John Colagioia reviewed When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk
Probably Unfair Review
2 stars
It maybe has a story? I don't know.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, everything feels like those contrived scenes in TV sitcoms where a writers room full of middle-aged men try to write a teenage girl's diary, but also find the task demeaning, so that you get lines like "I encountered a person of spectacular caliber, this eventide, everything has the same frenetic emotional valence, and I needed to suppress the urge to squee."
It also does that horrible thing where it doesn't trust the reader to keep track of a straightforward conversation, with every line awkwardly appended with some variation of "[person] said," with an optional adverb, which becomes frustrating in long conversations with short lines.
I mostly zoned out on this, a shame, because quite a few minor characters seemed interesting.