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I have already read and loved Emery Lord's other books and The Names They Gave Us was no different. It delicately balanced the lighthearted moments of a summer camp book with gut-punching, emotional moments. All of the characters had deep and carefully created backstories, inner lives, and motivations. That can be very difficult to balance when dealing with an ensemble novel like this one, but Lord handles it masterfully. When you have a larger number of characters, it can get to a point where the characters don't feel as fully fleshed out and are more like decorative pieces, but this is not the case in Names .  Some of my favorite parts of the story were the times when our main group of counselors would spend their evenings off and build a campfire. This was their time to unwind and vent about their days. I really enjoyed these parts because they served as wonderful and natural spaces for character development. They were also some of the funniest and most heartwarming sc...

Oh, how I loved it. I read this book in a few days and read the vast majority of it in one evening. It was a summer romance but it also made my heart ache. This book tackles grief and mental illness and it does it beautifully. I've never lost a parent, but I did lose a grandparent six months ago and I related to Jonah in how hard it was to watch my mom grieve. I spent the week my grandmother was in the hospital with my mom and I promised not to leave and that if she wanted to stay all night I would to, but I had to leave her a few days after my grandmother passed away. My mom had to drop me back off at my dorm just a few hours after the funeral and I know it was hard for both of us. Like Jonah, I have a hard time talking about grief and in the past, I've been someone who's tried to pretend everything is okay even when it's not. There have also been times where, like Vivi, I've thought I was doing better than I really was, though luckily the realization came more...