You Will Know Me

Megan Abbott

2017 Nominee

International Thriller Awards best Hardcover

2017 Nominee

CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger

28 July 2016
9781509802654
352 pages

Synopsis

Almost unbearably tense, chilling and addictive . . . Exceptional' - Paula Hawkins, author of Girl on the Train

A mother knows best . . . doesn't she?

Talented and determined, Devon is the centre of her ambitious parents' world, and the lynchpin of their marriage. There is nothing Katie and Eric wouldn't do for her.

When a violent hit-and-run accident sends shockwaves through their close-knit community, Katie is immediately concerned for her daughter, a rising star of the gymnastics world. She and Eric have worked so hard to protect Devon from anything that might distract or hurt her. That's what every parent wants for their child, after all. Even if they don't realize how much you've sacrificed for them. Even if they are keeping secrets from you . . .

Plotted with all the brilliance of Dare Me, and written with the compassion of The Fever, the astonishing You Will Know Me - dark and tender by turns - is an unforgettable novel by Megan Abbott.

Almost unbearably tense, chilling and addictive, You Will Know Me deftly transports the reader to the hyper-competitive arena of gymnastics where the dreams and aspirations of not just families but entire communities rest on the slender shoulders of one teenage girl. Exceptional.
What Megan Abbott knows, as so many maestros of the heebie-jeebies do, is that it's not strangers who are scary; it's the people you think you know and love . . . Abbott is in top form in this novel. She resumes her customary role of black cat, opaque and unblinking, filling her readers with queasy suspicion at every turn.
The underlying tension she sustains is so beautifully unbearable, you may be unable to leave the couch. Scene by scene and moment by moment, she keeps you on edge - the same way Breaking Bad did, without the meth or machismo . . . unputdownable . . . Abbott is a literary descendant of Richard Yates, John Cheever and other writers who captured what used to be called lives of quiet desperation. Abbott's fiction is also indebted to such noir stylists as James M Cain and Patricia Highsmith.

Books by Megan Abbott