All We Could Have Been by Te Carter

All We Could Have Been

by Te Carter

162 days.
 
That’s how long Lexi needs to survive at her new school. Every year, she starts somewhere else under a new name, hiding in plain sight for as long as she can manage. Her record is 134, but it's senior year now and if she can make it till June, she can disappear into the real world. Maybe a big city, where no one recognizes her and no one knows about her brother and what he did.
 
But this time things are different. This time there’s her new friend, Ryan, who makes her believe that she belongs somewhere. This time there’s Marcus, the boy looks at her in a way no one has before. This time she’s actually started to miss her older brother, Scott, even though she knows she shouldn’t. He was the boy who hung out with her reading comics and riding bikes. The boy who applied Band-Aids to scraped knees and chased away spiders. But he’s also the reason that she’s been in hiding away from the world, and from herself.
 
It turns out you can't really run away from who you are. Eventually, it catches up with you. 
 
It’s just 162 days, but for Lexi that's a few days too many. 
 

Reviewed by readingwithwrin on

2 of 5 stars

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2.5 stars.

Lexie is one of those characters that you want to like and you want to care about, but you just can't for some reason. Lexie herself isn't a terrible person, she's a senior in high school who is just trying to make it through her last year. Her brother killing multiple people put her into this situation where she is being blamed for what he did still after all these years. Its a terrible situation to be in and one that affects her whole family.
Lexie has tried to control any part of her life that she can and she does through the clothes she wears, and how she puts on a persona to hide her real self. She decides one day to trust someone and they actually understand her and see her for her. They don't care about what her brother did. This was a big turning point for Lexie and one that I wish she had had earlier in her life so she could have had more 'normal' experiences where she wasn't having to act all the time.
Overall this book was just kind of meh for me. I kept getting this sinking feeling in my stomach while reading it and I can't explain why. I had no real problems with any part of the story itself, it was put together nicely and I even found myself liking multiple characters. I just never found myself being drawn into the story and really truly caring about any of the characters.

This book just wasn't for me and that's okay.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 20 October, 2019: Finished reading
  • 20 October, 2019: Reviewed