Megan Abbott

5

4.5 stars!

You Will Know Me is my first book by Megan Abbott. It will not be my last.

My on-line friend and author, Randy Chandler, recommended her work to me, and I filed it away under "authors to investigate." Then I ran across Ms. Abbott's intro to Ed Brubaker's [b:Fatale: Deluxe Edition, Volume One|20299680|Fatale Deluxe Edition, Volume One|Ed Brubaker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1396174697s/20299680.jpg|28133252], and I liked her style, (AND I LOVED that incredible graphic show more novel), so when I saw You Will Know Me available at my local library on audio, I hopped on it.

In listening to this book, I experienced so much tension and apprehension, I couldn't wait to get back to it after being forced to, you know, work and feed my family. The narrator was fantastic and so was the story. I thought I had it all figured out early on, but I was only partly right. To me, it wasn't the mystery that appealed to me the most, in fact you might guess it right away. It was the way in which this tale was told that got to me; the family dynamics, their sacrifices and resentments all rang true, as did the characters of the family friends and fellow sports parents. (Gymnastics play a big part in this story and the parents of the children...well, some of them were just the worst.) Having dealt with similar parents when my son was growing up and playing baseball, all of this just felt like superior, honest, storytelling and to that I say BRAVO!

Highly recommended! show less

A gripping and disturbing read about the disappearance of 13-year-old Evie and the impact it has on her best friend Lizzie. The two girls, just entering adolescence, are old enough to have desperate crushes, but young enough that these are really innocent dreams of romance, without any real comprehension of adult lusts. After Evie disappears, Lizzie (who narrates the book) does not quite understand why the grown-ups are so horrified, so her shock is mingled with disappointment that her best show more friend might have been keeping secrets, curiosity about the Big Feelings that she imagines may lie behind the disappearance, and a certain gratification and excitement at the opportunity it gives her to give support to Evie's handsome, charming father. She is able to remember a few bits of information which might be useful for the investigation into Evie's disappearance, but she doesn't tell everything she knows, and in her eagerness to help goes further than she should to make clues appear. Lizzie is a compelling narrator - you understand why she is doing what she is doing, while being horrified at the level of her misunderstanding and the ways that she behaves as a result. And she is not the only deluded one in this narrative - the book is an excellent portrayal of the way that people try and justify their own bad behaviour, and how blaming and judging others feeds into that.

I just know that night I’d stood out there on the bristled tip of that lawn I felt it. Like a little girl slid between the folds of window drapes, between the folds of her mother’s skirt, I stood there and felt small and unwise, like the wisdom of the world lay just above me, lay right out there, lay through this keyhole, past this doorframe, behind these window blinds. show less

This book blew me away. It started out as a disappearance/kidnapping of thirteen year old Lizzie's best friend, and turned into something way more nuanced. All the characters rang true, and perceptions changed constantly as Lizzie tried to find out what happened to her friend, with new revelations and realizations of a psychological nature until the very last page. Unforgettable.