Echoes Between Us

By: Katie McGarry

Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Graham Halstead

Echoes Between Us is bestselling author Katie McGarry’s breakout teen contemporary novel about a girl with everything to lose and the boy who will do anything to save her.

Veronica sees ghosts—more specifically, her mother’s ghost, thanks to the blinding migraines that consume her whole life and keep Veronica on the fringes. But the haunting afterimages make her wonder if there is something more going on….

Golden boy Sawyer is handsome and popular, a state champion swimmer, but this All-American is hiding an adrenaline addiction that could kill him. Drawn to each other after a chance meeting, can they help each other battle the demons that haunt their every step or will they push their luck too far and risk losing it all…including their lives?

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Teen

“Katie McGarry knows what YA is, how it works, and what it can do better than anyone, but she always takes it one step further.”—Hypable

©2020 Katie McGarry (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“One of my favorites she’s ever written. SO INCREDIBLE.”—Kristen Simmons, critically acclaimed author of the Article 5 series

“Enthralling...”— School Library Journal

Grievous and graceful and altogether lovely.

Katie McGarry has a way with words. She is easily one of my favorite YA writers, and I'm happy to pick up just about anything of hers. I'll admit that I had some doubts with this story--on the surface, it seems so different from everything she's done before. And, in many ways, it is. But this has all the trademarks of her storytelling, and so much more. It goes deeper, hits harder, and excavates everything. This story is full of spirit and grace, grief and hope. It looks at the twining of life and death and acknowledges both. It is profound, a deep well of story and emotion and feeling. Overwhelming, bittersweet, and beautiful. Give this book a shot. You won't regret it.

a sweet, sorrowful, lovely story

The book was an unexpected joy. I was intrigued by the premise, and the story completely enveloped me. The characters are complex and intriguing. While this book is YA, in no way is it written exclusively for the younger audience. The story encompasses grief, loss, love, and embracing one’s true self. The two main characters are truly lovely and relatable. The secondary characters aren’t just background characters, but concrete. I truly recommend this story. Plus, Brittany Pressley (I swear I love everything she narrates) and Graham Halstead do stellar jobs bringing this story to life.

How much I related to it

I loved the book so much. I personally could relate with both characters in different parts of the story. I cried for them and felt their pain. I cried happy tears when they were happy. I. Love. This . Book. I would take up acting to be Veronica in the movie just to have a movie be made .

Compelling YA Contemporary

I’m sure I say it with her every new release, but when it comes to YA, Katie McGarry is my #1 go-to author. She writes the kind of stories that I love and I’m always ready and waiting for each new novel. In Echoes Between Us, Katie delivers a story with her trademarks: relatable characters facing real-life challenges, romance, and an emotional connection.

Life hasn’t been easy for seventeen-year-old Veronica since the death of her mother six months ago. Her father is a truck driver who is gone for days at a time and her best friend Leo, who she is also secretly in love with, is leaving for college. Veronica also has a brain tumor… like the one that killed her mother. The tumor causes debilitating headaches that seem to be getting worse, but she keeps that information from her father. She also doesn’t share with him that she sees and communicates with her mother’s ghost.

From outward appearances, Sawyer is the golden boy. Handsome, popular, a star athlete. But Sawyer is being crushed by the pressure he feels at home. Since his parent’s divorce six years ago he has felt increasingly responsible for not just his six-year-old sister but also his mother. Her drinking has gone from letting loose on the weekends to almost every night. Between her interference in his life, his resentment of his father, and pressure at school, Sawyer feels like he’s walking a tightrope. The only relief he finds is the adrenaline rush from cliff jumping but he finds himself craving that high more and more.

Veronica and Sawyer were an unlikely pair – the girl who marched to the beat of her own drum and who was considered “weird” by the kids at school and the boy who, from the outside, had it all. But they both felt a lack of control over their lives. In Sawyer, Veronica had someone who saw beyond the tumor and the quirks and appreciated her for the bold and fearless girl she was. And in Veronica, Sawyer found someone who accepted him for who he was, who cared about what he wanted, and supported him without judgment. They truly brought out the best in each other.

The friend groups played a big role and those who have read McGarry’s Only a Breath Apart will remember Jesse, Scarlet, Leo and Nazareth (side note: we seriously need a book about Nazareth). Veronica and Sawyer did not run in the same circles and their friends definitely started off as wary and judgmental of one another. I loved seeing the slow acceptance as they started to know and trust each other and were actually supportive of each other during times of need.

Katie did an amazing job of blending the paranormal elements (Veronica sees ghosts), the spiritual aspect (Veronica’s friend Glory is something of a psychic who believes in angels and an afterlife) and skepticism (Sawyer is convinced there is a logical explanation for any “phenomenon”). McGarry tackles some weighty issues in Echoes Between Us and, as usual, handles them with such a light, respectful hand. There are addiction issues, learning disorders, faith, grief, mortality, discussion of sexuality, and more. There is a big focus on acceptance, in many forms, and I loved how Katie wove that deftly throughout the story.

By the end of the story, I was in love with these characters and my heart ached for their struggles. Both Sawyer and Veronica had to have such inner strength to face their challenges and overcome them. Katie made these characters feel utterly realistic and I shed some tears as I was swept into their story. Once again, Katie McGarry has delivered an emotional and compelling story that is sure to be among my favorite books of the year.

Predictable Spoilers

Mixed.

Buying into the popular boy falling in love with the quirky misunderstood outcast has been one of the most difficult YA tropes for me to embrace. Study buddies? Sure. Friends even. Instalove? Nope.

If Katie McGarry had spent a few minutes googling brain tumors, she could have more realistically told Veronica’s story and I’d have given ECHOES BETWEEN US a higher rating. McGarry did a good job job portraying hallucinations as ghosts and I was glad she didn’t attempt to write hallucinations and ghosts. I also liked how, through Veronica, McGarry put mental illness on par with physical illness.

For younger teens

For younger audiences than her usual fare. She’s a very talented writer and she had a good topic but she pulled the punches in my opinion. Sometimes I felt like this was meant as something to be read for a high school assignment for further discussion, vs for the general public. So be forewarned this is not similar to her usual books.