You Will Know Me - Megan Abbott

Little, Brown & Company, July 26, 2016.

Four Stars

Katie and Eric Knox have based their whole marriage on getting their talented gymnast daughter Devon into the Olympics. They have sacrificed their own careers, taken out a second mortgage on their home, and spent countless hours on the road, taking Devon to practices and competitions. It will all be worth it, because Devon is six weeks away from the competition that will make her an Elite gymnast, only steps away from the Olympic team. However, a sudden death could ruin all of Devon’s dreams.

Coach Teddy takes care of all the girls at his gym, including his wayward niece Hailey. When her boyfriend Ryan is killed in a hit and run car accident, Hailey suffers from a mental breakdown and begins harassing Devon. Katie, who thinks she knows everything about her daughter, can’t figure out what Devon has to do with it – but there are dark secrets swirling all around her. In the close-knit gymnastics community, rumours abound and loyalties are constantly shifting.

You Will Know Me is written from Katie’s perspective, which makes this different from Abbott’s other teen-centric novels. Her stories are about adolescents, but they are focused on very adult themes, so it is interesting to see this one told from a mother’s point of view. It is about the moments when a child leaves the shelter of home and becomes a separate person – a person that her mother does not even recognize. Katie always thinks the best of Devon, but even she isn’t sure what her daughter is capable of.

Katie was drawn to Ryan in life – his charismatic personality made her feel important in a way that she hadn’t since falling into the shadows of parenthood. After his death, Katie becomes almost obsessed with him – the crime itself, and how it has affected everyone around her. The microcosm of the gym shows the full desperation of desire and ambition, as embodied by young teenage girls. There is an overarching layer of dark foreshadowing, and creepy hints of what is to come.

Abbott is so fantastically manipulative, always providing new twists just when you think you have it all figured out. She makes you question how well you can know your own family – the people you are physically closest to, but who still hold so many secrets. Abbott’s genre has been called “girl-noir”, and it’s a fitting term – she is not as obvious as other suspense writers, making her novels a guilty pleasure with a measure of intelligence. She takes seemingly small, domestic situations and extrapolates them to the full extent of their darkness.

You Will Know Me was perfectly timed to coincide with the 2016 Rio Olympics – watching those powerful young gymnasts on tv gave me a mental image of what Devon and her peers were going through in this novel. It doesn’t even matter if you figure out who killed Ryan, because it is more about character and family dynamics. Once again, Abbott has used great writing to elevate a basic plot into perfection.

I received this book from Little, Brown & Company and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.