We Were Here - Matt de la Peña

We Were Here by Matt de la Pena
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

CATEGORY: REQUIRED AUTHOR

We Were Here is the story of a half-Mexican, half-American kid who gets into trouble. The story follows this coming-of-age novel as the protagonist, Miguel, experiences juvi and then a group home. In both of these places he makes unexpected allies. The three of them break out of the group home and begin on their adventure south towards the Mexican border. The intention is to start anew in Mexico, away from their troubled pasts. The novel is written as the journal entries that the judge required of Miguel as part of his sentence and we don't find out what he did to get stuck in a group home until the very end of the novel. The novel follows these three boys as they travel down California. And as they go they learn new things about each other, making friends in the most unexpected places, and develop a crucial understanding of their lives and the reasons for what they did.

We Were Here was a beautiful coming-of-age novel that shows the healing process of grief. De le Peña does a good job of writing his characters realistically and giving them a sense of depth that is difficult to do in YA literature. The novel itself sometimes felt kind of slow going but that meant that as a reader you were able to sit and process what you read. It was different from other YA lit, in a good way.

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