The eleven linked stories in When We Were Someone Else introduce several New Jersey teenagers and return to them as young adults. In youth and young adulthood, they confront challenges as varied as addiction, suicide, abuse, and the search for love and a sure sense of self. This debut book won the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, selected by Hilma Wolitzer. “These slyly linked stories are not only funny and wrenching,” writes author Jim Shepard, “but also provide the empathetic gift of shifting perspectives and their attendant illuminations.” Kirkus Reviews writes, “This cat’s cradles of characters and storylines deftly exposes the challenges, and terrors, of becoming an adult.” When We Were Someone Else has also drawn advance praise from Ben Loory, who finds in the book “a dazzling array of personal explosions and quietly brilliant revelations,” and from Amy E. Wallen, who writes, “Rachel Groves is bellying up to the bar with Lorrie Moore, Jim Shepard, and Adam Haslett.”