Title: When You Were Everything Author: Ashley Woodfolk
Published: March 10, 2020
Genre(s): Realistic/Contemporary
Page Count: 400
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:You can't rewrite the past, but you can always choose to start again.
It’s been twenty-seven days since Cleo and Layla’s friendship imploded.
Nearly a month since Cleo realized they’ll never be besties again.
Now, Cleo wants to erase every memory, good or bad, that tethers her to her ex–best friend. But pretending Layla doesn’t exist isn’t as easy as Cleo hoped, especially after she’s assigned to be Layla’s tutor. Despite budding new friendships with other classmates—and a raging crush on a gorgeous boy named Dom—Cleo’s turbulent past with Layla comes back to haunt them both.
Alternating between time lines of Then and Now, When You Were Everything blends past and present into an emotional story about the beauty of self-forgiveness, the promise of new beginnings, and the courage it takes to remain open to love.
The worst breakup is never with your significant other. Really, it’s not. Instead, it’s the breakup of a close friendship that’s the most painful and longest felt. When we enter a dating relationship, we acknowledge (perhaps unconsciously) the risk that things won’t work out, that maybe this won’t be forever. But we rarely think of what would happen if our best friend—with whom we have been more open, more vulnerable, and more ourself with than anyone else—were to slip out of our life. Maybe they go quietly, or maybe they go with a lot of noise and harsh words. It doesn’t matter. Nobody is prepared to lose a friend.
When You Were Everything unearths—in gutting, unflinching honesty—the reality of a breakdown in a friendship. Cleo and Layla have been friends since middle school. Not just friends: best friends. While not unhealthily so, they were each other’s entire cosmos. They’ve done everything together…until they stop.
How did it go wrong? Who was at fault? Could it have been avoided? And most important: how do you move on?
I feel that When You Were Everything is a book that hits hard because readers feel so seen by Cleo and the events that unfold her sophomore year of high school. Almost everyone has lost a friend they were extremely close with, in some way or another. The betrayal of seeing your best friend hanging out and having fun with someone besides yourself is…if not universal, then really damn close to it.
Ashley Woodfolk’s storytelling, prose, and characterization are 100% on point throughout this novel. I say that this book is high quality, and by that I mean that When You Were Everything is just about the epitome of perfection. The feelings were so real and so intense—the plot may be understated, but this author knows how to craft authentic voices. I both couldn’t wait for the incredibly prickly growing pains to be over…but I didn’t want to book to end too soon. I wanted to continue watching Cleo learn and adapt and find new things to enjoy and people to enjoy them with.
As a character, Cleo is a bit odd in terms of her likes and dislikes (an ungenerous person might call her pretentious). She likes Shakespeare and Ella Fitzgerald, and I thought those strong, well-developed passions created an excellent backdrop to Cleo’s unfolding emotional crises. Because of course…it’s not just that she’s losing Layla. Of course not. As is true to life, one personal trauma piles on top of another, and it seems like nothing in Cleo’s life is stable or going like it should. And I loved that Woodfolk brought nuance to her protagonist’s characterization and how her relationship fell apart. Neither Layla nor Cleo were solely to blame here—both girls contributed, both were hurting and hurt each other in turn.
I guess what I’m really trying to say here, with this review is simply this: When You Were Everything is a book that, I feel, cuts straighter and deeper into what it’s like to be a teenager girl than many I’ve read before. This book is excellently written, perfectly plotted, and features a main character who felt so painfully real to me that I never wanted her story to end.
