I can’t necessarily articulate how this book made me feel and how hard it resonated. Or, maybe I could but it would become a therapy assignment diary entry. Anyway, We Could Be Rats deeply affected me, and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time. 

This came at a particularly tough time, too. Lamenting the loss of innocence, struggling to reconcile your childhood and adult selves, mourning the terrible loss of a friend, reflecting on your complicated family dynamics, and feeling isolated in a small conservative town while dealing with serious mental health struggles and suicidal ideation. It’s heavy and it’s all too real. There’s still Austin’s signature dark humor, but the specific situations in this one were too resonant for me to really do anything but cry. Sigrid and Margit’s sibling relationship is relatable and moving, and I would’ve loved even more of them actually together, but it’s very touching. The book is uniquely structured and I’ll definitely need to re-read. It felt a bit disjointed and repetitive at first, but I’m already recalibrating after finishing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I changed my rating to 5 after a re-read.

As someone who prefers to hang out with my baby cousin at family events because I’d still much rather be playing with toy cars and dinosaurs, the feeling of having to leave behind your childhood imagination, sense of wonder, and innocence was also something I loved to see. It reminded me of Seven by Taylor Swift in some ways. Where do all our childhood traits go when we’re forced to abandon them and become acceptable adults? “Are there still beautiful things?”

I was already crying near the end, but that last page made me SOB. And now the cover makes me cry too. Emily Austin continues to See™ me and apparently Sees™ a lot of others, too. There will always be something comforting about that. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.