challenging demographics to write in a non-contrived way. Please see my review for more info.

I thought this was an excellent coming of age story. I really enjoyed the San Francisco setting as well as getting to know Eulabee, Faith, Julia, and Maria Fabiola. I thought each of their stories were interesting and unique, and as someone who was born in the early eighties, I loved being transported back to that decade through this story.

While Eulabee and her friends were definitely more brazen than I was at that age, I could totally connect with and understand the things they were going through. The early teens are such a tumultuous time for any young woman. This book covered several important and heavy topics, and my heart hurt for Eulabee and some of the things she endured.

Though her character was over the top, I have no doubt that there are plenty of real Maria Fabiolas in the world. I had a "Maria" in my life as a kid, just not to the extreme of the character in the book. But I really respected Eulabee for the way she handled that relationship, when it would've been so much easier to go along with her friend and keep the peace.

This was a quick and enjoyable read, and I thought the ending was perfect. I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a coming of age story or that is nostalgic for the 80's.

“We’re the city’s most meaningful flowers,” Maria Fabiola says. “We’re glamorous and intriguing to the outside world.”

Usually, I feel like when an author goes back to a juvenile time, they have a harder time writing like a true juvenile. When discussing Faith and her adoption, I was at first a bit cringe, then I remembered, Eulabee is only thirteen and that’s exactly how a thirteen year old would describe adoption. It was so innocent and I really appreciated Vida’s writing and awareness.

It’s hard to really provide my feelings for this book. At first, you remember they’re children, but at the same time, their cruelty is one that takes years to master. I thought it would be a 50/50 split on 1984/85 and 2019, but 2019 seemed almost like an epilogue. The writing is absolutely intoxicating to where I couldn’t not stop. I read this in less than 12 hours because I needed to know what was going on and got sucked in by the writing style of Vida.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I think the blurb is definitely misleading as this is mostly about a girl, Eulabee, and how she goes through life as a preteen. It’s character driven, and the plot doesn’t really seem to have a clear direction.

Thank you Ecco & NetGalley for the gifted copy. We Run The Tides is out 2/9/2021.

Definitely an interesting read, but the narrative felt choppy and hard to follow, especially in the beginning. I hate to say that I was bored by a book, per se, because I believe every book has at least something redeeming about it! But this book just couldn't keep me engaged, I didn't care about any of the four main girls or what was going on in their lives, and about 30% in I just wanted it to be over.

Review: WE RUN THE TIDES by Vendela Vida

Thank you to Ecco for an eARC copy of WE RUN THE TIDES in exchange for an honest review (via @netgalley)

Eulabee, a teenager in the town of quiet Sea Cliff, has her world turned upside down after a falling out with her friends over an incident that may-or-may-not have happened. Quickly, things take another turn as her best friend Maria Fabiola suddenly disappears.

WE RUN THE TIDES was such a great book that combines mystery with teenage drama. It was a totally unique plot that I just loved, I could never see where exactly the story was going to go.Vendela Vida perfectly captures the tumultuousness of being a young teenager trying to form your own identity while craving the attention of your peers. There were so many times that I cringed at Eulabee’s actions, but the cringe was good because she acted exactly how I pictured a young person in her situation acting.

The writing was so beautiful and thoughtful, I was completely taken away by it. WE RUN THE TIDES is a perfect choice for a book with depth that makes you think, as well as a satisfying story.

WE RUN THE TIDES comes out February 9th!

"We Run The Tides" is an 80s tale of adolescents learning about choice and consequence. It's a relateable story about truth and deception, and the reality that telling the truth doesn't always put you in the good graces of your peers.

I really wanted to connect with characters in this book, but I felt like I never really knew who they were. There was enough of a pace to keep me reading until the end, but I left with a feeling that all the characters' outcomes were hazy and mild.

It was a quick read and a fun perspective on San Francisco before the tech boom.

What do you do when you are best friends with someone who is so desperate for attention that she will do anything to get it, especially lie and then expect you [and all that follow her] to fall in line and lie with her? Here lies the issue at the heart of the latest book by Vendela Vida, a literary novel set in 1980's San Franscisco [with an epilogue set in 2019]. Ms. Vida writes a book that makes one both nostalgic for the past, angry at things they may have suffered at the hands of others when in school, and extreme frustration at all the adults inability to see just how dangerous and insincere Maria Fabiola truly is. At least, that is how I felt throughout most of this book.

I have read Vendela Vida before and have loved her books. There is always something within them that resonates with me and that was what I was hoping for with this read. I wanted to love this book. I really did. Unfortunately, I did not. There was quite a bit that resonated with me [and reminded me of all the things I hated about HS and the "popular" girls who thought they were so awesome when all they were were mean girls], but the whole issue with Maria Fabiola just rubbed me the wrong way [and I believe you are supposed to feel this way] and even if I was supposed to feel that way, it didn't make for an enjoyable reading experience at times. I liked Eulabee [and her family] so much and I never saw her as a mean girl per say, and she finds out that living without the "in crowd" CAN be done [even if it is horrible at the time], and I truly admired her by the end of the book, but some of her choices were just...I don't know, ludicrous? She just didn't seem like the kind of girl that would do some of the things she did, so that was frustrating to me. Then add the end of the book and the issues surrounding Maria Fabiola, and all that just made it impossible for me to love the book, no matter how I tried.

Thank you to NetGalley, Vendela Vida, and Ecco for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked this. It's sort of a story of a teenage girl having a falling out with her best friend, but with so many twists and turns, laugh-out-loud moments, moments when things turn out worse than you'd imagined and when things get resolved in surprising ways. I liked Eulabee as a character a lot, and liked the very specific setting (San Francisco in the 1980s, wealthy but not yet tech-boom-wealthy) as well as the details of the Swedish-American community.

Before I begin, I realize that I am in the minority with my opinion on this novel. I have started and stopped this novel probably 15 times and have always struggled to really get into it. At first, I will admit feeling the nostalgia from that time period and I could certainly relate to Eulabee and the network of girls, especially Maria. I mean, we have all known our own Maria growing up. But unfortunately, I just didn't connect and was honestly bored. with the plot. I did something I never do, giving up at about the 75% mark. It just wasn't for me. I am giving it 2 stars instead of 1 because I did find the language and wording wonderful.

Wow - just wow. We Run the Tides is one I was excited to read because it takes place in 80's San Francisco, but I did not expect it to impress me THIS much.

Eulabee and Maria Fabiola are best friends up until the day they disagree on something they see while walking to school. Thus begins a chain reaction of events that lead to Maria Fabiola disappearing. This book is equal parts mystery, coming-of-age and historical fiction. Vida's characters are written so well. I felt like this book was very similar in style and just as well-written as Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend series. The relationship between the best friend main characters is very similar - it's probable that Vida finds Ferrante as one of her inspirations.

I cannot recommend this book enough - the sexuality, the coming-of-age, the mystery, all of it... it might not be what you expect when you read the synopsis, but it's incredibly worth it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Vendela Vida and Ecco for allowing me to have an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very quick, compelling read. I think it's going to be a popular literary fiction title, and it's begging to get picked up for a limited tv series. The characters are well-developed, as was the town and the school setting. I was genuinely invested in what happened to these characters, which made it difficult to put down. There's a lot of good conversation topics here for book clubs, as well. It really brought me back to those middle school/high school feelings of jealousy, betrayal, and the anxiety of fitting in. It was interesting to see how the relationships between the characters as young women translated to their lives as adults. My only gripe is that I wish it were longer, and the transition between the past and present day was a bit jarring.

This was a lovely coming of age book about two girls who share a secret. It was a bit sad at times, but it really gets at the idea of wanting to fit in and popular in school. I also enjoyed the humor in this book.
In the book you have a 13 year-old, Eulabee lives with her family in the Bay Area and goes to a private school. She starts to drift away from her magnetic childhood friend, Maria Fabiola after a misunderstanding. Maria Fabiola is a beautiful but troubled young lady who uses and lies to people to gain attention and admiration. Over the course of the book you see both develop and I really enjoyed it.

I received this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This novel has the strongest sense of San Francisco of any that I have yet read. It captures the eccentricity of the city's residents. and ensnares readers in a mystery as cloudy as the city's fog. This book also captures the perceptions and eccentricities of the middle schooler equally well. While the middle portion of the novel seemed a bit random, the beginning and the denouement were charming and frightening all at once. I also loved the foil of the main protagonists and one supporting character; a clever twist. I hope more readers find this unique book.