No One Here Is Lonely by Sarah Everett (ARC Review)

Title: No One Here Is Lonely
Author: Sarah Everett
Type: Fiction
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Science Fiction, Romance
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers (Penguin Random House)
Date published: February 5, 2019

A physical copy of this book was kindly provided by Raincoast Books in exchange for an honest review.

Our entire lives are online, but what if the boy you love actually lives there? For fans of Adam Silvera comes a story about the future of relationships.

Eden has always had two loves: her best friend, Lacey, and her crush, Will. And then, almost simultaneously, she loses them both. Will to a car accident and Lacey to the inevitable growing up and growing apart.

Devastated by the holes they have left in her life, Eden finds solace in an unlikely place. Before he died, Will set up an account with In Good Company, a service that uploads voices and emails and creates a digital companion that can be called anytime, day or night. It couldn’t come at a better time because, after losing Lacey–the hardest thing Eden has had to deal with–who else can she confide all her secrets to? Who is Eden without Lacey?

As Eden falls deeper into her relationship with “Will,” she hardly notices as her real life blooms around her. There is a new job, new friends. Then there is Oliver. He’s Lacey’s twin, so has always been off-limits to her, until now. He may be real, but to have him, will Eden be able to say goodbye to Will?

I had a very interesting experience with this book. When I first heard about it, I got the impression that this would be a contemporary YA novel with a hint of science fiction due to someone’s consciousness and voice being recorded into a computer. And while this was definitely the case, the atmosphere within the book itself was different from what I had imagined. Yes, it’s science fiction in a sense, but it’s so seamlessly woven into the story that it felt as if it was just contemporary as well, because it felt as if a company like In Good Company could actually be real. I suppose, what I’m trying to say is that it was all very believable. The very first bit of the book was very difficult for me to get through because I don’t do well when it comes to death and grief (and I really kicked myself for requesting this book while I sat there with my chest tight and tears streaming down my face). Once I got past that, the pacing is what got me a little bit.

Things became a little slow, and I just felt pain for the main character, Eden, with no end in sight. I took a few breaks from this book during this part by reading other books, just for the sake of my own emotional well-being, haha. Then, a few nights ago, I sat down with No One Here Is Lonely, and I was determined to see it through to the end. And it turned out that I didn’t even really need to push myself to read through the second half of the book because things really picked up, and I was pulled into the story until the very last page. And when I was done No One Here Is Lonely, I definitely found myself missing the characters and experiencing a book hangover (which happens very rarely for me with contemporary YA books). And in the end, I was very happy to have requested this book, because the second half was definitely worth it. This book definitely tore open some old wounds that I had from a former best friend who really hurt me, but it also helped cauterize and heal them more than they had been healed before. I definitely came out of this experience having learned something.

Sarah Everett grew up in enchanted forests, desert islands, and inside a magical wardrobe. She speaks two Nigerian languages and a small amount of Afrikaans, and was also president of her high school’s Japanese club (which was only slightly less nerdy than it sounds). She now lives in Alberta, Canada, where she moonlights as a graduate student and writes young-adult novels. She believes in chocolate, daydreaming, and good mistakes. When she’s not writing, Sarah is probably nose-deep in a book, bemoaning her nonexistent sense of direction or engaging in some “car-aoke” while she tries to find her way home. Her first book was Everyone We’ve Been. Visit her on Twitter at @heysaraheverett.