Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour

Young Adult. Ghosts. Trauma. Friendship. Magical Realism.

Rating: 3.5/5

Pages: 288 

Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group; Rocky Pond Books

Started: 12 May 2023

Finished: 14 May 2023

Summary: 

    As a kid aging out of the foster system, Mila isn't particularly used to trusting other people. On the other hand a small community that accepts everyone and functions like a family is exactly what she's looking for. So when a small farming commune asks her to join them in their rural community as teacher for young students, she accepts their offer. Yet despite the new start that the community offers, Mila begins to discover that it's not easy to run away from your ghosts. 

Thoughts:

    Were the ghosts in this book real? I have no idea. There were a lot of aspects of this book I found really beautiful. I liked the writing, was fascinated by the slow reveal of Mila's traumatic past, and was captivated by the rural setting that was cult-ish but in a positive and healing way. I found this book very engaging, and very easy to read; I sped through it in just a few hours. There was just one problem: I'm not sure I really understood what was going on. 

    The surface-level plot did make sense. Mila went to the farm, found a community who had rituals that helped her face her difficult past, and with their help she found a way to come to terms with everything she had survived. But the line between supernatural and figurative was very blurred. Usually I love that kind of literary blurring of literal and metaphorical (that's one of my favorite parts of Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You The Sun) but there were so many other confusing aspects of this book that the lack of clarity felt muddled rather than artful. What kind of organization was the farm? Who else really did see ghosts? Were the ghosts real? Why was Mila so emotionally entangled with a very young boy? Who were the ghosts, simply the remainders of the dead or the shadows of living people too? What was the symbolic significance of the ghosts? I felt so muddled reading this novel that I was left with mostly confusion, even if I was touched by the writing and the plot. 

    This was not a bad book. In fact, I think it was a beautiful book. But it was decidedly too abstract for my taste.