You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“That was what gymnastics did, though. It aged girls and kept them young forever at the same time.”- You Will Know Me, Megan Abbott

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 gymnastics 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. From a writer with "exceptional gifts for making nerves jangle and skin crawl," (Janet Maslin) You Will Know Me is a breathless rollercoaster of a novel about the desperate limits of desire, jealousy, and ambition.

One of my biggest guilty pleasures is reality TV. More specifically, sport reality TV, more along the same lines as Dance Moms as opposed to Keeping Up With the Kardashians or Survivor or The Voice (though I do really want to watch more of RuPaul's Drag Race. Loved the .5 of an episode that I watched). I don't know, there's something about cutthroat competition and all the dynamics that come with that that fascinate me, especially the mothers that push their daughters (usually daughters) to do well in it. Cheer and dance usually get the reality treatment, with some gymnastics whenever the Olympics approaches, but I would also love to see sports like ice skating or even my beloved horse back riding (those hunter/jumper and dressage queens are crazy, let me tell you). I don't know, maybe it's because I watch or read and enjoy so much heavy stuff that sometimes I just want to get wrapped up in brain-melting trash.

Sadly, this book wasn't as much like that as I expected, and honestly I wanted more. I wish Abbott had taken the Everything I Never Told You approach and had a real tiger mom narrate. Katie just felt bland to me, not really that interesting, always doing the Right Thing To Do. For the most part, at least. There were a few moments where she really rubbed on me, like how she always acts like she's so above the other gymnastics parents yet on several occasions stoops to their level, proving that maybe she wasn't as above them as she thinks she is. I liked Gwen more than Katie, mostly because I appreciate honesty. Gwen would lie to get her way, but for the most part she was brutally honest. She would have been a fascinating character to follow, and I found the dynamics between her and her daughter infinitely more interesting than Katie's. Maybe that's just my personality, though. I didn't entirely trust Katie, she struck me as the type of person who'd smile at you to your face and hand out participation trophies, talking about how everyone's a winner, and then talk shit about you behind your back. My New England sensibilities prefer the Gwens of the world to the Katies. 

I also thought the family's dysfunction wasn't particularly done well. Half the time, her and her husband's relationship read like a cheap romance novel with the tortured, broody soul and the girl who just can't stay away from him. Not to mention, a whole big part of the book was how the son, Drew, was supposedly always ignored in favor of his sister, and it's a big moment when Katie decides to spend some time with Drew, yet she's always with him and she's always spending one on one time with him even prior to that moment. Frankly, Drew felt like a surplus character, at least in my opinion. The book would have been fine without him, maybe even a bit more centered and less heavy-handed, since his entire purpose in the plot was to be precocious and feed us heavy-handed foreshadows through his strangely prophetic dreams (I've never had a prophetic dream; most of mine involve me wandering around my house). And Devon, while an interesting character in her own right, felt poorly developed. In the end, the only character I really felt like I knew was Katie. 

Of course, perhaps my perception of dysfunction has been skewed by Everything I Never Told You. Seriously, look up dysfunction in the dictionary and you'll see a picture of the Lee family. 

I also felt like the effects of this level of competitiveness were touched upon, but in a very surface level way and not really developed much at all. It would be interesting if that was focused on more as opposed to, again, just a mentions that Katie immediately brushed to the side in favor of talking yet again about just how special her daughter is, and how everyone else's daughter sucks in comparison to Devon.

However, in this book's favor, because I really did like it even if I am bashing it a lot, I will say that Abbott has an extremely original writing style. I had a hard time matching it to any other writing style I've ever encountered. I think Abbott's very talented and enjoyed this unconventional style- it's third person, but it feels more intimate than that- like the writer is trying to tell a story to you personally. 

Also, like Everything I Never Told You, this book had an addictive quality. The chapters were long, but once I started reading I had a hard time stopping. Eventually, I would have to force myself to stop because the chapters were so long and I didn't want to pull an allnighter to try and finish this book. 

The mystery was fun, but it took a long time coming. Like halfway through the book, I started wondering if this was another book that I thought was a thriller but ended up being straight up contemporary. I mean, the thriller elements weren't perfect, and it was fairly obvious who did it, and a few of the twists felt like cop-outs, but overall, it was fun. I think I was just tired of criticizing things, so I just sat back and turned that nagging voice in my brain down low for a bit. While my gut choice was correct, there was enough of the mystery in there to keep me guessing and actually feel a bit accomplished when it turned out to be right. 

Bottom line? I liked this book. I mean, was it perfect? No. But it is addictive and fun and the world of cutthroat gymnastics was fascinating to immerse myself in, even though we could have gotten more. So I'd recommend it. Just maybe not do what I did and read it in the same few weeks as Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You. You'll appreciate this book much more if you don't do that. But I'd have no problem with picking up more of Abbott in the future.

7.5 out of 10