18 February 2016

Review #345: You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott



My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“Children are knives, my mother once said. They don’t mean to, but they cut. And yet we cling to them, don’t we, we clasp them until the blood flows.”

----Joanne Harris



Megan Abbott, the Edgar®-winning author, pens yet another heart-stopping thriller, You Will Know Me, which is yet to publish in the month of July of year 2016, that unfolds the story of a mother with a child prodigy, and this is a mother's tale of how and at what extent she can go to protect her daughter and her husband thereby rescuing her whole family all just in the name of fame and celibacy and Olympic dreams of her daughter that will not only take her whole family under spot light but the whole town, especially the coaching center which came to fame under her daughter's name.


Synopsis:

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.


Katie is the mother of a gymnastics prodigy daughter, Devon who is aiming as well as competing to make it in the Olympic squad. She also has a science-freak son, Drew. Her husband, Eric and she herself are a part as well as the leaders of their community coaching center where Devon is it's face and a hope for many girls who spires to be like Devon. Devon kept on beating on hurdle after another and kept on racing towards the Olympic dream, but when a young college boy dies on a hit-and-run mishap, things get worse and Katie's idea of her innocent little girl drastically changes as one rumor after another starts piling up in the town. But Katie has to protect her daughter as well as her dreams and she can't let anything ruin it, be it a dead boy's cause of death investigation or those dirty rumors about her daughter and her husband. Will Katie be able to protect her whole family in the light of that boy's death?

Well, why haven't I discovered this best-selling author before You Will Know Me. I need to read her previous books ASAP!! OMG! Holy Buckets, this is like "the most brain-twisting read" that i had after a very long time, I mean literally!! The author really knows how to get under readers' skins especially by controlling and dominating their minds. I could not face away from the fear, panic of something terrible that is bound to happen in the story and despite of the deep fear, I kept on hooked on to the story line like a hawk!!!

The author's writing is mind-blowing, interlaced with dark emotions and mystery, in one word, the writing is exquisite and flawless. The narrative is something, totally engaging and it is the first person POV of Katie, whose voice gets imprinted onto the readers' minds. The mystery has lots of depth and lots of unexpected twists and turns that will throw the readers off their edges. The story builds up based on Devon's preparation for the championship, and then the death of that boy happens which changes the whole course of the story. The author has even set an atmosphere that feels like an impending doom in the story line, but no matter what, it is so hard to anticipate what is that catastrophic effect.

The characters, oh my, all the time, had a strong psychological grip on my mind and they never once let me go, even after the end of the novel. The main characters, Katie, Devon, Hailey, Gwen, Eric, Drew, Coach T, are brilliantly developed, both with their flaws as well as with their dark sides. We see all the characters from Katie's POV, thus they may not be who they are in their own demeanor, but that's the point, we need to live with Katie's perspective to look into the story and also into the character's demeanor.

The darkness, especially the sickness in Katie's family as well as among all the characters are very well depicted. And folks, please don't go and try to figure it our on your own, because the author knows how to laid out a dark, twisted, mysterious road filled with equally grim and realistic characters. The author knows very well how to bring out the darkness and that evil minds of human beings.

The author has done a great research on gymnastics, what are the routines, exercises, instruments, especially focusing on the mentality of a young Olympic-dreams aspiring gymnast, trying to put the spotlight on her emotions, which is at times ice-cold or at times ignorant, or at times selfish. Among all the others, the only positive character in the story line is Drew, he is young, and the way he talks will make the readers fall for his charm, especially for his wit and intelligence.

In a nutshell, this is a spellbinding and fast-paced page-turner that will only keep the readers guess till the very end.

Verdict: This is going to be one of the best thrillers of this year. So guys, please do not miss this one, even if you are not a huge fan of psychological thrillers!!

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Megan Abbott's, publicist, for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book.
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Author Info:
Megan Abbott is the Edgar®-winning author of the novels Queenpin, The Song Is You, Die a Little, Bury Me Deep, The End of Everything, Dare Me, and her latest, The Fever, which was chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by Amazon, National Public Radio, the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times.
Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Believer and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan and received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and the New School University. In 2013-14, she served as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at Ole Miss.
She is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, and the editor of A Hell of a Woman, an anthology of female crime fiction. She has been nominated for many awards, including three Edgar® Awards, Hammett Prize, the Shirley Jackson Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Folio Prize.
Visit her here


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