Review: YOU WILL KNOW ME, Megan Abbott

• first published 2016 by Picador
• ISBN 978-1-4472-2636-2
• 344 pages
• source: my local library
• Author website
• A finalist for International Thriller Writers Best Novel of 2017 

Synopsis  (author website)

Katie and Eric Knox have dedicated their lives to their fifteen-year-old daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful. But when a violent death rocks their close-knit gym community just weeks before an all-important competition, everything the Knoxes have worked so hard for feels suddenly at risk. As rumors swirl among the other parents, revealing hidden plots and allegiances, Katie tries frantically to hold her family together while also finding herself drawn, irresistibly, to the crime itself, and the dark corners it threatens to illuminate.

You Will Know Me is a breathless rollercoaster of a novel about the desperate limits of desire, jealousy, and ambition.

My Take

YOU WILL KNOW ME takes to reader into a world that few of us know much about - that of competitive gymnastics.This is a world of sacrifices, where the family's whole life is dedicated to one goal, and even Katie and Eric's son Drew is affected by the need to give everything to Devon. It strikes you that this is what must happen in the lives of so many elite sporting hopefuls.

But then an apparent hit and run results in the death of a popular member of the gymnastic community and most are only too willing to blame someone who has been in trouble before. All important gymnastic trials are only a few weeks off and nothing must be allowed to disrupt final preparations.

The novel asks some serious questions about the nature of sacrifice and explores the social and psychological pressures behind what is, after all, a sport. What lengths will parents go to to achieve their daughter's potential, but what is actually their own ambition?

A very good read.

My Rating: 4.7

I've also read
DIE A LITTLE
4.7, BURY ME DEEP
4.5, THE END OF EVERYTHING

Review: THE END OF EVERYTHING, Megan Abbot

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 480 KB
• Print Length: 304 pages
• Publisher: Picador; Australia/New Zealand ed edition (August 1, 2011)
• Sold by: Macmillan
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005EOLW22
• Source: I bought it

Synopsis (author website)

In a placid 1980s suburb in the Midwest, thirteen-year-old Lizzie and her next door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable, best friends who swap bathing suits and field-hockey sticks and between whom, presumably, there are no secrets. Together they live in the shadow of Evie's glamorous older sister Dusty, who provides them a window on the exotic, intoxicating possibilities on their own teenage horizons. To Lizzie, the Verver household, presided over by Evie's big-hearted father, is the world's most perfect place.

And then, one afternoon, Evie disappeared.

My take

Some might argue that THE END OF EVERYTHING is not really crime fiction. When Evie disappears no-one is sure that a crime has been committed, although the longer she is gone, the more likely it seems that she has been abducted. The question of planned sexual abuse is raised. There's plenty of mystery though and, in the end, the reader can't be sure he knows he/she has all the answers.

Much of the story relies on the memories and interpretations of Evie's friend and neighbour Lizzie and her memories are unreliable and her interpretations often one-sided. Lizzie's mind has played with some of her memories, trying to make sense of them.

Both our memories self spun, radiant fictions.

THE END OF EVERYTHING is really about relationships, particularly between adolescent girls and their fathers and male neighbours. Although Evie and Lizzie are almost exactly the same age, their bodies are not in sync, and Evie has secrets from Lizzie. Their mothers don't seem to understand much and Evie's mother in particular does not cope well. Their older siblings, Lizzie's brother Ted, and Evie's sister Dusty, have more clues but Dusty's interpretations are tinged with jealousy as she sees Evie about to move into the centre stage that she has occupied for so long.

As Evie's father searches to understand what may have happened to his daughter, Lizzie and he seem to grow closer. Lizzie comes up with the initial clue to who took Evie, and after that plants "evidence" to reinforce that conclusion, and at the same time seems to place herself centrepiece.

My rating 4.5

THE END OF EVERYTHING has provoked some very different reactions from readers, but be aware that some of these contain more plot spoilers than I have:

• Jenny's Books
• The Book Smugglers
• Booking Mama
• Bermuda Onion 
• Reactions to Reading

I read THE END OF EVERYTHING for discussion at my face to face book group and we chose it because Megan Abbott will be at Adelaide Writers' Week in March. It will be interesting to see what group members think. One has already commented to me on what she thought was an abrupt ending.

Other reviews of titles by Megan Abbott on MiP
DIE A LITTLE
4.7, BURY ME DEEP

Review: BURY ME DEEP, Megan Abbott

Published in USA in 2009, Simon & Schuster
ISBN 978-1-84739-633-4
240 pages

From the back of the book:
In October 1931, a station agent found two large trunks abandoned in Los Angeles' Southern Pacific Station. What he found inside ignited one of the most scandalous tabloid sensations of the decade.

BURY ME DEEP is a story of naivete, of corruption, and of drug addiction.
Marion Seeley is left on her own in Phoenix by her husband who goes off to Mexico to simultaneously overcome his own drug addiction and to make his fortune. Marion, who really knows very little of the seamier side of life, goes to work at a medical clinic and is befriended by Louise and her roommate Ginny. Ginny is dying from TB and her treatments are expensive. To pay for them (and to live the "high life") Louise entertains powerful men with wild parties. She introduces Marion to Joe Lanigan, local politician, and as corrupt as they come. From that point on Marion's future spirals downwards.

BURY ME DEEP is an appalling story told so authentically that in the end you just can't believe what happened to Marion.The tension continues to build right into the final pages.

My rating : 4.7

BURY ME DEEP has been nominated for a number of awards, the latest is the shortlisting for an Anthony Award for best Paperback Original.
Find out more about awards and nominations on Megan Abbott's website.

Author Megan Abbott admits that the novel is heavily based on a real story- she tells the reader thatat the end of the book - and you can read about it on The Rap Sheet.
Megan Abbott won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2008 for Queenpin. She was also nominated for an Edgar in 2006 for Best First Novel. In 2008, she won the Barry Award (Deadly Pleasures and Mystery News award) and has been nominated three times for the Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention award).

Megan Abbott's novels
Die a Little (2005)
The Song Is You (2007)
Queenpin (2007)
Bury Me Deep (2009)

DIE A LITTLE by Megan Abbott

The King family, Lora the schoolteacher and her brother Bill a policeman had always lived together, a peaceful co-existence, and together they were a team. That is, until Alice Steele almost crashed her car into his. And from that point on Bill was a goner: he and Alice decide to marry just 5 months later. Right from the start, Lora feels that Alice is not to be trusted, that there is something rotten underneath the bright and breezy, glamorous façade. Alice has been a Hollywood wardrobe assistant, but Lora gets her a job as a home economics teacher at the school she herself teaches at. This should give them a chance to get to know each other better, but Lora becomes increasingly suspicious of what Alice does, especially after she disappears during the school day. Finally Alice's true colours emerge, and now it is not a question of Bill looking out for Lora as he's done all of his life, but of her saving him.

This book has been classified by some as modern noir. Set in 1950s Hollywood, its setting and style both evoke a period that we rarely encounter in a modern novel. And yet this is Megan Abbott's debut. There is some clever writing.

To tell the truth, I struggled with this book, and began to wonder why I was reading it. Over on 4 Mystery Addicts, we have been categorising what sort of reader we are, what sort of books we prefer, ranging from cozy on one end of the spectrum to noir on the other. Now I read the occasional cozy, love my police procedurals, but if this is noir, then it is not a category that I enjoy.