What I Was is a sensitively written coming-of-age portrayal of the initially alien but beautiful first feeling of love. The distinctive innocence of our sixteen-year old hero added with his perpetually numbed perspective of the educational system he is thrown back and forth in, eventually closes in as he is sent to a public school on the craggy East-Anglian coast.

The scandalous but sensitive subject of an unusual flowering companionship between our hero and ‘the boy with the beautiful eyes…and no past’ is carefully addressed in What I Was. The melancholy tale allows the reader to vicariously re-live the complex, foreign disposition departed by a first love. When our hero is first acquainted with Finn, he becomes very much preoccupied and transfixed with his ‘flickering half-smile’ and his self-sufficient, free-spirited life by the sea.

The fog-smothered location of the school St Oswald’s adds to the foggy, head-clouded mindset of the hero as he meets trials and tribulations that test his dedication and devotion to the seemingly emotionally-departed Finn. What I Was presents an unconventional, however, resolute love; and as the tale progresses an eventually conspicuous twist is unveiled causing the reader to re-read several parts of the book in distinct annoyance that they didn’t figure it out themselves.

I would highly recommend this book to any reader that enjoys a good romance; as this compelling, ironic tale, added with hapless twists that seem to embrace the plot will leave the reader nostalgic and mentally awake.