This is the first book I've read of Ashley Woodfolk, and I was not disappointed. What a beautifully written book about friendship, loss, love, and all that in between. As someone who has lost her fair share of friends throughout my life, this book really touched me on a deeper level. I liked how we saw how both actions of both girls brought upon the end of their friendship. Some of the drama felt a little over the top (dad and the English teacher), but other than that, I really enjoyed this book. I would definitely recommend this to someone once it's been released.

Oh my lord Jesus this book was absolutely brilliant! The main character goes through trials of losing friends and gaining more. She goes through her family being separated but, it was written so beautiful! Ashley Woodfolk knew what she was doing when she wrote this book and it was absolutely amazing. It’s honestly leaving me speechless!

I started out reading this book thinking oh just another high school drama - same old, same old - but by the last chapter I was literally sobbing. A book that can elicit that emotion is a good thing. But it was an uphill struggle - both for the main character, and for me to stick with her.

Cleo Baker, who is African American, and Layla Hassan, from a Bangladeshi family, have been best friends ever since they met in Middle School. (Other characters in the book run the gamut of diversity, although it is never a plot point.) But when the book begins, Cleo and Layla haven’t spoken for twenty-seven days. The story then goes back and forth in time to explain what happened and how Cleo reacted to their falling out. Cleo feels much like she did when her beloved grandmother Gigi died four years earlier:

“That person you loved? They’re gone. . . . I’m sick of crying every time I see or hear or feel something that reminds me of [Layla]. But before I can move on, I have to shake off the weight of my past. Of our past. I need to rewrite our prologue before it destroys me. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

She also needs to grow up, and let her friends and loved ones lead their own lives that don’t revolve around her. She needs to learn that love and friendship don’t have to be * exclusive.* But it takes a very long time.

In the process, she makes some very bad mistakes out of hurt and jealousy, but also finds some new friends, meets a possible boyfriend, and learns that her parents are human beings who have flaws like everyone else. As Dom - her new possible boyfriend - tells her, “Things that you can’t control happen all the time. . . . But you *can* control what you do next.”

Evaluation: The characters we get to know best - both the teens and the adults - are complicated human beings trying to navigate a world of uncertainty. Woodfolk wants us to understand that relationships of all kinds - whether between friends, family, or love interests, are a complex mix of attraction, expectations, and adaptations to change. No relationship is trivial, and deserves thought, care, and participants granting each other freedom to evolve. This is a book not only worth reading, but would be valuable for parents to read together with their teens and discuss.

Beautiful storytelling and also a bit heartbreaking. Only because it is so relatable is why it was heartbreaking. I need more from Ashley. Keep breaking my heart and putting it back together with your gorgeous writing and storytelling.

i loved how this book validated friendships, while there was a love interest, it didn't overtake the issues that showed up as she navigated the loss of her best friend, what they both did wrong and how to move on and trust/try again. anatomy of a friendship, all the love, dependence, vulnerability, expectation and how our friendshps teach us, define us and can bring us to our knees. as an older adult, who has always valued friendship despite a world that thinks love relationships are the main that really change us and make us stronger. Having lost a lot of friends in the past few years, some to relationships ending and some to people dying. it still resonated with me and brought me to tears, despite it not being over high school issues and high school rejection and bullying 4.5

Wow, this book hit me right in the feels. An original story with a surprisingly unoriginal plot, in that, losing friends happens so often and it’s a shock not more people talk /write about it. And as someone who cut a really toxic friend whom I, as the story would say, lived in a “snow globe” with from my life last year, I certainly have looked for literature that would help me make sense of the emptiness a friend breakup can leave.

While I could tell this was YA at times, the way Cleo was not as self-aware as say an adult would be, I think the theme just resonates so strongly with anyone who has experienced this pain. The author poignantly shows the breakdown of a friendship, one that doesn’t end in a necessarily happy resolution. I especially loved the epilogue and how it brought Cleo’s character development full circle.

I’ll definitely be looking out for more by this author.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of WHEN YOU WERE EVERYTHING by Ashley Woodfolk in exchange for my honest review.***

4.5 STARS

Cleo and Layla are best friends. Until they aren’t. Cleo, jealous when Layla’s world expanding with new friends and opportunities, sees her friend’s growth as rejection. She strikes out and Layla’s friends strike back. Cleo escalates with a cruel comment about Layla’s stuttering and things go from bad to worse.

Friendships are complicated. Friends don’t come with with instruction manuals explaining how to handle conflict. Teenagers don’t have a breadth of experience navigating relationship difficulties. Cleo has the additional stress of her parents impending divorce, making her even clingier. I empathized with her on an intellectual level, but still found her pretty awful. I give Ashley Woodfolk a lot of credit fir creating such a complex usually unlikable narrator. Often I’ll read a novel where the protagonist seems to be the writer’s alter ego, a perfect heroine/victim. If Woodfolk sees herself in Cleo, she’s got to be incredibly insightful.

WHEN YOU WERE EVERYTHING starts off with minor relationship infractions and escalates to OMG she did NOT do that. At times Cleo seemed to be comparing a paper cut to an amputation, her attacks were so personal cruel. Layla wasn’t the one escalating things, her new friend Sloane was the antagonist. Cleo, through her hurt, blamed Layla.

The conclusion was my least favorite aspect of the story. I have nothing negative to say about it, just that for me it didn’t live up to the rest of WHEN YOU WERE EVERYTHING.

WHEN YOU WERE EVERYTHING will resonate with anyone who’s ever been a teenager and had a friend.