We Were Never Here
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jul 28, 2026
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The remaining members of a ghost hunting show return to the haunted manor that may have killed their friend in this “moody, character-driven” (School Library Journal, starred review) contemporary gothic debut perfect for fans of She Is a Haunting and Delicious Monsters.
Four teens went into the manor, three came out.
In July, Georgia Perry and Jules Park—secret girlfriends, covert art thieves, and cohosts of a popular YouTube ghost hunting show—step into a haunted house to steal a priceless painting. A few short hours later, there’s a knife in Jules’s chest and Georgia is waking up in a pool of blood with no painting and no memory of how she got there.
Now it’s October, and Georgia is underwater. She hasn’t been to class in weeks, and she’s avoiding her old crew—and only friends—like the plague. But when the three remaining thieves get a call from the man who paid a hefty sum to keep them out of jail, demanding that they return to finish the job, Georgia has no choice but to return to her old life.
As the estranged friends scramble to steal the painting with no cover story and no leader, they quickly realize that something is very, very wrong, and it’s not just the suffocating memory of Jules or the prying eyes of their viewers. Between the strange shadows that begin to trail them and the nightmares plaguing Georgia’s sleep, only one thing is certain: something followed them home from De Lys manor, and it will do anything to keep them from going back.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three teenage content creators grapple with the mysterious death of a friend in Hannan's ephemeral paranormal debut. James, Georgia, Circe, and Jules are recording an episode of their viral ghost hunting show in the abandoned De Lys Manor when Jules unexpectedly dies from stab wounds. Following Jules's death, Circe is unable to focus on her art, jeopardizing the group's lucrative art-thieving business, for which their show serves as a cover—they swap paintings with Circe's forgeries and sell the originals via sketchy older accomplice Lark. Tech whiz James is equally unmoored as he frets about affording school tuition, while Georgia, who starred on the show alongside Jules, with whom she was also in a secret relationship, grows increasingly unnerved by her inability to recall Jules's murder, despite being alone with her when it happened. When Lark blackmails the racially diverse trio into returning to De Lys for another art theft and Georgia begins exhibiting strange behaviors, the strain brings out painful truths and tests the teens' belief in the supernatural. As fissures among the three widen, they struggle to accomplish Lark's task all while trying to figure out what really happened during their first visit. Murky worldbuilding is balanced by evocative storytelling; the outcome is a leisurely paced murder mystery for fans of gothic thrillers. Ages 14–up.
