The trace amount of alcohol in her bloodstream. The tremendous amount of guilt on her shoulders. A severely scarred face that is a daily reminder of the car crash that killed her sister. But when Mia finally pieces together her memories of the night Rachel died, the shocking truth might be as jarring as the crunch of metal. It’s been a year since fifteen-year-old Mia Hopkins was in a car crash … Hopkins was in a car crash that killed her older sister, Rachel, and left her own face terribly scarred. The doctors tell her she was lucky to survive. Her therapist says it will take time to heal. The police reports claim there were trace amounts of alcohol in her bloodstream. But no matter how much she tries to reconstruct the events of that fateful night, Mia’s memory is spotty at best. She’s left with accusations, rumors, and guilt so powerful it is quickly consuming her.
As the rest of Mia’s family struggles with their own grief, Mia is sent to New York City to spend the summer with a grandmother she’s never met. All Mia wants to do is hide from the world, but instead she’s stuck with a summer job in the bustling kitchens of the café down the street. There she meets Fig–blue-haired, friendly, and vivacious–who takes Mia under her wing. As Mia gets to know Fig and her friends–including Cooper, the artistic boy who’s always on Mia’s mind–she realizes that she’s not the only one with a painful past.
Over the summer, Mia starts to learn that redemption isn’t as impossible as she once thought, but her scars inside run deep and aren’t nearly so simple to heal … especially when Mia finally pieces together her memories of the awful night Rachel died.
We Were Beautiful is:
- A unique coming of age story about tragedy, forgiveness, and love
- Written by acclaimed, award-winning author Heather Hepler
- Perfect for fans of Robyn Schneider and Justina Chen.
- A poignant, clean YA romance unafraid to explore serious contemporary life issues
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Fifteen-year-old Mia Hopkins is sent to New York City to spend the summer with her grandmother a year after she was involved in a car accident that killed her sister Rachel and left Mia’s face scarred. She just wants to hide from the world but ends up working at a summer job in the kitchen of a café where she meets Fig and her family who runs it, The Brunelli’s. She also meets Fig’s friends Sebastian, Cooper and his sister Sarah.
I loved this book from the first page and enjoyed reading about Mia’s journey. The supporting characters were also great too, loved the artistic Cooper, Sebastian who loves to enter pie-eating contests and the awesome Fig and her crazy family. There were some funny moments and sad moments, and I loved that the story was set in New York in the summer. The writing was really great, just an incredibly moving coming of age story that I definitely recommend!
This book was a little different than some contemporaries, but definitely had all the angst as well as humor that makes a teen story work. I liked all the characters, loved Fig’s Italian family especially. It was also great to see that even as Mia struggled with her own demons of losing her sister, she still made the same mistake of assuming others hadn’t been through things anywhere near what she had. Cooper was adorable, loved the idea of the mural he was making with the tiles. It was also fun to be experiencing New York City from a teen’s perspective, made me want to take a trip out there again myself. A lot of food that sounded delicious at the restaurant, and then I loved one part where the character even pointed out something that has bothered me for a while now, the fact that fortune cookies rarely actually contain a fortune anymore. I say they are now just kind of proverb type of sayings, or as this character said, pithy sayings. A great book for a good spring read.
Survivor’s guilt and learning to forgive yourself
I loved this book that hit all the right notes for me. I guess it’s probably considered to be a YA book but I’m definitely not young and sometimes I wonder whether I’ll ever be an adult and it turned out to be a real winner for me.
15 year-old Mia has a life filled with turmoil and grief. A little less than a year ago she was in a car accident that killed her older sister. Her family is falling apart and she gets sent from the small town in Maine where she grew up to live with her maternal grandmother who she has never met in New York City.
Scarred both inside and out, Mia navigates in these new surroundings meeting new friends, dealing with her grief, and learning to forgive herself.
Again, I loved the story. I loved the in-depth characterizations, the descriptions of NYC, and the dealing with difficult issues that this story took in stride.
I highly recommend this book to the YA crowd and to adults, too.
I received this book from Blink YA Books through Edelweiss in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.