When I picked up the first volume of We Were There I was also beginning to read Sand Chronicles, another series that had been recommended along with this one. While I loved Sand Chronicles from the beginning, I found We Were There to be a huge disappointment. It had all the negative cliches you sometimes find in some of the worse shojo mangas: a ditzy, overly submissive, clueless girl with a crush. The popular, bad boy hot-dude with a tendency to be emotionally abusive. The Nice Guy who'd probably be an excellent boyfriend for the girl, but you know will end up in second place. It seemed predictable, and the romance was so unbelievable to me that I almost stopped reading there.
I'm so glad I didn't. This wasn't a perfect series by any means, but the character development and growth that occurred over these 16 volumes was worth it. Once Yuuki Obata started throwing out some real issues and experiences for Takahashi, Yano, and the rest of the group to deal with, it ratcheted up the drama and made this a really interesting series to continue reading. This final volume throws a few more twists and turns at the reader and even brought a tear to my eye a couple of times before ending on a satisfying note.
I don't usually like writing reviews for books, but in the end I was very wrong about this series so I feel like I owe it this. ( )