Three-sentence Review: When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk

A three-sentence review of When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk published by Delacorte Press.

Cleo and Layla are best (and only) friends, or they were before Layla started branching out in the friend world. It’s not working for Cleo and she’s decided to overwrite her memories of Layla with new ones. The then/now structure fills in the details about the demise of the friendship and shows Cleo’s mistakes and the steps she is taking to build a new life.

Here’s my answer to one of my 85 beta reading questions.

What were the most emotional scenes?

Most scenes with Cleo and Layla’s friend Slone are emotional, because Slone knows how to use her words to cut people down. This happens multiple times when Slone and Cleo interact. But I think the scenes that were the most emotionally hard for me were when Cleo does things she knows will hurt Layla. Because Woodfolk has given us such a clear window into Cleo’s pain we know she should know better than to do what she’s done. But she does it anyway.