Sloan Harlow is a new author to me and I enjoyed her writing. It was a YA, high schoolers, but filled with some twists. It’s one of those books where you need to keep it in perspective they are teenagers.
I really enjoyed the story.

This books target audience is definitely YA, but what that being said I still enjoyed it. It was very fast paced, (helped me with my reading slump) and immediately captures you in and has you wanting to read as much as you can in one sitting to get more information. I love how this book touched on some very real topics in this world and showed them in the setting of high school because even though we may not want to think that younger adults go through these things, they certainly do and especially that feeling of being alone as we saw that is how Ella felt. I think far too many people in this world think they’re alone and others around them may not always realize it at the time. The majority of this book is in Ella’s pov but I also liked how we had another pov and more insight, dual povs are superior in my opinion. I enjoyed going through this with Ella and seeing her grow and come into herself. A point of compliant I have with Ella is merely that she is very forgiving.. I think myself personally if I was in that situation I would not be as so but I understand both sides of it. This book, in a way, actually reminds me of a show that came out a few years ago on tv and if I told you the show name and if you’ve read this book, I definitely think you would understand my referencing a connection between the two!(I really liked that show, which might be why I liked the book). Would recommend this book to someone who is looking for a fast paced high school setting, mystery/thriller, with some romance.

I do not often read about high schoolers but I was surprised with how fun this was to read. Before I go too far, I want to emphasize that there was a bit of violence and sexual scenes. That doesn't bother me but I would add those trigger warnings before recommending.
Ella is going into her senior year at North Davis High after a hard summer of losing her best friend, Hayley. She has some issues beyond the normal with her death and also has complicated feelings for Hayley's boyfriend, Sawyer. I particularly liked how this had both points of view throughout the book. Going through grief and then life is such a process!
I was immersed the whole time I read this and I will say that I think it took me two days. The drama and twists were real crazy!

This book was heartbreaking, crushing, restorative and perfectly pieced.

I really enjoyed Everything We Never Said! It reminded me of the ~vibes~ of If He Had Been With Me, a booktok favorite of last year. The twist at the end got me. I even binged it in 24 hours. It is so easy to get swept into this world, to root for the characters and hope to find out what happened.

My only recommendation is to read this as a New Adult (NA) read rather than how it is categorized as a Young Adult (YA). There is a lot of language, scenes that are not fade to dark, and HAEVY topics that I wouldn't classify as Young Adult.

While the main characters are high school age, I was surprised that the rest of the content of this book was young adult. With that being said, as an adult, I really enjoyed this book. I could kind of see where the plot was going, but I enjoyed the journey of getting there. It deals with some heavy, but important topics. It's a mixture of a coming of age story filled with mystery, suspense, and romance. There a few nice twists that show up that are somewhat unexpected. Overall a very enjoyable read.

Thanks to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group | G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Ebook/YA: At 58%, I figured it out. The book was 320 pages and probably 100 pages too long. I understand the duel narrator's POV is all the thing in the past few years, but this book really didn't need it. Giving the book in first person of Emma would have worked better.
This book is YA and I'm an adult, so the stupid teen decisions don't go into my dislike of the writing. Teen drama comes with the territory.
My biggest critic of the book is Haley's diary and letter. The diary is written in past tense. Haley says that she wished she had called Emma. In reality she should have said she wants to call Emma or talk to Emma. The diary has too much dialogue and details for a high schooler. Then the letter is several pages long with, again, too much detail and quotes, Both are too well written and grammatically correct with no inside jargon.

When I first starting reading this book, it felt cute, but I wasn't sure. She's falling for her (dead) best friends boyfriend. Is it grief, a coping mechanism, a way to be close to dead bff?

But then things take a shift. We don't have all the information, someone is hurting her bestie, (trigger warning DV) we make assumptions based on her besties diary, but what is the truth and who can she trust.

This book went from cute teen love to DV and a mystery back to cute teen love, and it was perfect.

I really enjoyed the writing style of the author and the way she flip-flops back and forth between point of views and the diary. This was definitely a good read and I will recommend this to some of my students who enjoy this type of book.

Thank you to netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am not a YA reader but the book synopsis intrigued me and I am so glad I requested this arc! I was hooked from the beginning. Sloan Harlow was able to write a book that has a little of everything. I finished the book in two days but it is a perfect book to read in a sitting. I can definitely see this book becoming a tv show. The ending was a surprise with a twist I did not expect. It is a YA so if that is not your thing then the characters and their decisions might have you scratching your head. I’m so glad I tried something new and look forward to others enjoying this book!

Thank you Penguin Group & NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book!

"For fans of Colleen Hoover" was what initially drew me to this book. Like Colleen's books, this was a quick, enjoyable, emotional read for me.

Everything We Never Said by Sloan Harlow stands out from other YA stories with its unique blend of suspense, romance, and impactful topics. The story revolves around Ella, who is grappling with the death of her best friend, Haley, and her growing romantic feelings for Sawyer, Haley's boyfriend. As Ella delves deeper into the mystery of that fateful night and uncovers more of Hayley's secrets, the suspense escalates to a thrilling climax that left me breathless.

The emotional depth of Everything We Never Said is what truly resonated with me. It's not just a fast-paced suspenseful romance, but a poignant exploration of domestic abuse and anger management issues among teens. The author's portrayal, though heightened for dramatic effect, is still authentic enough to be both enlightening and impactful.

Yet, as always, I loved the fast pace and the building suspense! The story holds a few twists and turns that left my jaw on the floor, and my hat is off to the author for that last big twist. I thought I had it all figured out, but I was mistaken if I thought that was the end of the story. My jaw is still lingering on the floor.

This book is perfect if you love YA Romantic Suspense that will shock you and impact you far beyond the story.

I loved this book so much! I loved getting to see one of the main characters we follow, Ella, come out of her shell and find her voice in a series of tragic and confusing events.

All 3 characters mentioned had their complete story told. I didn’t leave the book feeling like I had wished I’d known more about either.

Good twist at the end, I truthfully did not see it coming. Overall highly recommend as a good book to read this summer!

Thank you to Penguin Teen and NetGalley for the advanced read!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Penguin Young Readers Group/G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers. Ella and Hayley were best friends until Haley is killed in an accident. As Ella tries to navigate her feelings of guilt and grief she finds herself growing closer to Haley’s boyfriend Sawyer. As Ella and Sawyer’s relationship grows, Ella finds Haley’s diary and she begins to question all she thinks she knows about Sawyer and what Haley and Sawyer’s relationship truly was. Everything We Never Said was a fast paced thriller. Although it is listed as YA, I felt like some of the content was geared to a slightly older audience. I would definitely recommend checking the content warnings before reading. Although the plot twist became clear pretty early on, this was a quick and engaging read.

I was instantly drawn into this book so I’m going to break my review down into half and half, the good and the bad, while doing my best to be as respectful and honest as possible.

First off, THE GOOD:
The characters are interesting and likable. We don’t have to start out slowly and wind our way into a a plot line but are rather thrown into the deep end of this world, discovering who each character is as they deal with grief and loss on their own terms. The switch in points of view between Sawyer and Ella keeps this fresh and tense, because most people can only handle one person’s emotions being layered upon them so openly for a short amount of time, and the emotional impact of this book is raw and beautiful in many ways. The author is skilled and makes us feel the emotions of Ella, a best friend grieving for her closest companion , Hayley, who is suddenly gone in a horrific car wreck without even a body to mourn, just an open ended question and so much guilt and grief because she was drinking at a party and can’t remember what she did wrong that may have cost her friend her life. To make matters worse, her growing attraction to Hayley’s boyfriend Sawyer has her very mixed up. Fortunately a former childhood friend steps in, Seema, my favorite character, who sees the guilt in some ways but is an also an unbiased mind in the mix of turmoil.

On Sawyers side, his mother is a young woman who struggles to take care of her two children and has a lovely relationship with them but also is a good role model who encourages even tempers and accountability, and has an open mind to listen to her son and support him, but he feels a great deal of pressure from the secrets he is holding back about himself, his past, and his complicated feelings for Ella, about Hayley, and himself.

The plot moves along swiftly and has artistic and fluid descriptions of the emotions of the characters and their actions and reactions that are easy to follow and pull you in so far that they mislead you from solving the mystery until near the very end where is hits you in the face. Which is nice. It’s not predictable. And you care about how it resolves. This is a sign that the author not only cares about story, but the readers and their reactions. Giving them a quality engaging story that is worth the effort to read. A lot of love and time has gone into this book and it’s obvious.

That being said, half way through this book I was at a five star rating. Three quarters of the way I was down to four stars. By the end I felt frustrated and was down to three, so trying to be as unbiased as possible, here are the BAD points that stood out to me about this book. First off, I admit I am against abortion. Maybe that shouldn’t affect how I feel about a story, but it does and I apologize in advance for that. No spoilers, or at least not too much of one, I hope, because it occurs late in the story but one of the characters becomes pregnant. Based on her over all poor choices ( taking into account she is a teenager, and was being manipulated, she still made very poor choices for herself early in the plot before her life starts to go downhill, and while this can be blamed in part on her upbringing, no one seems to hold these choices against her at ALL, so where is the accountability? Yes, she is a victim, but also allowed much of her victimization and seeking out the relationship that created the pregnancy should have been addressed as a HUGE flaw in judgement on her part, but every gave her a pass because she suffered.) she finds herself trapped in a terrifying situation. Any young woman would be scared , would feel caught and confused and miserable, but the way this situation is written out made me almost quit the book. Seriously, if someone decides they are going to get an abortion and kill the baby, why would they care about drinking during the pregnancy? Drinking causes birth defects but how is that worse than KILLING the child outright? But this character is so PERFECT in everyone’s eyes that she can’t possibly do something so irresponsible as drink while pregnant and hurt her unborn child, even though she is desperately looking for a way to end its life. Again, I’m sorry for being biased but this annoyed me to no end. As did the note following the abortion about how easy it was. It was unnecessary and clearly pushing the opinion of the author that this was the right choice, no regrets, which is unrealistic and misleading to teens. Not all abortions are simple and I have yet to meet someone who had one that said it wasn’t traumatic in some way to them even if it was just the fear leading up to the operation. Combine that with how difficult and miserable they make Sawyers mother’s life who got pregnant even younger and choose NOT to have an abortion and the book feels like it should have “ This novel has a Planned Parenthood Seal of Support and Approval “ stamped on the beautiful cover destroying the art but also as a warning to anyone it might offend. I have friends that had children in their teens, they’re lives have been difficult but now they live better than most people I know and they never regretted it. The pushiness of agenda combined with the overall perfection of the characters just made me really draw away from all the good of book

That said, I have yet to meet a teenager who writes this well , and the way Hayley writes in her diary and the ways Sawyer and Ella think are all so…vivid and flowery they are hard to distinguish as distinct voices from each other. They don’t feel like TRUE teenagers. They feel like idealized teens who have flaws but those flaws are often overlooked by everyone around them. And their mistakes are all forgiven so quickly by each other and everyone else with little to no consequences. Even the way Sawyer thinks near the end when certain circumstances lead us to believe bad things about his character, he is almost too mysterious in his own head, not even honest with himself in an effort to hold off the big reveals.

The reveals at the end WERE surprisingly but it felt like there were no real clues, like certain villains did much too good a job hiding their instabilities from everyone in public while suddenly being so unstable behind the scenes. This includes our leading male who is a dream boat despite all the stress he’s going through until he suddenly starts to crack and then out of no where, he’s a completely different person in much need of therapy. Why exactly was he NOT in therapy anyway? Most states cover a therapist for children who suffer abuse and even before Hayley, his mom, being the kind caring woman she is, seems like she would have sought out help for him to deal with his traumatic past and stress. But instead he festers until he boils over then his mom puts all the blame on him instead of acknowledging he has been suffering and needed help a long time again with his anger management skills.. That’s not taking accountability either.

Sorry to be such a downer, it’s a good book, but it felt a lot like the Pretty Little Liars show my mother used to watch and never liked that or Gossip Girl. This has shades of both. So maybe it just wasn’t a good fit for me. It has a lot of important features and points that would help many teens deal with their lives, like inappropriate relationships, being groomed, abuse, anger management, teen sexuality, teen drinking, secrets that do more harm than good, invasion of privacy, the support of family, being loyal to your friends and not forgetting them, coming to terms with grief and remorse, and all of this is amazingly well done in a book that has a tense plot . So all due credit for all the great parts of this even if you never read this review or can’t get part my criticisms, I’m not trying to be nit picky on you or say your work isn’t awesome. It just bothered me personally on too many aspects to give it a full rating.

OH??? WTF???

That's it. That's my whole review. Didn't see that coming. The plot twist got me good.

I'm usually not one to jump into YA and High school type books because of the age. However, I devoured this book quickly once I actually got a chance to sit down and read it. The twists in this book had me enthralled fully. I love a good book with a great plot and twists. The romance was just the right amount, little spice but not a lot which is perfect. I will definitely be looking into more books by this author. This is my first ever read by her and I give it a 4 out of 5.

This story follows Ella who is struggling with the loss of her best friend Hayley at the beginning of her Senior Year. They were involved in a car accident months prior, and now Ella blames herself for the crash. Feeling bullied and very alone she ends up finding some comfort in Hayley's boyfriend, Sawyer. As their relationship turns into something more than just friends, Ella finds Hayley's diary and starts questioning everything she thought she knew about Sawyer, while still trying to piece together her memories of that fateful accident.

I found the story to be very predictable and had to suspend my reasoning on some occasions but still liked it enough to finish it.

First and foremost, I think Sloan Harlow incorporated some complex themes into this story very well! This book easily could have been poorly written and cringy, but this is not the case for Everything We Never Said. You need to look up trigger warnings before reading this, as there are quite a few (I don't want to give away any because they could be spoilors). I do give this a 5 star rating because I loved the main characters: Ella and Hayley and I like that the author had me questioning multiple characters motives which kept me on my toes. Although I gave it a 5 star rating for readability and enjoyability, I do have a few issues with this book. I would not classify this as a thriller, or at least not to other thrillers I typically read. I also have an issue with this being catergorized as YA. It does involve high schoolers, but the heavy topics are not appropriate for YA to read IMO. There are a few events or things that get brought up once and never again that didn't need to necessarily be mentioned, but those are easy to forget about. Overall, I enjoyed the book. Thanks to PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group | G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book caught my attention immediately when it was labeled as a YA thriller type book. It almost sounded and gave off Pretty Little Liars vibes with its thriller notes but as I dove in further into the book, the teenage drama started to overpower the overall theme of it. I really enjoyed following along on the mystery of the friends background and diary and finding out information about her that the best-friend didn't know and how it was all piecing together. But once there were those typical teenage drama scenes, of not getting a text back within a class period, it was hard to get past a few of those points (maybe because I'm past that point in my life!).
Overall, the idea of the story as a whole is an interesting one! I think a couple of the major points could have been elaborated more on but not get wordy on the diary entries of things that might not be as prominent in the story.

Wow. Considering that I went into this not knowing what to expect, I must say I really enjoyed reading this. From start to finish this book had me hooked with the writing style and just the way the author carried me along as a reader the entire way. I won't say too much because I really think it's worth reading and experiencing for yourself.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe this is the author's debut novel and after reading it, I definitely look forward to reading more of her work.

What a dark and twisty book. The chemistry between Ella and Sawyer was incredible, definitely had me hooked. I liked how the twist was one that kept me guessing though I did land on the correct assumption just before the reveal. This book has a lot of important things to say about domestic violence. I’ll be recommending it to anyone who’s looking for a steamy read that’s not afraid to delve into some issues.