Mila is used to being alone. Maybe that’s why she said yes to the opportunity: living in this remote place, among the flowers and the fog and the crash of waves far below.
But she hadn’t known about the ghosts.
Newly graduated from high school, Mila has aged out of the foster care system. So when she’s offered a job and a place to stay at a farm on an isolated part of the Northern California Coast, she immediately accepts. Maybe she will finally find a new home, a real home. The farm is a refuge, but also haunted by the past traumas its young residents have come to escape. And Mila’s own terrible memories are starting to rise to the surface.
This review is FULL OF SPOILERS, please be wary if you don't want to be spoiled. I couldn't write this review without them.
First of all, I want to say that I loved the writing style and the atmosphere in this book. Nina definitely knows how to write and how to hold people's interest. Also, at least one of the difficulties I had may be because I was reading a proof version; a simple spacing change was all I needed and that could very easily have happened in the finished version.
This is shorter than I was expecting. Nina packs a lot into this short space, though, bringing us up to date on Mila's background through flashbacks and memories, and following her through an undisclosed amount of time on the farm. I found some of the flashbacks very abrupt...that's the spacing issue...and I wasn't sure how much time passed on the farm, although maybe I just missed something there.
The real problem is that, even after finishing reading it, I'm not really sure what was happening. Were the ghosts really ghosts? How could people interact with them? Why did they only appear there on that farm and not anywhere else where people are traumatised? Even the very ending, when Mila has accepted her past; it seemed like she was conflating their treatment of her with the way her stepfather acted and deciding to leave, but then I think she decided to stay because as long as she was choosing it herself it was fine? I'm really not sure what was going on there.
This is a beautiful, atmospheric read with great characters and a wonderful idea, and I highly recommend it. I'm just not sure what it's about!
Watch Over Me publishes on the 15th September, 2020.
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