I'm so torn about this book.
It was a super slow start... Like a glacial start. I had no idea what it was really about or what the point was in the first 48-49%. Once we crossed that halfway point, it intrigued me and I really needed to know what was going to happen.
My favorite character is not one that I would have thought would be a favorite based on the first half of the book, and I really wanted more page time for them.
I really did like all of the conversations surrounding a character as asexual. While I know not everyone can relate to this character's feelings, I personally loved the representation in the book.

I think my biggest issue with the book is that I have no idea what genre it really fits into. I was looking forward to more spookiness or paranormal elements, but it just didn't quite get there for me.
I'm sure there are going to be people who eat this up.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The cover is gorgeous, which is what initially drew me in. Then I read the summary and I was immediately intrigued. A lake only the main character can find? A mystery filled with magical realism that starts to unravel the most hidden truths? That all definitely sounds very intriguing and promising.

Unfortunately, the story fell quite flat for me. We Were Restless Things started out strong and gripping, where you're immediately pulled into the story. But after the first few chapters, it started to go downhill for me. I no longer felt that powerful sense of 'I need to know what happens next'. The story started to lose my attention, where I no longer cared about what happens to the characters. I saw the plot going nowhere, which was unfortunate. It was an atmospheric read, but the atmosphere and story together did not work for me. I really wanted to like this story because the idea is unique and has the potential to be amazing. But I just found the characters to be boring with no character development and no real path in the story.  

What I did like about this book is the real life issues that are presented to Noemi. She struggles with too many secrets that it starts to get a bit overbearing for her, and her life starts to unravel. Noemi and her two close companions are trying to find their way in this complicated world and also find out what really happened to Link. However, the issues presented were not dealt with entirely in a way that connected well with the plot and storyline.

We Were Restless Things offers a strong premise, but unfortunately is not executed well enough to offer a powerful story. Even though I was not a fan of this story, I know there will be readers who will feel a connection with the characters and storyline.

We Were Restless Things, a lyrical debut from Cole Nagamatsu, relates the aftermath of a small town death. Teenaged Link Miller is found dead in the woods, having seemingly drowned on dry land, miles away from any body of water. He leaves behind him an assortment of other teenagers - a sister, a friend, a friend he'd rather was a girlfriend - who, along with the new boy in town, explore the woods and themselves, as their lives swirl and eddy around the impossible loss, trying to make sense of the unearthly and of one another.

Nagamatsu's novel is a haunting, languorously eerie story that drifts back and forth across the border between reality and fantasy; a mystery that ebbs and flows through dreamlike tide pools of unknowing. We're given a cast of characters who feel as flesh and blood as one could hope for in a book, scared and strong and confused teenagers caught in the liminal space between childhood and adulthood. The whole story explores these liminal spaces - magic and mundanity, the wondrous and the horrible, dream and wakefulness, love and hatred, death and life. The boy who drowns on dry land; the girl who photographs her dreams. The surface of the water, ringed with ripples, the only sign that something has submerged, passed from one element into another. The edge of the forest, and the crossing from home into danger, into a fairy tale. The narrow but unbridgeable, unfathomable, gap between two human hearts.

Being languorous and dreamlike doesn’t mean the story lacks for urgency; after all, dreams can sometimes have the strongest sense of immediacy and desperation despite being about nothing. And We Were Restless Things isn’t even that. Things happen, the plot moves along, revelations are unfolded, even if not always in a linear fashion or at a galloping pace, but with an inexorable weirdness that kept me hooked. It's a nautilus shell of a story, labyrinthine and echoing with ocean sounds that aren't there, and I loved every page.


Would recommend to fans of The Lost Coast, The Things She’s Seen, and Erin Morgenstern.

CW: child abuse, parental neglect, catfishing, self harm, drowning, death, sibling death, mention of suicide

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the advance review copy!

really interesting and great characters. it could've been creepier and the relationships were a little weird for me. But a very beautiful cover and I will check out the author's other books!

Rating 3

The cover for "We Were Restless Things" by Cole Nagamatsu is beautiful. It is a clean design and already makes one wonder what the book is about. I mean seriously having vines as veins coming out of the hand?! Just wow, what a wonderful job. Especially in the choice of flower color neither too bright nor dull. As if the cover wasn't enough the synopsis really grabs ahold of the reader making them want to know more. Who doesn't love a good story involving secrets, different point of views, and a weird forrest? I know I do but unfortunately this book just didn't do it for me. I'm not sure if it was the writing style or the main plot but I just could not get into it. The story seemed to switch directions and from there I just lost interest.

Should you read "We Were Restless Things"?
Honestly, I would give it a try because I'm not sure if it was just me or the story as a whole. But don't be afraid to not finish if it isn't for you.

**Received an advanced copy through NetGalley in return for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. **

Set through the viewpoint of multiple characters, this novel takes on the life of a forest and a lake that sometimes appears there. After the death of a teen boy, a group of friends go to the forest for answers.
Opinion
This book was a bit strange for me because it was out of my normal realm of fiction. The style of writing was intriguing and the characters were very interesting. I did not get the ending I wanted but the ending provided was good. Overall, I enjoyed the book.

“Last spring he’d erupted into a classmate like a cold-water geyser. Now, he was depressurized, a near-empty, placid pool, but a shove in the hallway or a match behind his hair could change that. “

The plot of this book drew me in. Link died from drowning, where there is no lake for mikes and miles? Noemi is the only one who knows the truth and it’s becoming too heavy of a burden so she enlists the help of 2 others to get the real truth? Oh yes please.

Someone stating they’re Link is texting noemi to stay away. When I saw those texts, I rubbed my hands together because I knew it was about to get good. Sadly, it never really picked up.

Let’s talk about the imagery in this book. Holy beautiful lines, y’all. It amazes me how someone can use words and form a sentence I can feel, I can see, I can physically taste.

This is definitely a character driven book, which I don’t mind. However, I wanted to know more about the death of Link as that is what drew me in to want to read. I don’t know where the actual plot went. I thought I was going to be taken on a journey or discovery: of theirselves, their friendships, Link’s fate. Instead, I got a lot of casual conversation.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I think the characters were fantastic (Neomi had amazing character development and I praise this) but I just longer for so much more.

Thank you Sourcebooks Fire & NetGalley for the gifted copy. This one is out Oct 8th.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me an e-arc to review.

We Were Restless Things by Cole Nagamatsu is a story about loss and navigating not only ones emotions in the aftermath, but learning to navigate ones self period.

While the imagery in this book is often times gorgeous and the writing style itself holds up amazingly well, the plot itself falls a little short.

I found myself struggling to read for more than a few minutes at a time, frustrated by the plot and the characters and the character development that was never really developing anything. I feel like throughout the whole of this book that none of the characters truly changed or grew from what they were at the beginning - the author would just 'show' you a different side of them that has existed all along and that was that.

I was excited to see that this book has LGBTQ+ representation, but in the end I was disappointed with how flat it felt. Noemi's asexuality was refreshing to read and rang true to how the character acted throughout the book, but while the relationship between Lyle and Amberlynn felt fated by the time it happened, it also felt hollow.

The surprise relationship between Jonas and Noemi also threw me for a loop and was somewhat of a turn off because I wasn't expecting it.

Overall, while I liked the writing, the story fell a bit short for me but I am definitely going to keep an eye out for this author in the future.

Introduction

One summer after the death of teen Link Miller, his friends are left coping with the loss. Coping with the loss of a close friend is hard enough when the passing comes under normal circumstances, but the details surrounding Link's are anything but normal. Link's death was ruled a strange accident, as it was discovered that he had managed to drown in a forest miles away from the nearest body of water.

His friend, Noemi, is the only one that knows the truth. Link drowned in a lake in the forest that only she can find. With this knowledge, coupled with the fact that recently, she's started to receive text messages from a number claiming to be Link, Noemi is finding moving passed her friend's death to be a difficult process.

With the help of her friends, they begin to unravel the mystery surrounding Link's death and in doing so, attempt to move forward together.

Pace

This is a very quiet, and at times, successfully eerie book. It isn't told like a typical teen mystery. There is no dramatic sleuthing. The story is told slowly, and the answer to all the books questions seem to creep up on you, mostly without any over the top dramatic reveals.

This story is told through the points of view of four characters. Three that were Link's friends prior to his death, and one labelled "unknown" I like books that are told through multiple different POVs, but because the story is told through four different ones, the chapters were very short and at times, the change of POV felt unnecessary.

Characters

I didn't particularly like or dislike any of the characters. Although, sometimes they felt flat and difficult to relate to.

Noemi was an especially difficult character for me to like. She is overbearingly controlling of her friends, and she also had a very quick-tempered attitude that was difficult to get passed. Obviously every character needs to have flaws to feel realistic, but being as controlling and as quick-tempered as she is, I had a hard time believing that she would be able to keep many friends, (Spoiler! I also had a hard time believing that, just based on her attitude alone, all three of the male characters would show romantic interest in her).

There was some good representation of different sexualities throughout the story, Noemi is asexual, and Amberlyn and Lyle share a few romantic moments together.

I thought that Lyle and Amberlyn were adorable together and I wish that that relationship had played a larger part in the book. In my opinion they were much more interesting than the central relationship in the book.

The Forest (Big spoilers!)

I enjoyed the concept of "the forest" as a character/being/entity. It was a very interesting aspect to read, although I wish it had been developed a little further. By the time the main characters get to truly speak to "the forest," I believe that there is only 30 or so more pages left. In my opinion, having the characters speak to "the forest" was the most interesting part of the whole book, so I wish that it could have somehow played a larger part. Squishing all of the true interaction to the end of the book felt a little rushed and I was a slightly disappointed.

Conclusion

This book was pretty good, there were some aspects that missed the mark for me but other parts that made the book worth reading. As a warning, there are brief sexual themes, so I would recommend this book to teens who are a little older and who are looking for a read that is a little contemporary while having some mysterious and eerie moods intertwined in it.

The thing that drew me into this book is the premise.  It seems like a fascinating concept, a lake that only some people can find? A mysterious death? Sign me up! I will admit that there is also a bit of the cover buy aspect that drew me in because the cover of this book is absolutely gorgeous.  However, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I really wanted to.

The book is definitely atmospheric and I really liked all the descriptions that were included. The forest was eerie and ominous, and I did really enjoy the feature of the mysterious lake.  I also really liked the characters.  They were well written and the points of view were well defined.  Each character felt really unique, and I liked that it included asexual representation.

That being said, I didn't necessarily love how it all came together.  I feel bad rating this book on the lower end for me, especially since it's in part because I had a different expectation for it.  However, I can't help that that is how I feel.  It was a slowburn of a story and I think I just expected something a little bit different.

The other reason for my lower rating is that I didn't really enjoy the romance that developed between Noemi and Jonas.  They were set up to be potential future step siblings and I just can't really condone a relationship between them.  It's just not something that I enjoy.  However, I liked how Noemi was able to advocate for herself when it came to her asexuality and make characters understand where she's coming from.  I just would have preferred if she had ended up with Gaeten.

However, the book is still worth checking out, and if you're intrigued by the premise you should give it a shot!

We Were Restless Things was a weird and interesting book that follows a group of teens as they deal with the loss of a friend while gaining a new friend. There were a lot of topics discussed throughout this book that will resonate with everyone differently and I think that teens will appreciate that Cole Nagamatsu does not sugar coat these topics because they are "kids".

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

DNF. Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy! I decided to not keep reading this one, it was not for me. Thanks!

3.5 stars - At the beginning of the novel, I really thought I had stumbled upon a new fave book. Nagamatsu's writing is phenomenal. She is excellent at creating a spooky atmosphere with just her characters. I was super into the fact that this was very character forward, but it soon fell aprt around the 50% mark. The plot of the novel was still pretty solid, but I was a little lost at certain parts because the timeline jumped around a lot. I really liked the representation in here (we have an ace main character (on page!) and a sapphic romance). And while I did enjoy the characters, I feel like only one or two of them were <i>really</i> developed while the others remained unchanged in the novel. Additionally, the love triangle/square that happened in the novel was lackluster and underdeveloped as well (one of the love interests was particularly annoying). All in all, I enjoyed the mesh between weird horror and contemporary and do still recommend this as I think parts of the book just weren't for me!

When starting this book the first thing that catches your attention is the writing. Especially for a debut novel, the writing in We Were Restless Things is exceptionally good. The way Nagamatsu sets a scene and describes the world is very impressing. The way Noemi’s dream journal entries were written, was also spot on. It really reads like those parts were written by someone who just woke up from a dream and wants to write down everything they remember from said dream.

In the more fabulism parts of the book, the parts that take place in the forest, the writing is also so atmospherical. It really leaves a lasting impression. However, more towards the middle of the book, we get less parts in the forest, and thus the writing loses its beauty and atmosphere. Which is rather a pity. Don’t get the wrong impression, the writing is still very solid and the way Nagamatsu describes things is still impressing, but the writing does lose a bit of its ‘flair’.

Unlike what is stated in the premise, We Were Restless Things has some different plot lines. The premise really makes you believe this book is all about a weird forest and these characters who try to solve Link’s mysterious death. And the story is about those things, but it often times felt like that was not the main focus of the story. Especially towards the middle of the book the focus was on the lives of the characters and their romantic relationships. That was, once again, a bit of a pity because the fabulism parts of this book made it really stand out from a lot of other books.

Next to that the balance between the different plot lines felt a bit off. At the beginning and the very end of the book, its focus layed on Link’s death and the forest. However, in the middle Nagamatsu seemed to have forgotten she was writing a book with fabulism elements. It would have been nicer to have the fabulism forest parts spread out more throughout the book, instead of having those saturated at the beginning and the end, then the plot would’ve been less weak.

Even though the plot was the weakest element of We Were Restless Things, it was still a page turner. I was picking this book up whenever I could, on the train, at home, or even when I was walking down the pavement. As a reader you just needed to know what would happen next.

Another strong point of this book were the characters. Quite a few books with multiple point of views fall in the trap of writing every pov the same way. However, in We Were Restless Things every character had its distinct voice and set of characteristics.

What made the book absolutely amazing, was the asexual representation. Noemi, one of the main characters, is asexual. Asexuality is a spectrum, so everyone experiences it in another way. However, Noemi’s asexuality was so well written and very relatable to me. I’ve read other reviews stating that the way asexuality is written in this book “doesn’t sit well” with those reviewers. The only thing I can say to that is, that as an own voices reviewer the ace rep in this book is phenomenal and this was the first time ever I really felt seen by a book.

That being said, We Were Restless Things definitely has it flaws and could’ve used an extra round or two of edits, but it still had some solid parts and the best ace rep I’ve ever come across. I ended up giving this book 3.5 stars for those reasons.

Unfortunately this did not work for me, it couldn't hold my attention. It was boring, without any obvious direction, the characters were flat and annoying. This was nothing I expected from the blurb which was so promising.

As always, keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and you might have a completely different experience!

First things first: the cover is so pretty! That is why I initially was interested in reading this book. I think the writing was very strong in some aspects and I enjoyed the emphasis on characters since I'm a sucker for character driven stories. But, unfortunately this wasn't for me. A big thing that makes or breaks a book in my opinion is pacing and this book's was just too slow for me. Overall, an okay debut that makes me want to check out Nagamatsu's future work.

This is actually a 2.5 from me.

I really wanted to loved this book, like I REALLY wanted to love it. The gorgeous cover, the premise, the fact that many of my favorite booktubers have been anticipating reading this...but it just fell flat. It was weird, but not the good kind of weird, and I like pretty weird stuff.

I like the representation in the book and the topics and themes it dealt with (asexuality, FF romance, grief, domestic abuse, self-harm, among others), I think it was done pretty well in my eyes, granted I don't identify as any of the above mentioned so I can't really state if it was well represented or not but I felt like I got a bit of insight as to the struggles you would deal with in life, in relationships in general.

The fantasy element of this book was kind of put on the back burner to the romance going on and at the end it was like the author remembered that this big issue that has been going on throughout the book had to be resolved and decided to solve it all in the last 15% of the book. The previous 85% is spent in mostly meaningless conversations and details that don't add anything to our main story. I never really knew if the book was more plot or character driven because it would pick up one or the other and forget the rest, and there you spent pages and pages reading things that didn’t need to be there while the important aspects of the story were pushed aside.

I did enjoy parts of the book, don't get me wrong, I didn’t hate it. It just wasn't for me. And I pushed through days and days and days of reading because I wanted to get to the ending and possible explanation of what was going on and was so disappointed by what I found. If you like VERY slow paced books, that are kind of not following a super coherent path then this book might be for you, if not I'm not sure I would recommend it.

I really am not sure what I just read. It was bizarre but I couldn’t stop reading it. It had no plot and yet again, I still could not stop reading it. I found myself skipping over a lot of parts because it just didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I will say, the imagery is phenomenal. I’m still trying to figure out what this book was about though... 2.5 stars rounded up.

I really liked the atmosphere and the premise of this book. In many ways, it reminded me of the Raven Cycle books by Maggie Stiefvater. It was quick and easy to read and had some good representation in it (as far as I can tell). However, I didn't think the plot came together very well in the end.

We Were Restless Things by Cole Nagamatsu looks and sounds excellent. However, it just wasn't for me. I considered giving it up several times, but once I made it to the 60% mark I figured I might as well just keep going. In a way, it reminds me of The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, but it does not have anything that makes that all time favorite series of mine work. This is far to slow and boring for me to become invested and very little actually happens. I wasn't interested let alone invested in any of the characters either, and given that it's not a plot-driven story this didn't work for me either. I will say though that I certainly appreciated having the chance to meet another ace character, though. That doesn't happen nearly enough.