Binge-eating, suicidal thoughts, sexual frustration, alienated parents, best-friend-turned-mean-girl – in short, a good wallow in what one character calls a “drama pit” – are the components author Suzanne Sutherland brings to her YA debut, a coming-of-age lesbian romance set against the backdrop of Toronto’s underground music scene at the dawn of the new millennium.        

After 17-year-old Katherine’s beloved grandmother dies on New Year’s Eve, her “everything sucks” attitude during the final term of high school is deepened. Grieving and feeling lost, she stumbles into a relationship with the loquacious, independent-minded Marie, whose eager companionship and enthusiasm for a “punk but sort of emo” local band draw Katherine into a new awareness of music and her own sexuality.

When We Were Good has a sure arc and quick pace. However, in a story that’s so much about sensuality – not just in relation to Katherine’s sexual awakening, but also to music, literature, and the Toronto setting – Sutherland’s prose is surprisingly colourless, describing the action efficiently but without poetic edge. Too many of the characters are clichéd and thinly drawn – Katherine’s ex-best friend, for example, whose shallowness is signalled by her fixation on the prom committee and her overuse of the word “like.”  

In Marie, however, Sutherland creates a character of abundance and vigour – in body, enthusiasm, and quirkiness – and her evocation of the “emo” elements of high school and self-reflective gazings of adolescence ring true. If the story has weaknesses, it also has an eager energy that drives it forward.