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Book: “We Were Warned” by Chelsea Ichaso
Publishing Info: Sourcebooks Fire, March 2025
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC from the publisher.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: Everyone knows the legend of Fairport twenty years ago, a shocking murder closed the place down. This year, the ruins will be bulldozed at last. But tonight, it’s not too late to die.
All her life, Eden Stafford has heard the lore about the abandoned beach resort at the edge of ever since the notorious murder there, anyone who sets foot on the property is cursed to die, It’s more than just a over the years, two high school students who dared to explore the ruins of Fairport Village were killed there.
Eden is no stranger to notoriety, having endured a family scandal that’s made her a target at school. So when she reluctantly attends an overnight party at the ruins, she’s on edge—not because of some legend, but because the clique that has made her life hell for years is there, too, including Caleb Durham, the worst of them all.
Yet out of all the things Eden expected to happen that night, finding another student dead at Fairport Village wasn’t one of them.
Though the death is ruled an accident, Eden knows she saw something suspicious at the ruins—and Caleb and her other longtime tormentors did too. Now they’re all being followed by a deadly stranger, and to save themselves, they must work together to uncover the truth about Fairport Village. But after all that’s happened, can Eden really trust Caleb and his friends? Or will they leave her to face a killer alone?
Review: Thank you to Sourcebooks Fire for sending me an ARC of this novel!
One of my favorite things to do when I was working at one of my old library internships was putting together YA displays. I had this internship for half a year and I did about four or five displays, and finding common themes in books, from the obvious to the kind of quirky, was really fun. Whenever I read a YA novel I think about this fun task, and what kind of display said book would fit into. I kept thinking about that as I read “We Were Warned” by Chelsea Ichaso, because man would it have had so many possibilities! Would it have been on a YA Urban Legends display? A “If You Like “Pretty Little Liars…” display (dating myself like crazy here)? Would it have been on a “Creepy Stories By The Seaside” display? It has a lot of potential!
This is probably a great entry for the thriller genre for the target audience, but also has the goods to be entertaining to anyone looking for a quick and snappy read with some decent red herrings and an easy to follow mystery. I love the idea of an urban legend that is possibly true, and the way that it captures how a small town tragedy can take on a life of its own within the minds of the people who live within a community that has head to live with it. I’ve always been a huge sucker for mysteries and horror tales that use this kind of device, and this one had a solid background and a sufficiently eerie setting of an abandoned seaside resort that was the location of a horrific murder and some devastating fallout in the years after (including more murders). I found the mystery to be entertaining and a quick read, and I can definitely see how young adult audiences would be able to relate to Eden and Caleb, and even some of the more morally grey characters like Victoria, Caleb’s close friend and kind of Mean Girl that is Eden’s nemesis (but maybe misunderstood?). I enjoyed the dynamics between these characters and how Ichaso upended expectations for Eden and for me as a reader.
That said, as a 40 year old woman who has read MANY mysteries and thrillers over the years, “We Were Warned” definitely reads like a YA thriller to me. Which is NOT a bad thing at all. I would absolutely put this on a display for chilling thrillers in a YA section of a library, and know exactly who I would recommend this title to. But as a YA thriller, it does have some things that didn’t work for me. For one, Eden is, at times, a bit grating in the constant reminders of how Caleb must hate her and how much she hates him, while it’s pretty clear to the reader (or at least this reader) that there was more to the story on Caleb’s side. It got a bit repetitive to read about her resentment towards him and her assumptions, as it was obvious that wasn’t the case. There were also some twists in here that didn’t work for me, one in particular that followed a familiar ‘one last shock’ routine that almost never clicks with me when it happens in a thriller novel I’m reading. But again, these kinds of things are not necessarily going to hinder the audience that the book is intended for. It’s definitely a ‘your mileage may vary’ situation.
“We Were Warned” has a fun premise and an entertaining mystery. While it was a bit middle of the road for me, I am pretty certain that it will be a good fit for its intended audience!
Rating 6: Entertaining and a fast read to be sure and almost certainly a solid thriller for the audience it is written for, though more seasoned thriller fans may be underwhelmed at times.
Reader’s Advisory:
“We Were Warned” is included on the Goodreads list “YA Novels of 2025”.
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