There is a Venn diagram out there about the perfect overlap of eccentric, profound, and simple, and Emily Austen’s writing sits right in the centre.

This is a book about the stories we tell others and ourselves to get through our lives. This felt like a realistic and tender take on what it means to feel lost in the world, and I loved getting to see glimpses of that from the perspective of both sisters.

I felt hooked from the beginning, but felt the book drag a bit in the middle. It made sense why the first have was structured and written the way it was, and it definitely picked up for me with Margit’s first chapter (which made me sob almost). This is my third Em Austen I’ve read and I love the little plot twists she has every time.

Unfortunately I felt a bit disappointed by the second half. I almost appreciate the lack of resolution in some sense, because that feels more authentic (or rather a simple upward trend of everything becomes okay again). But part of me also misses the wrap ups quintessential of her novels. I think there were some really interesting concepts she toyed with about how we help/let others help/how to actually help/can you help etc etc and I wish that was explored a bit more.
I didn’t feel fully satisfied with the story, and this may be a personal bias, but I think I’ve read too many books in the sad girl genre. And while I appreciate some things about Em Austen books staying on brand, I wish she’d get a bit more adventurous with her plots.


Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for the arc!

After reading Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, and now We Could Be Rats, it’s obvious that Emily Austin has a formula: a depressed lesbian in a small conservative town untangles her childhood with toxic parents and complicated familial relationships. And it’s worked both times! We Could Be Rats paints a portrait of Sigrid through suicide note attempts, in which she laments adulthood and mourns a childhood that seemed simpler, but is something she is healing from throughout the book. It took me a few chapters to get into its format of twenty-one attempted suicide notes, but once I did I couldn’t put it down—by the time I finished reading it I had ten pages of highlighted quotes (on my kobo <3). It’s an emotional and vulnerable story that is rooted in the societal and political upheaval we are currently (and unfortunately) living in. Emily Austin is exceptional at writing characters who deal with tragedy in a somehow humorous and uplifting way. She managed to both make me cry and feel comforted in under 300 pages.

3.5 ⭐️
Emily Austin is one of my favourite authors but I found this to be a a bit of a slower start and harder to get into than her other novels. I didn't relate to the characters as much as I did in Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead or Interesting Facts About Space, but it was still a super well written tale of sisterhood, friendship & regret, and I’ll continue to read anything she puts out.

I'm always super excited to read and recommend a new Emily Austin book. Her characters are always very complex and incredibly unique while also very relatable and understandable, even as they dig themselves in deeper in ways that they know will only make things more difficult on themselves. The start of this book felt a little bit slow, but it made for a lot of character development and establishment that worked really well to set up the twist partway through and everything that came after it. The writing style was very unique and managed to be very detailed without feeling bogged down. The writing also managed to be funny and not just depressing, even while talking about sad topics and taking them seriously which is a delicate balance to strike.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC! All thoughts are my own.

I can't explain it, but I feel like Emily Austin releases a book exactly when I need it. I struggle to describe how I felt about this book other than I felt it in my bones. The story is complex and intricate and I was always on my toes with this read. The characters, Sigrid and Margit, are so wonderfully odd and interesting that I couldn't put this book down.

I will keep reading Emily Austin books as long as she keeps writing them.

I love Emily Austin and her latest book, We Could Be Rats, did not disappoint. As usual, she did an excellent job of balancing heavy themes with humor. Her characters address things many (all?) of us experience and feel, but don't often have the space to discuss freely. With characters you're rooting for from start to finish, a few unexpected twists, and heavy nostalgia for the early 2000s, We Could Be Rats is a must read.

This novel explores sisterhood and loss of innocence in part epistolary style. The book also faces the tough topic of mental health with Emily's signature dark humor. Fans of Emily's style will love this new book, as the shift in prose makes it a more character-driven story. Thank you NetGalley & Atria Books for the ARC. Make sure you pick this up when it publishes January 28th, 2025.

**Review will be shared on Goodreads**

Emily Austin has done it again. The format of this book kept me on the edge of my seat, I was not sure who to believe! An insightful, thoughtful, passionate story about life, death, and those we love. Amazing work!

We Could Be Rats is a novel about two sisters - Sigrid and Margit - who faced a difficult childhood and ultimately drifted apart due to their differences, until Sigrid attempts suicide and makes Margit complicit in writing a note. The novel is broken into three parts, the initial part showing multiple attempts at writing a suicide note, the second showing Margit's point of view, and the third showing Sigrid's.

I thought the book covered heavy topics with a sense of humor that made them feel less heavy, despite covering topics from childhood trauma to suicide. The separation of the book into three distinct parts helped tell the story through different lenses, helping the reader piece the truth together piece by piece. The repetitive nature of part 1's letters reflected the nature of intrusive thoughts/rumination that can lead one to seek release from the hell that can come from one's mental health, and I found the constant "let me try again" at the end of each chapter amusing. The book is about a messy person with a messy past, and the style of writing really captures the essence of Sigrid and Margit. I will say I was more interested in Sigrid's parts than Margit's, but that may have been a result of the initial letters portraying Margit as an unsavory person in Sigrid's life. Overall this was a quick, interesting read that fits nicely with Emily Austin's collection.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

emily, the last chapter made me sob.

this is a love letter to every queer girl who has ever been in a place that didn’t want them there. so many versions of myself felt seen in this book.

i’m still thinking about this book and it’s been weeks. i’m going to have to reread it.

I want to start by saying, Emily Austin is hands down one of my favorite authors. Her work is consistently imaginative, heartfelt, and funny. The balancing she does between humor and terribly sad sh*t is remarkable. I love her, and I will read and recommend literally anything she puts out.

WE COULD BE RATS might be my least favorite from her, but I still enjoyed it - the twist that Margit wrote the suicide notes totally worked on me, and I really fell hard for Sigrid. I think I just wanted something different from the second part, specifically more story/scene. A full book of exposition (letters + journal entries) became tonally repetitive, and revelations (like that Sigrid was making the bomb threats) fell flat since we were just being told things.

But that's just me! This was also beautiful and heartwarming and sad and funny and sweet, and Austin took a wonderful risk with this story that I deeply admire.

I accidentally read this in under 24 hours. It's not the longest book in the world, so maybe that's not a feat to some, but that's not the point. The point is, I devoured it. I felt such a connection to Sigrid within just the first few pages and I couldn't stop reading.

As someone who spent their childhood attached to toys and playing make believe all the time beside my sister, some of this felt like a personal attack. Maybe that's why I cried so much during it. Maybe I would have cried anyway because it's just that beautiful of a story. I am leaning towards the latter, honestly.

I loved everything about this. No notes.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster, Atria, and NetGalley for providing an ARC for review.

I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that I found the first 60% of this book borderline unpalatable. The narrator of this portion has a truly nauseating combination of self-hatred and narcissism, with an amount of neurotic naval-gazing that I haven’t seen since Woody Allen in Annie Hall (this is not a compliment – I hate this movie and that man with a passion). The beginning section of the book is Sigrid’s suicide note. The narrative switches between stories of Sigrid’s childhood with her sister, Margit, and stories from Sigrid’s life recently. There are breaks between these flashbacks that consist of Sigrid begging her sister to edit her thesis-length suicide note to somehow make it more likable. It is also hard to understand what is true and what is made up by the narrator in this section; the narrator will repeatedly state that something she just said was a lie that she created to be more likable or make her suicide more comprehensible. For instance, she alludes at multiple points to be undergoing a psychotic break and discusses experiencing hallucinations; pages later, she walks this back, stating this all was a lie, and justifies including these sections because she was trying to help the reader understand her suicide. What would actually help the reader understand her motivations to kill herself would to describe her thoughts and actions leading up to her suicide attempt; this is curiously missing, and it is not clear that this was a deliberate decision until the very end of the book. In the meantime, this section just feels confusing and is simply too long.

Somehow, the following 40% almost make up for first section. When the book actually focuses on two sisters who were traumatized, and now are in their early 20s coping with their experiences in wildly different ways, the narrative shines. Their relationship is as ugly as it is beautiful, and it is incredibly complex. The last couple of pages justify why the first section was confusing and annoying. However, I still find myself unsure about what actually happened in this narrative versus what was fictionalized or revised.

???/5

Another Emily Austin novel that I absolutely loved! I have never read a novel that was written this way and it was so refreshing. The subject matter was heavy but it also had a humor that I loved.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

I will never not consume an Emily Austin book and simultaneously cry and lust for a better life. She has an uncanny way of tapping into the psyche and tugging on the heartstrings that I utterly adore her for.

the first two sections were 3 stars, but the final section was 5 stars all the way. so meeting in the middle!

• adrift & alone, sigrid, a queer high school dropout who works at dollar pal, attempts many times to write her own suicide note to little success
• through sigrid & her sister margit’s perspectives, the reader has to piece together the events that got us to the present, and the implications it has on them both
• i found this darkly comical, and very easy to read. austin’s writing style really shines in the 3 distinct sections to this book, but it was the final section that really stood out

I absolutely adore everything Emily Austin writes and this was her best yet! I felt so much for Sigrid and Margit as I read this. I don't have any sisters, but I've been really into all the books about sisters lately. I feel like this is one of those books I'll think about for a very long time; it was so heartfelt and tender and gave me all the feels. Thank you so much to Aria Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

This novel follows two sisters as one struggles with mental illness and they both reconcile how their childhood affected them. This was my first Emily Austin and I went in very high expectations, maybe too high. I enjoyed my time with this book, but wasn't running to pick it up and didn't find it terribly memorable. The writing had some exquisite moments though and I really appreciated how the writer made the story relatable to someone who would not think they'd have anything in common with these characters.

thank you so much to netgalley & atria books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!
this book was slightly different to austin's last two publications which i loved deeply; i'd even categorize them as some of my favorite contemporary books of all time. this was different, but has austin's throughline of weird little lesbians uncovering their traumas and discovering themselves in the span of less than 300 pages. we could be rats is experimental in some ways for its writing style - austin dabbles in some narrative/perspective switching and takes the idea of 'unreliable narrator' to a new real. i couldn't decide if i liked it or not, but i will say the writing choices she makes are not without reason. in the book, we are reading sigrid's attempts at a suicide note, which have then subsequently at parts been edited by her sister margit to i found it inventive if not a bit distracting (but again, intentionally distracting). this book has a difficult main topic (primarily dealing with suicide and mental health) but i think covers it beautifully and sensitively. the ending is beautiful and I don't have much more to say about it than that because I do think everyone should just experience it for themselves. another amazing novel by emily austin. absolutely go read this book when it comes out in january!!!!!

favorite / most thoughtful quotes:
-"Every time I lose someone, I'll have less purpose. I will degrade in value the longer I live, until there is no point to me."
-Sigrid about the death of her grandma: "One thing I really wrestled with was feeling like there was less love in the world for me. When she died, I felt a shift in the universe. It was more than her absence. I felt the cosmic void where her love for me used to be."
-"Sometimes it's kinder to let people believe they are helping you even when they aren't."
Margit when her boyfriend is meeting her sister for the first time: "I wanted to jump in to guide his answer. I wanted to cue him into the safer assumption being that I told him about her in general, but before I could, Mo said, "Yeah, she told me she loves you." (This one really resonated with me as someone who struggles with anxiety/control and often wants to 'manage' people's interactions. What a beautiful reminder that people can surprise you and it is not always in your best interest to manage things, and in fact people can express themselves better than you can for them)
-About people who don't have as much privilege: "We were morally obligated to be less stupid"
-Sigrid's friend Greta about people disliking her because of her beliefs and how she talked about them: "I know I'm unbearable, but what else can I be? We have to be unbearable, you and I."
-"I always believed everyone was ultimately good. We were just born in the world we were in; we were shaped in ways we wouldn't have chosen to be had the world been created by us."
-It's hard for me to reconcile being my authentic self with existing comfortably."

Netgalley comes in clutch for this one 😌🫶 thanks @nineinchnovels for recommending it. It definitely called out some of my childhood trauma. The middle bit = 🫨. If it's not on your radar, it should be. I'm definitely going to be buying this one when it hits the shelves on January 28th. The main trigger warning is that this is a story where the main character wants to unalive herself, and she sees her death as a trivial thing.