5 stars for the Setting and Atmosphere
3 stars for the story
This was moody, atmospheric, and lovely. Mila’s regrets, loneliness and desire to belong were written beautifully. I also loved the setting of this remote farm full of ghosts, and the magical realism aspect that people just accepted them. There wasn’t a lot of plot, and I don’t think that was the point, but Mila’s journey and memories did not start to feel compelling until the second half. But overall, lovely descriptions and great sense of place.

Mila has aged out of foster care and her foster parents are expecting a baby, leaving less room for her. So when she gets offered an internship at a farm, she takes it. She isn't intimidated by the fact that is remote. She won't have Internet or cell phone services. But she's lived without before. Immediately, she falls in love with Terry and Julia, the leaders, as well as the other interns and kids. But when night falls, the ghosts appear. As Mila comes to love the farm, she must eventually unravel the secret behind the ghosts and the secret she's been keeping.
Nina LaCour does a wonderful job building and using her setting. You can see, smell, and almost taste the fresh farm air, the ocean wind, the fresh flowers and produce. What sits with you, though, is the concept of tackling your own ghosts or demons. It's a great story about accepting your past, your role init, and learning to go forward as a more complete person. This doesn't sit like a typical ghost story. It isn't scary--Mila is never afraid of the ghosts. It is more psychological than that, and that is what I love about it. Don't go into it looking for your traditional haunting; go into it looking for self-exploration and you won't be disappointed..

Haunting. LaCour’s prose deftly exists in the line between reality and fantasy in which the reader can’t tell if ghosts are real, imagined-or if it matters. Is this a cult book? Is this a ghost book? I don’t have a concrete answer but I read it in one sitting regardless.

The setting was interesting, and the characters were too, the story line was slow and dragging. the writing is pretty though.

As is typical of Nina LaCour's works, Watch Over Me proved to be a beautiful, atmospheric, and haunting (literally and figuratively) piece. The bold subtlety of LaCour's writing is a must-read.

I could not put this book down, Something was creepy, eerie and unsettling about it, but what? You will care about Mila and quickly grow to love her new family so why is it so eerie? We all have our ghosts.

Nina LaCour is a hauntingly and achingly beautiful writer. She writes damaged girls searching for meaning and love. This book continues her writing trajectory, capturing the story of Mila, a young adult leaving the foster system and joining a new type of family community on a farm. There are figurative and literal ghosts confronting Mila throughout the book as she reckons with her past that haunts her.

Thank you to Netgalley and publishers for the review copy.

Watch Over Me is a beautifully written story about Mila. Mila has finally left the foster care system and is set out for a new life as a home school teacher to a family of many who have lost their families over time. The farm is haunted and the ghosts Mila sees are not the kind of ghosts you and I might think. Struggling to make peace with her past, Mila is quickly accepted into this make shift family but can’t seem to escape the demons of her old life. LaCour writes a hauntingly, melancholic story of love, grief and acceptance..

Review is based on an advanced readers copy.
I enjoyed the unique perspective and was happy to see a book featuring a story not often told. I think this book is a good addition to a narrative about trauma and being left alone at a young age. I think it left a lot of questions unanswered for me but fulfilled the main characters journey with a beautiful ending.

Nina Labour offers an atmospheric and haunting novel about pain and forgiving yourself. It's emotionally raw.

I really liked this book. It's a ghost story, and is also a story of acceptance for ones life and choices, as well as acceptance by others. Mila has been alone for much of the past four years. She had a beautiful childhood with her mother and maternal grandparents, until one day her mother breaks ties with her grandparents and she and Mila move into a "skeleton" house with her mothers new boyfriend. What happens there haunts Mila, and even after she is placed in the child welfare system, continues to do so. As she makes her way into the world, an interesting offer comes to go live at a farm far upstate on California's Mendocino coast. Mila wants desperately to be accepted and to belong, so she is forced to look at the truth of her memories.

Beautifully written, this book will appeal to YA readers, but as an adult reading it, I can also very much appreciate the value and charm of the story.

Nina Lacour's last young adult novel, "We Are Okay", is one of my favorite realistic fiction titles for teens, so I was very much looking forward to this new novel in 2020. I was also drawn to this because the foster experience and characters in foster care are still rare in YA, and Lacour is an author I trust to sensitively represent the experience for not just her main characters but the other teens and children who Mila meets on her journey. All that plus the promise of ghosts and suspense immediately hooked me; plus the cover is absolutely gorgeous.

"Watch Over Me" delivered on everything I expected. As with "We Are Okay", Lacour brings weight and richness to her story with her skill with sensory detail and atmosphere (like, I wanted to eat every meal prepared in this book). She is also an expert at depicting adolescent loneliness, doubt, and the myriad of other emotions brought on by coming of age while haunted by trauma. The puzzle of the plot (what is up with these ghosts? Can we trust Mila? Can we trust this family in the middle of nowhere?) was unpredictable and satisfying; I could not put this book down.

I will definitely be purchasing this for my collection and recommending it widely. Belongs in every library serving teens, as does "We Are Okay".

As with Nina Lacour’s other beautiful work, Watch Over Me is a short but stunning portrait of loneliness and healing from one’s past trauma. Although there are some “gothic” elements, this book is primarily a story about grief and healing, with ghosts acting as a metaphor for those themes. The writing is astonishing and gripping and it will absolutely deliver for readers who loved “We Are Okay.” There really isn’t much of a romance element at all but it isn’t something that I came away missing at all. I loved this book and will be buying it for my YA collection.