My rating: 🌟🌟🌟 (3 stars)
Publisher: Atria Books
I think between having high expectations based on Dunlop's last book She Regrets Nothing that I very much enjoyed and realizing the terrible thing the main character's sister had done so very early on, I only liked this in a middling kind of way. Honestly, if I'd known the secret beforehand and that there'd be a fairly detailed recitation of what happened, I'd not have chosen it to read when I did (though I can't say I'd ever have been "in the mood" for the secret subject: highlight>>(Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy)).
As to the writing, Dunlop again does a wonderful job crafting her story and her way with words shone through. I did enjoy the look-in at the two sisters bound and estranged. I also enjoyed the epilogue and I attributed that to it ending more positively than I'd thought it would. I very much enjoyed Liz's life in Buenos Aires along with her expat pack. All their stories and what led them to drop out of the world for a time was well done. It was almost dreamlike this existence they had. All things considered, I'd read another by Dunlop.
Summary: Katie Cleary has always known exactly what she wants: to be the best skier in the world. As a teenager, she leaves her home to live and train full time with her two best friends, all-American brothers Luke and Blair, whose wealthy father has hired the best coaches money can buy. Together, they are the USA’s best shot at bringing home Olympic gold—as well as a love triangle waiting to happen.
But as the upward trajectory of Katie’s elite skiing career nears its zenith, a terrifying truth about her sister becomes impossible to ignore—one that will lay ruin not only to Katie’s career but to her family and her relationship with Luke and Blair.
With her life shattered and nothing left to lose, Katie flees the snowy mountainsides of home for Buenos Aires. There, she reinvents herself as Liz Sullivan, and meets a colorful group of ex-pats and the alluring, charismatic Gianluca Fortunado, a tango teacher with secrets of his own. This beautiful city, with its dark history and wild promise, seems like the perfect refuge, but can she really outrun her demons?
Told in alternating chapters, Katie grows up, falls in love, and races down the highest peaks on the planet—while Liz is reborn, falls into lust, and sinks into the underground tango scene at the bottom of the world. From the moneyed ski chalets of the American West to the dimly lit milongas of Argentina, We Came Here to Forget explores what it means to dream, to desire, to achieve—and what’s left behind after it all disappears.
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