When We Were Bright and Beautiful
Ratings15
Average rating3.2
You can have everything, and still not have enough.
Cassie Quinn may only be twenty-three, but she knows a few things. One: money can’t buy happiness, but it’s certainly better to have it. Two: family matters most. Three: her younger brother Billy is not a rapist.
When Billy, a junior at Princeton, is arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie races home to Manhattan to join forces with her big brother Nate and their parents, Lawrence and Eleanor. The Quinns scramble to hire the best legal minds money can buy, but Billy fits the all-too-familiar sex-offender profile—white, athletic, and privileged—that makes headlines and sways juries.
Meanwhile, Cassie struggles to understand why Billy’s ex Diana would go this far, even if the breakup was painful. And she knows how the end of first love can destroy someone: Her own years-long affair with a powerful, charismatic man left her shattered, and she’s only recently regained her footing.
As reporters converge outside their Upper East Side landmark building, the Quinns gird themselves for a media-saturated trial, and Cassie vows she’ll do whatever it takes to save Billy. But what if that means exposing her own darkest secrets to the world?
Lightning-paced and psychologically astute as it rockets toward an explosive ending, When We Were Bright and Beautiful is a dazzling novel that asks: who will pay the price when the truth is revealed?
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This is one of those books where the reader needs to be patient because there are time switches in the beginning that may confuse you. I'll just urge you to keep reading because by the end of Part I, the plot takes a very interesting turn and from there on in, you'll be hard pressed to put this one down. While the main characters are white privileged moneyed selfish people, by the end you at least see them as more than that - as flawed human beings who may never be entirely happy in their own skins but who you now understand at a deeper level. A sad tale - no one makes it out “aive”, particularly Cassie, our protagonist, a young girl orphaned at an early age and still longing for the warmth and safety of family.
