I Will Find You Again
Sarah Lyu
Simon & Schuster
Published March 14, 2023
Amazon | Bookshop | Goodreads
About I Will Find You Again
All the Bright Places meets Ace of Spades in this twisty teen thriller about finding a way to live after losing the one person who feels like home.
Welcome to Meadowlark, Long Island—expensive homes and good schools, ambition and loneliness. Meet Chase Ohara and Lia Vestiano: the driven overachiever and the impulsive wanderer, the future CEO and the free spirit. Best friends for years—weekend trips to Montauk, sleepovers on a yacht—and then, first love. True love.
But when Lia disappears, Chase’s life turns into a series of grim snapshots. Anger. Grief. Running. Pink pills in an Altoids tin. A cheating ring at school. Heartbreak and lies. A catastrophic secret.
And the shocking truth that will change everything about the way Chase sees Lia—and herself.
My Review
For some reason, I find I’m always drawn to books about complicated grief. This one is no exception. It’s an intense story, both in its exploration of grief, but also in the way that it’s written like a thriller. I feel like all the stories I want to compare it to give things away about the plot, though.
After Lia’s death, Chase finds herself trying to sift through her memories and those of her friends to piece together what happened and understand why. She feels someone must be responsible, or that there must be an explanation that will make Lia’s death make sense, and she’ll do whatever it takes to find the truth.
I liked those things about her. Her desperation was palpable. Her grief exploded off the page. I couldn’t help rooting for her, even though sometimes she did self-destructive things.
The story explores the pressure that Chase and her friends feel at school. All of them have ambitious AP course loads plus extracurriculars. They decide that drugs and a cheating ring, in which one person completes an assignment or test and distributes the work to the others, is the only reasonable way to survive.
While obviously cheating is wrong, I couldn’t help pausing to think about why they chose that course and whether certain high-achieving academic programs do push kids too hard. I don’t know. It’s still something I’m thinking about.
All in all, I WILL FIND YOU AGAIN has perfect pacing in a deep, emotional landscape. Fans of E. Lockhart or Matthew Quick totally want to check this one out.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 14 up.
Representation
Chase is Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Taiwanese. Lia is Korean and adopted by white parents.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme profanity used pretty frequently.
Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between two girls.
Spiritual Content
None.
Violent Content
Mentions of suicidal thoughts. Brief mention of a suicide attempt.
Drug Content
Chase takes an upper called Focentra (a fictional drug) which she buys from a classmate.
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