Review: Nina LaCour – Watch Over Me

Watch Over Me
Nina LaCour

Mila has aged out of the foster care system and she doesn’t know quite what to do next. She’s offered a job on an isolated farm where there’s the fog and the flowers to keep her hidden. But she’s being seen now, and Mila’s own memories are beginning to return. How can she survive by herself? Or will she need to trust others.

This was almost real-world believable. Apart from the ghosts. But she hadn’t known about the ghosts. It’s fascinating how LaCour is able to step inside a tortured psyche and make it so that her readers are imprinted into the novel themselves. By this I mean that almost any person who has undergone trauma could see how this related to them.

It’s key here that even if the ghosts aren’t real, it can often seem so to someone who has experienced prolonged and extreme trauma. This novel makes it easier for the inhabitants of the farm by making it clear that they must face their ‘ghosts’ before they can move on with their lives. If only it was that easy to overcome past life experiences that way, rather than having to go to many years of therapy that may or may not work! I think something else that this novel highlights is that you have to be ready to face your demons, or they will continue to have power over you. It reminds me of the old saying ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’.

I should have reviewed this while it was really fresh in my mind, but I’ve been in a bit of a reviewing slump. I really quite enjoyed it, although my job was killed a little by reading an eBook version. I had previously enjoyed Hold Still and The Disenchantments, so maybe that set me up with high expectations? Perhaps I would read it again, but only if I had a paperback copy.