"It's this almost poetic ability to capture and analyze the moment and the fragments of life that pass through crisis, relationships, choices, and consequences that keep What We Never Had alive and moving through a post-college world where one door has shut and the next remains ajar, facing both possibilities and the unknown. Readers with an affinity for humor, poetic language, and an unusual narrative approach that uses the form "you" to capture life's subtler nuances will find this novel to be unerringly precise and pointed in its protagonist's journey through the netherworld that often represents the post-college condition."
Book Review: What We Never Had (The Big Smoke)
"I recently watched Mike Birbiglia’s movie, Don’t Think Twice, and one of my favorite lines was, “Your twenties are all about hope and then your thirties are all about realizing how dumb it was to hope.” We’re shown this kind of mentality throughout What We Never Had. The main character Josh—though not quite thirty—is starting to develop a similar outlook on life. It is mentioned, but never fully developed, about how he came back to Los Angeles to try and make it as an actor, but it didn’t pan out. He failed years before the story takes place and now we’re watching him readjust his expectations for life. The acting element is a small piece of the greater narrative and while we don’t get the full story we’re not supposed to because the core of Zach Wyner’s novel is what comes after."
Book Review: What We Never Had (San Jose Mercury News)
"The book tells the story of Josh, a twenty-something guy living in Hollywood during the tense, post-Iraq invasion days of 2003. Josh, whose ambitions as an actor have come to naught, has found a job supervising privileged teens in a high school “Homework Club.” His friends Bill and Amare aren’t so lucky. Chronically unemployed, they spend their days railing against the state of the world and their nights crashing on the couch of Josh’s one-bedroom apartment."