If You Were Here Book Review

Five parts and 72 chapters later, I have finished reading Alafair Burke’s If You Were Here. Where do you begin to explain a book to readers filled with ample twists and turns and head-spinning verbiage that will have you engaged, confused, and wondering if this author used offensive content when describing characters? I’ll start by stating that this book didn’t need 72 chapters. Burke could have expressed McKenna Jordan’s (one of the main characters) story in fewer chapters. 

If You Were Here welcomes readers inside McKenna Jordan’s world as she searches for her missing friend, Susan Hauptmann, who has been missing for ten years. Jordan’s world is upended when she sees video footage of a woman she thinks is Susan chasing after a teenager in hopes of retrieving her phone that the adolescent has taken from her. 

This video footage sends Jordan on a winding road filled with highs and lows, searching for this woman. She’s confident that it is Susan. But why resurface after all this time? More importantly, if it is her, where has she been, and why did she disappear all those years ago? If You Were Here is an intricate story with vivid details and complex characters. At times within the story, I felt the author’s description of some of her characters was offensive. 

The synopsis is what captivated me to read If You Were Here. I also appreciated that there are short chapters. However, this book could have been told in 30, maybe even 40 chapters. It got confusing for me halfway through the book. Trying to follow along and uncover why this person did this, or that person did that was taxing. There was a lot of picking up and putting down with this book. 

I read reviews of Burke’s If You Were Here online, where readers expected her work to mimic her father’s. As I haven’t read his work before, I can’t say that I expected the same, but she did an alright job with this book. If you are a fan of mystery or suspense or a fan of Burke’s work and have yet to read If You Were Here, you should check it out. 

If You Were Here by Alafair Burke is available everywhere books are sold.