Nina LaCour

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

A Novel

We are Okay

It's 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 if it's 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥? 

Of course it is! It's the point of the novel. We can search for the truth, we can convince ourselves of whatever we want to believe, but we'll never actually know. Jane says "I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."

If only 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘺 were a more accurate word. It should sound much less pretty. 

What I mean is don't be a person who seeks out grief. There is enough of that in life.

It wasn't the ghosts. It was the hauntings that mattered. The ghosts told the governess that she would never know love. The ghost told Jane Eyre that she was alone.

this was when i knew... this book will forever hold a special place in my heart

We were on a beach and the sun was bright and I was in my mother’s arms. She was singing to me. I can’t hear the song, but I can hear the tone of her voice; and when the singing stopped, she rested her face on my head. The whole world was out there. Honeybees and deciduous trees. Swimming pools and grocery stores. Men with vacant eyes, bells on diner doors, motels so bleak and lonely they settle in your bones. Mabel and Ana and the man Gramps would become or perhaps was already. Each someday and each kiss. Each specific kind of heartbreak. The whole world was out there, but I was in my mother’s arms, and I didn’t know it yet.

She smooths my hair behind my ear, away from my wet face. I can’t stop crying. This is more than a room with my name on a door. More than glasses of water out of their kitchen sink. 

She pulls me close to her, until I’m smaller than I knew I could be. Until I fit against her chest, my head nestled where her neck meets her shoulder, and I gasp because I remember something. 

I thought that Ocean Beach would do it or maybe the pink shells or the staring at her photograph. I thought that one of these things, one day, might help me remember. 

My mother’s salty hair, her strong arms, her lips against the top of my head. Not the sound of her voice, not her words, but the feeling of her singing, the vibrations of her throat against my face. 

Her hair like a curtain, keeping me shaded. 

Her smile when she looked at me, burning with love. 

It’s all I remember, and it’s everything. 

I’m still gasping. I’m holding Ana tight. If she lets go, the memory might go with her. But she holds me close for a very long time, and then she takes my face between her hands and says, “Say yes.” 

The memory is still here. I can still feel it. 

And I have yet another chance, and I take it. 

“These are all things that change a person. If we endure them and we aren’t changed, then something is wrong. But do you remember her? That dove in my kitchen?” 

“Of course,” I say. I think of how beautifully painted her head is. I think of her copper wings. 

“You are still you,” Ana says. “And I still want to be your mother. You were alone for longer than you realized. (...)"

haah.... the tears in my eyes and in my heart

She says, “I wanted to be your mother. From the first night I met you, I wanted that.” 

Everything in me begins to buzz. My scalp and my fingers and my heart. 

“You came into the kitchen with Mabel. You were fourteen. I already knew a couple things about you, my daughter’s new friend whose name was Marin, who lived alone with her grandfather, who loved reading novels and talking about them. I watched you look around. You touched the painted dove above the sink when you thought no one was looking.” 

“I don’t like to anymore,” I find myself saying. 

“You probably will again. But even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter.” 

“What if I’m not that girl who walked into your kitchen?” 

The heater rattles; the hot air blows. She leans back to think, but still holds my hand tight. 

I’m making this hard for her. All I want is to say yes.

“‘I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I’m afraid that cord of communion would snap. And then I’ve a notion that I’d take to bleeding inwardly.’” 

There’s so much I could have found out if I’d gone home after the police station. I could have kept windows shut tight so that his ghost couldn’t get in and torn through all of my mother’s things. I could have touched every photograph. I could have combed his letters for clues about her. There must have been hints of the past in there, woven in with Gramps’s dreams of her life in Colorado. There would have been so much about her to discover, even if half of it wasn’t true.

if i could copy the whole book, i would. so exquisitely written

Gramps set up that tree every year. He pulled out the decorations his dead wife and dead daughter bought and pretended to be a man who had lost too much and survived it. He pretended, for me, that his mind and his heart were not dark and convoluted places. He pretended that he lived in a house with me, his granddaughter, for whom he baked and often drove to school and taught important lessons about how to treat stains and save money, when really he lived in a secret room with the dead. 

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s more complicated. 

There are degrees of obsession, of awareness, of grief, of insanity. Those days and nights in the motel room I weighed each of them against the other. I tried to make sense of what had happened, but each time I came up short. Each time I thought I may have understood, some line of logic snapped and I was thrust back into not knowing. 

But I guess it’s where we live most of the time. I guess it’s where we all live, so maybe it doesn’t have to be so lonely. Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty.

I say it with so much uncertainty, but who knows, I guess. 

 is an open word. It could mean tomorrow or it could be decades away. If someone had told me while I was huddled under the motel blankets that Mabel and I would be together again someday, that I would tell her the story of what happened someday and feel a little better, a little less afraid, I wouldn’t have believed it. And it’s only been four months since then, which is not long to wait for someday.

We take a last look out of the window at the night, and I send a silent wish to everyone out there for this kind of warmth.

“That night at the beach,” Mabel says. “And the days after, until school ended and all through the summer . . .” 

“I thought I’d never love another person.” 

“I guess we should have known better.” 

I close my eyes. Here we are on Ocean Beach. Here’s the whiskey bottle in the sand and the sound of waves crashing and the cold wind and the darkness and Mabel’s smile against my collarbone. Here we are in that spectacular summer. 

We are different people now, yes, but those girls were magic.

“I’m glad we didn’t know better,” I say.

I can see how much she wants this, but I don’t want to do it. Even if there was someone, how could I keep telling myself that I’m fine with so little, that all I need is Hannah’s friendship and the pool and scientific facts and my yellow bowls and a borrowed pair of winter boots, if I spoke a girl’s name aloud? She’d become something I wished for. 

It’s too much coming from her mouth and the look in her eyes is too earnest and I’m too overwhelmed to answer. I guess she needs this—for us to move on—but it feels like another loss. To think a new girl is pretty, and not in a way that lots of people in the world are pretty, but pretty in a way that might mean something to me. To look into Mabel’s dark eyes, try not to stare at her pink mouth or her long hair, and say that. To think that a girl who is practically a stranger could be the next person I love. To think she might take Mabel’s place. 

But I think about Mabel’s warmth on the pullout sofa. I think about her body against mine and I know that a lot of what I felt that night was about her, but that some of it wasn’t. Maybe I am already hoping for that feeling again, with someone new. Maybe I just didn’t know it. 

Something in me is cracking open, the light coming through is so bright it hurts, and the rest of me is still here, wounded, even though I know it’s all for the best.

the amount of warmth that blanketed me as i read this... :( im sobbing so hard

But they are still here, Mabel and Ana with suitcases next to their feet and bags slung over their shoulders, Javier and the driver wrestling a giant cardboard box from the trunk. I’m back in the stairwell going down, down, skipping steps. I might be flying. And then I’m in the lobby and they’re approaching. The car is leaving, but they are still here. 

“Are you mad?” Mabel asks. But I’m crying too hard to answer. And I’m too full of happiness to be embarrassed that I made them do this. 

 Javier says, leaning the box against the wall, opening his arms wide to embrace me, but Ana reaches me first, her strong arms pulling me close, and then they are all around me, all of them, arms everywhere, kisses covering my head and my cheeks, and I’m saying thank you, over and over, saying it so many times that I can’t make myself stop until it’s just Javier’s arms left around me and he’s whispering shhh in my ear, rubbing my back with his warm hand, saying, “Shhh, 

I was okay just a moment ago. I will learn how to be okay again.

So I pause the movie and I stand up and go out in the hall. I take off my slippers and feel the carpet under my feet. I stare down the long, empty hallway, and then I’m running. I run until I’m at the very end, and then I run back, and I need something more, so this time, I open my mouth and my lungs and I yell as I run. I fill this designated historical building with my voice. And then I push open the door to the stairway and in here my voice echoes. I run to the top, not to take in the view but to feel myself moving, and I run and I yell and I run, until I’ve gone up and down each hallway of each floor. Until I’m panting and sweaty and satiated in some small but vital way.

Those days and nights at the motel, I thought I was afraid of his ghost, but I wasn’t. 

And the way I’d convinced myself of so much: that I wasn’t sad, that I wasn’t alone. 

I was afraid of the man who I’d loved, and how he had been a stranger. 

Of what was in those boxes and what I might someday discover and the chance I may have lost by leaving them behind. 

I was afraid of the way we’d lived without opening doors. 

I was afraid we had never been at home with each other. 

I was afraid of the lies I’d told myself. 

I was afraid that our legs under the table had meant nothing. 

The folding of laundry had meant nothing. 

We were masters of collusion, Gramps and I. In that, at least, we were together.

...but my mind is too full of different versions of the last summer’s story. There’s one where I fail him. Where I stop coming home so he stops making dinner, and I’m not around to see how much he needs me. And then there’s one where he fails me. Where I feel it—that he doesn’t want me there, that I’m in the way. So I stay away, for him and for me. So that I never face his rejection. So that I get to pretend I’m the most important thing to him, the way he is to me. Because if we have any sense of self-preservation, we do the best with what we’re given.

I need to give him a grave in order to contain him. I need to bury something to anchor his ghost.

“Thanks so much,” I told her parents as they left. I tried to sound casually grateful and not how I really felt—as though they had saved my life. 

And Hannah kept saving me. She saved me with never asking questions, with instead reading to me about bees and botany and evolution. She saved me with clothes she loaned me and never took back. She saved me with seats next to her in the dining hall, with quick evasions when people asked me questions I couldn’t answer, with chapters read aloud and forced trips off campus and rides to the grocery store and a pair of winter boots

How many times do you get the chance to do something over again, to do it over right?

getting into this, i didn't know what to expect. little did i know, i just started what would be my favorite book 3 days later. 

this is the type of book that i believe one needs to be in a particular phase or situation in life to be fully immersed in it. it's perfect that this book came to me randomly, from my girlfriend who hasn't even read it, as if the universe conspired to make me read this at this very moment of my life. i'm more than glad it did. it's like a love letter from the night skies i used to love staring at when i was a kid. 

i deeply resonated with marin, not because i shared the same grief she had, but because i felt the same hollowness and weight of the losses you have to go through not only in the momentous points in your life but also every day. grief is everlasting, you may outgrow it, but you will always have this corner of your heart that was once full of love for the people you once knew, turned into a shrine of memories you're condemned to forget. you don't only lose them, you also lose who you were with them, the you that they knew you as. you can never get it back. all these stories, lost in the sea. 

this book has reached so deeply in my soul, and i think it's because of the perfect timing. for me, the depression was well-represented here. the withdrawal, the fear, the drowning. and so many other things i wish i didn't have to understand. 

the story was told so beautifully and written so exquisitely. it's a relatively short novel, but i had so many more annotations and quotes than i'd thought i'd have. it felt so intimate, raw, vulnerable, like i was marin herself. or rather, a ghost in her soul as she tells me everything she had to lose and gain and lose. a lot of tears were shed, but they were bittersweet. i feel that a piece of who i am, right now, in this very moment i am alive and breathing, at the age of 21, has been captured in these pages forever. thank you, nina lacour. i know i'll be coming back to this for comfort, and for the home you've given the lonely pieces of my soul. 

i loved it so much, i made a playlist for it which really helped set the perfect mood needed in reading this. 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0IPgh7eB7ZFLfEJIzosfqS?si=7420c00167dc4774

getting into this, i didn't know what to expect. little did i know, i just started what would be my favorite book 3 days later. 

this is the type of book that i believe one needs to be in a particular phase or situation in life to be fully immersed in it. it's perfect that this book came to me randomly, from my girlfriend who hasn't even read it, as if the universe conspired to make me read this at this very moment of my life. i'm more than glad it did. it's like a love letter from the night skies i used to love staring at when i was a kid. 

i deeply resonated with marin, not because i shared the same grief she had, but because i felt the same hollowness and weight of the losses you have to go through not only in the momentous points in your life but also every day. grief is everlasting, you may outgrow it, but you will always have this corner of your heart that was once full of love for the people you once knew, turned into a shrine of memories you're condemned to forget. you don't only lose them, you also lose who you were with them, the you that they knew you as. you can never get it back. all these stories, lost in the sea. 

this book has reached so deeply in my soul, and i think it's because of the perfect timing. for me, the depression was well-represented here. the withdrawal, the fear, the drowning. and so many other things i wish i didn't have to understand. 

the story was told so beautifully and written so exquisitely. it's a relatively short novel, but i had so many more annotations and quotes than i'd thought i'd have. it felt so intimate, raw, vulnerable, like i was marin herself. or rather, a ghost in her soul as she tells me everything she had to lose and gain and lose. a lot of tears were shed, but they were bittersweet. i feel that a piece of who i am, right now, in this very moment i am alive and breathing, at the age of 21, has been captured in these pages forever. thank you, nina lacour. i know i'll be coming back to this for comfort, and for the home you've given the lonely pieces of my soul. 

i loved it so much, i made a playlist for it which really helped set the perfect mood needed in reading this. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0IPgh7eB7ZFLfEJIzosfqS?si=7420c00167dc4774

We Are Okay

the first time i read this i was 16 and had never experienced real heartbreak, though i didn't know it at the time. i'm 20 now and i understand it all a lot more. as marin says, it's better if it's complicated. 

rory

** spoiler alert **
           < I can imagine how it would look to live there, and I know the things I would do, but I can't feel it.
I can't say yes.>

change & healing doesn’t come smoothly nor easily, this isn’t a fairytale where a single meeting with a fairy or a prince is going to fix all problems

“she didn’t have any character development” 
.. yes she did. 

her days spent with mabel made her realize some things. her denial, her regret, her love, her loneliness, & most of all her longing for someone to be by her side. mabel forced her back into reality, doused her in cold water when her body was as dry as a desert.

marin is a very raw & real character, she is so human. she is learning how to move on and become her own person. she is tying up split ends, fixing relationships, working through her losses and finding how to be herself between other people. 

this is a story of grief, loss, love & acceptance.
she didn’t need any major character development, the changes she made, even if they started small will get bigger and eventually she will find herself a different person surrounded by things that she can be proud of. 

< And I have yet another chance, and I take it.
"Yes," I say. "Yes." >

Heather Margaret

“It was terrifying, the idea that we could fall asleep girls, minty breathed and nightgowned, and wake to find ourselves wolves."

Sometimes the right book comes along at the right time. Perfection.

Bria

Nabila Azahra

4,5 stars

At this point all I wanna do is hug Marin & Mabel :( They are so pure and sweet and amazing and soft and whatever I just wanna hug theeeemm! My bed knows how much I cried reading this book. Grief, loneliness, forgiveness with lots of emotion beautifully captured in this book. I can see myself re-reading this book :) This is the first Nina Lacour's book I read, I might check out her other works too ;)

lina d

Julie Rubens

Great book! It was an easy read, good storyline, good characters. I liked it a lot. It’s not my favorite book ever but as long as I have 0 trouble continuing to read, a book gets 5 stars from me.

Winner of the 2018 Michael L. Printz Award — An achingly beautiful novel about grief and the enduring power of friendship. “Short, poetic and gorgeously written.” —The New York Times Book Review “A beautiful, devastating piece of art." —Bookpage You go through life thinking there’s so much you need. . . . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother. Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart. An intimate whisper that packs an indelible punch, We Are Okay is Nina LaCour at her finest. This gorgeously crafted and achingly honest portrayal of grief will leave you urgent to reach across any distance to reconnect with the people you love. Praise for We Are Okay “Nina LaCour treats her emotions so beautifully and with such empathy.” —Bustle ★ “Exquisite.” —Kirkus ★ “LaCour paints a captivating depiction of loss, bewilderment, and emotional paralysis . . . raw and beautiful.” —Booklist ★ “Beautifully crafted . . . . A quietly moving, potent novel.” —SLJ ★ “A moving portrait of a girl struggling to rebound after everything she’s known has been thrown into disarray.” —Publishers Weekly ★"Bittersweet and hopeful . . . poetic and skillfully crafted." —Shelf Awareness “So lonely and beautiful that I could hardly breathe. This is a perfect book.” —Stephanie Perkins, bestselling author of Anna and the French Kiss “As beautiful as the best memories, as sad as the best songs, as hopeful as your best dreams.” —Siobhan Vivian, bestselling author of The Last Boy and Girl in the World “You can feel every peak and valley of Marin’s emotional journey on your skin, in your gut. Beautifully written, heartfelt, and deeply real.” —Adi Alsaid, author of Never Always Sometimes and Let’s Get Lost

Zahra

3.5 stars.

The Lit Club pick for June 2017.
Short and sweet, but not memorable enough to be given 4 stars.

DNF at 37 minutes. Could have been the audiobook but this is so incredibly boring

Jasper

I think it's my first time to encounter this kind of story. Well, on how was the story laid out.

What I really loved about the book was the setting. I loved the fact that the story mostly happened in an deserted (?) dorm building all alone with a snow storm. I don't know about you but I got some Murakami vibes from here. I loved the loneliness and solitude that was being shown by the protagonist. This was a heart wrenching and emotional read about loss, betrayal, family and human connection. 10/10 would recommend.

P.S the cover was so gorgeous.

Vallari S

I like the representation and the fact that the book has relatable content for a lot of people that probably feel/have felt the same way. But otherwise, it was too cliche for me and a little slow at the beginning. It took me a while to get into it.

reading this book is like a reminder that your are never alone 🫂

elly

roro

it was really good. it broke my heart and made me cry

t. edwards

Nina Verhaaff 

First, this book was OK the fact that the author and I sharing names is also very funny.
Marin lives in a dorm room she's in college in New York and she's facing the loneliness that she has when she's in her dorm room there's no one around no one to visit her and she's pretty alone except for her roommate. Eventually, her friends from home come to visit, and then she needs to face the hard thing that she is pretty alone. 

Spoilers from here

Back that she left with her grandpa it's cute until she figures out it's not really her grandpa or something that's what I got from the story. The whole description that is given in the beginning on the dust jacket of the book that story only begins in the ending of the book that she leaves with only her wallet, a phone that stuff. I don't know if I would read it again it was a quick read because the book is very tiny and thin but the story itself followed grief but for me, I wasn't so interested in the story so I don't know if I will read it again so I'm giving it 2 1/2 stars.

Melissa Palmer

Book #37 Read in 2017
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Marin is spending Christmas break at the dorm. She is trying to avoid going home at all costs. Her best friend, Mabel, comes to visit and try to convince Marin to come back home with her. But Mabel does not know the whole story of why Marin left and Marin is reluctant to tell her. Will she? Will doing so help her to begin to heal? This was a decent quick read and the characters were interesting but the plot, to me, was not fully developed. I received this book from Amazon Vine in exchange for a honest review.

Apiecalypse Jen

I really enjoyed Nina LaCour’s adult novel, 

, so I was curious to try her YA stuff and it did not disappoint! This is the best YA novel I’ve read in a long time and a lot of it resonated with me even though I hadn’t lived through the same things the main character had. The prose was beautiful and easy to follow, and (since I listened to the audiobook) I’d like to reread a physical copy so I can catch more details. 

If you want an easy, quiet read with a lot of emotion and introspection I highly recommend this book!

Cloudface

I really enjoyed Nina LaCour’s adult novel, Yerba Buena, so I was curious to try her YA stuff and it did not disappoint! This is the best YA novel I’ve read in a long time and a lot of it resonated with me even though I hadn’t lived through the same things the main character had. The prose was beautiful and easy to follow, and (since I listened to the audiobook) I’d like to reread a physical copy so I can catch more details. 
If you want an easy, quiet read with a lot of emotion and introspection I highly recommend this book!

Hannah Yang

It is difficult to encapsulate what reading We Are Okay feels like, because it didn't feel like reading any other novel.

I can't relate to Marin's story at all, but I don't think We Are Okay was about the story. It was about how the landscape of Marin's mind shifts throughout the novel. There is the sunnier, brighter part of Marin revealed in her memories. There is her scared, lonely, hurt New York self that has shut all of her other selves away. I don't know if this feeling is shared by anyone else, but as I read, I felt that her thoughts were changing. Her worries began to subside. Like New York City, her mind's landscape was cold but sometimes, still bright and pretty.

I'm still not sure if that's the best way to put it into words, but what I can say is that We Are Okay is not about the story. There is definitely a story. There are a few plot twists, and there is a building up to a climax finished with a resolution. However, I think that when reading this novel it is more important to become lost in Marin's thoughts than to anticipate what will happen next, and what she will choose.

The conversation between Ana and Marin at the end was so important and I think that every teenager should hear something similar from time to time. Not every teenager will experience the kind of grief and loneliness that Marin did; not every teenager will have "problems". But I think that we all have some insecurities and questions that buzz at the back of our minds, and we all should be reminded that we are who we are and that we are okay.

  "These are all things that change a person. If we endure them and we aren't changed, then something is wrong. [...] You are still you," Ana says.

The writing was really readable. It was poetic but not prose; simple and straightforward without losing its lyrical feeling. Although I said the plot wasn't important, it was interesting (perhaps a bit on the predictable side for me, but it was a good story). It was a pleasure to read - I read the novel in just a few hours. A few words I would use to describe We Are Okay: Real, unapologetic, quiet, powerful, perhaps a little elegiac. I think that a lot of readers could enjoy it, and I'd say that it is appropriate for a mature middle schooler and up. I hope that readers will like it for what it tries to say, rather than for its plot.

Face down, lying on the ground, trying to process this book.

It's a great book, but god, am I glad that I put off reading this book. I originally planned to read this during finals earlier this year. I am so glad I did not. This book does a great job of portraying loneliness and how suffocating it can be.

I would 100% recommend this book to other people, but I would like to mention that this is a very character-driven book. If this is not your style of reading, then you can go ahead and skip this book.

Mythos

4.5/5 stars
Face down, lying on the ground, trying to process this book.

It's a great book, but god, am I glad that I put off reading this book. I originally planned to read this during finals earlier this year. I am so glad I did not. This book does a great job of portraying loneliness and how suffocating it can be.

I would 100% recommend this book to other people, but I would like to mention that this is a very character-driven book. If this is not your style of reading, then you can go ahead and skip this book.

This novel is a beautiful and poignant exploration of grief and loss. The clear, unornamented prose helped bring to conclusion the strong emotional arc for the protagonist. Truly a testament to both LaCour's talent and mastery and that artifice and overcomplication are not an inherent requirement to sophistication.

Lara Engle

"It wasn't the ghosts. It was the hauntings that mattered."

We Are Okay is a book about a young woman who is haunted but can't admit it. About a grandfather who let the hauntings get the better of him. And about a world who wants to help the pain go away.

It's a quiet book, more about insides than outsides, and not just the insides of people. It inhabits the insides of books, of paintings, of the process of artists. If it doesn't make you cry, then I guess you're dead inside, or you've had the enormous good luck not to have any hauntings yet. It's beautiful, sad, and life-affirming, even with the constant presence of the dead. We really are okay.

Samantha Chavez 

Such a beautiful and raw portrayal of grief but also of love and family and redemption.

We are Okay A Novel

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