Book Review: Who We Were Before by Leah Mercer
Publisher: Lake Union
Zoe and Edward’s marriage is hanging by a thread. Their son Milo was killed in an accident that Zoe can’t stop
blaming herself for. She wanders through life, numb to everything. She and
Edward don’t touch, don’t talk, and don’t even seem to like each other let
alone love each other anymore. In an attempt to help them reconcile her parent’s
treat them to a weekend in Paris .
Once there, Edward wanders off to text the woman he is
emotionally cheating with. In her dazed state Zoe has her wallet and phone
stolen. They are split apart and after an initial burst of anger they both
decide that neither is going to look for the other. This struck me as two
children saying “Fine then, be that way.”
Zoe wanders Paris
and Edward prepares to take his cheating to the next level. The book is set in
a series of flashbacks between their past and present which seems to be jarring
at times. While I like reading about things from both their points of view I
feel like it should have been split into “before” and “after” instead of a
jumping of back and forth on the timeline.
While I felt empathy for Zoe, I just felt anger for Edward.
Then at times I just wanted to yell at them for to stop being so stupid. The
constantly “missing” each other when they finally realize they want to fix
their marriage was annoying and almost made me stop reading.
It’s a quick read and touches on grief and survivor’s guilt
in a real and honest way. I can appreciate that. It wasn’t a bad book but the
formatting left a lot to be desired. It might be that it’s just not to my
taste. The ending came rather abruptly and left me feeling like the book was a
bit unfinished.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley.com in
exchange for an honest review.
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