You Were Never Here

Written by Kathleen Peacock

HarperTeen

978-0-06-300251-7

392 pp.

Ages 13+ 

October 2020

 

I used to think that once things broke, you couldn't put them back together, that the cracks would always be present and there was no point in trying. (pg. 388)

Seventeen year old Mary Catherine Montgomery a.k.a. Cat undoubtedly thinks of herself as broken, or at least not normal, and it has nothing to do with her physique, though she often deprecates herself for her wild red hair and chubbiness. What Cat can do, since puberty, is feel others' desires and fears when she has skin-to-skin contact. Consequently, she wears long sleeves as much as possible and avoids crowds and any chance of close contact with anyone. She's learned from experience how damaging it can be to reveal what she knows. The first time was with Riley Fraser, the boy next door to her Aunt Jet's in Montgomery Falls, New Brunswick. Now after another incident because of her gift, Cat is leaving her home in NYC and going to stay with her aunt. But things are much different now. Oh, she still has her gift, though she generally knows how to avoid its consequences. It's Riley. He's disappeared.

At her aunt's home, now a rooming house, Cat meets eighteen-year-old Aidan Porter, as well as his friends Chase, Joey and Skylar, and reconnects with Riley's older brother Noah who returned from university when his brother disappeared three months earlier. As Cat tries to fit in with her horror film-loving new acquaintances and piece together the bullying that Skylar is experiencing related to Riley, as well as help Noah learn what happened to his brother, Cat gets caught up in another incident when they discover the near-dead body of another student, Rachel Larsen.

In a thrilling YA novel of a suspicious disappearance, a supernatural gift and the natural need for acceptance and human contact, Kathleen Peacock sends us into the community of Montgomery Falls and into the heads of Cat and several others to recognize that,

Sometimes... people fear the things they want or want the things they fear. (pg. 154)

Discovering what happened to Riley is paramount in You Were Never Here but learning about Cat's ability and how that has impacted her relationships with Riley, her NYC friend Lacey, her father, and others is also relevant. Because of that power, Cat avoids getting close to people, including her own family, and can't trust herself to feel for anyone, worried that they might run out on her or accuse her of being a monster. How do you trust others when you can't trust yourself? Blending Cat's gift with regular teenage angst, a craving for friendship and a bit of romance, and a mystery or two to be solved, Kathleen Peacock has created a story teeming with emotions and tension, and reminds us what it takes to be human, and Cat most certainly is. She's bright, realistic, compassionate, and cautiously trusting, though not always of herself. She is not the monster but there is one around. And, as with any good mystery, the reveal is both unexpected and convincing.