WE WEREN'T LOOKING TO BE FOUND

Two teenage girls’ paths intersect at a low point in their lives, but where they go from there is anything but certain.

Danielle Washington and Camila Ortiz meet at Peach Tree Hills, a suburban residential treatment facility for adolescent girls outside Atlanta, where they’re roommates as well as the only brown-skinned girls. Originally from a well-off Black political family in Dallas, Dani’s relationship to addiction and dependency is the primary focus of her recovery, but her resentment toward her mother and how that impacts her sense of self is complicated even further by learning to be honest with herself. Similarly, Cams has self-harm tendencies that her Latin American parents—one a Colombian immigrant and one Mexican American—in small-town Georgia have struggled with for some time. Kuehn is careful not to offer easy answers for why both girls find themselves in overlapping and distinct moments of despair and desperation, self-harm and self-sabotage, but the connections among family, race, and the widespread societal harm inflicted upon young girls in particular are presented thoughtfully in the dueling narrations of these two deeply intelligent and expressive teens. Dani and Cams complement each other well as earnest storytellers and, eventually, reluctant friends, but their experiences are as raw as their struggles may feel futile. Still, the professionals in the novel provide a tremendous and optimistic amount of care.

An insightful, grounded, and compassionately messy meditation on adolescence, institutional support, and helping oneself.