A review by jolles
If We Had Known by Elise Juska

3.0

I thought the premise of this book was unique and that's mostly what kept my sustained attention. While the mass-shooter story has been done and re-done in numerous genres, particularly YA, I think that Juska's focalization of the perspectives of the main characters did a really artful job of exploring the contours of these types of national tragedies and how they play out on a more micro scale. The book was a pretty captivating read and I found myself weirdly invested in Maggie--particularly in the descriptions of her life as a professor and how she views her relationship to her students. With that said, I feel like the book ended really abruptly and kind of sloppily. I was glad that there wasn't a happy ending--the cynic in me appreciates it when there isn't this forced tying up of loose ends, but I found the relationship between Luke and Anna rather trite and found the last ~40 pages devoid of the same verve with which the novel began. Overall it was an enjoyable, somewhat breezy read.