This is an audacious novel about family and ambition from “one of the best living mystery writers” — the bestselling, award-winning author of The Fever (Grantland). How far will you go to achieve a dream? That’s the question a celebrated coach poses to Katie and Eric Knox after he sees their daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful, compete. For the Knoxes there are no limits — … there are no limits — until a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community and everything they have worked so hard for is suddenly at risk.
As rumors swirl among the other parents, Katie tries frantically to hold her family together while also finding herself irresistibly drawn to the crime itself. What she uncovers — about her daughter’s fears, her own marriage, and herself — forces Katie to consider whether there’s any price she isn’t willing to pay to achieve Devon’s dream.
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 parental sacrifice, furtive desire, and the staggering force of ambition.
more
This was the fastest read I’ve picked up in a while — which was fine, because it was impossible to put down. The world of the characters is disconcertingly real in a funhouse-mirror type of way, with parental devotion and young love sliding from almost normal to nightmare zone in an instant. Almost everyone is both sympathetic and terrible (the exceptions are mostly straight-up terrible), the machinations are vicious, and victory is never clean.
Here’s to a nicer world.
I finished two books over Labor Day weekend: You Will Know Me and An Ember in the Ashes. Really enjoyed them both!
You Will Know Me was eerie because it felt entirely possible, more so than many other thrillers I’ve read—it’s hard to imagine any real person could be like Amy Dunn, but in this book, the characters, their ambitions, the lies they told, and the choices they made seemed very realistic. The gymnastics element was timely post-Olympics, but this story was really about the bonds (good and bad) of a family and a marriage, and the lengths that people will go to for their children and their dreams. Thanks for recommendation, @merrycoin and @HMish!
You Will Know Me may not be my favorite Abbott book (oh hey there Dare Me), but I still enjoyed it. It’s about the world of competitive gymnastics, an especially good read if you’re jonesing for a post-Olympics fix.
While a lot of her previous work focuses on the internal lives of teenage girls, this book is narrated by Kate, the mother of a talented gymnast named Devon. But Devon’s psyche is still the main attraction, as the other characters try to understand this intense and seemingly unemotional young woman who so many adults have pinned their hopes and dreams on. And, of course, there’s a murder…
“She hadn’t learned, no one had taught her… that the things you want, you never get them. And if you do, they’re not what you thought they’d be. But you’d still do anything to keep them. Because you’d wanted them for so long.”
What is it worth to see your child compete in the Olympics? How far would you go to make that dream happen? With her trademark tension, Megan Abbott hits a high note with this story of a family whose lives revolve around their fifteen-year-old daughter Devon, a star gymnast with Olympic aspirations. Katie and Eric Knox are dedicated to their fifteen-year-old daughter Devon’s success, with Eric nearly obsessed with her potential as an athlete and Katie willing to do anything to keep her family together, even if it means sacrificing everything.
The reader gets a glimpse behind the scenes of competitive gymnastics and discovers a world that is as cutthroat as any professional sport. How far will Katie and Eric go to help Devon to succeed? And what about Devon, a cool, controlled powerhouse, both physically and emotionally? What does she really want? It’s impossible not to tear through this book, utterly convinced of the conclusion and still stunned as the story unravels to a grim and quiet end.
I only discovered Megan Abbott last year, but she has quickly become one of my top three favorite thriller authors. Often compared to Gillian Flynn, she brings a creepy edge and her own unique style to her books. You Will Know Me is another in a string of literary successes for Ms. Abbott and I look forward to seeing what’s next from her.
You Will Know Me was a quick, engrossing thriller about a family who pursues their daughter’s dreams of becoming an Olympic gymnast — no matter the cost. Most of the characters are horrible (yet believable), and this book made me glad I never played competitive sports. For all the inspiring Olympic triumphs out there, it’s easy to forget that there can be an ugly underbelly to competitive sports, and Abbott does a nice job of highlighting how Olympic dreams can be taken way too far.
This was my first Megan Abbott novel, and I’m excited to read more of her work!
Just read a review of You Will Know Me, a mystery/thriller centering on a gymnastics prodigy, and I’m very excited to read it! I read one of her other books, Dare Me and based on it I think Abbott will be great at capturing the strange headspace of a serious teenage athlete–the thrill and terror of feeling that your entire life hinges on a single vault or flip. And it feels topical with the Summer Olympics coming up!
Anyone have other good novels involving sports to recommend?
Thriller fans can’t go wrong when Megan Abbott publishes a new book. The slow-building suspense, family setting, and questionable friendships that she has become known for are again present in Megan Abbott’s latest, You Will Know Me.
Devon is a star gymnast, having trained most of her life to be the best in her town, on her team, and someday, in the country. Like Dare Me, which focused on the cutthroat world of cheerleading, You Will Know Me explores the highs and lows that come with a family devoting everything they have to a sport. Devon’s parents remortgage the house, give up everything so that Devon can pursue her dreams.
Among it all, one of their close knit gymnast group is killed, shaking them all, and leaving them determined to find out what really happened on a back road one night. Megan Abbott writes page-turners, and this one won’t let you down!
Megan Abbott’s novel You Will Know Me follows Devon Knox, a very talented gymnast. Her dream is the Olympics, and her parents make it theirs, too. Abbott describes the gymnasts as muscled machines, aged beyond their years but forever girls. For the Knoxes there are no limits–until a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community and everything they have worked so hard for is suddenly at risk. You Will Know Me is my favorite Megan Abbott novel to date. Fast-paced and “unputdownable”.
3.5 stars might be more accurate for YOU WILL KNOW ME.
Megan Abbot tells the story of Devon Knox, a one-in-a-million star gymnast, despite a severe childhood injury. Devon and her parents want nothing less than an Olympic gold medal.
It’s a suspenseful tale about the dedication required of all young athletes and the commitment and sacrifices their families make in pursuit of their dreams of glory. What comes across clearly in this story is the potential dark side of this narrowly focused lifestyle, where family and community aspirations exert untold pressure on the young athlete.
The first hundred pages seemed slow to me. But the pace increasingly accelerates after that, making the end of the book intense, as characters come to see the ways in which ambition shapes perception and morality. It’s quite a cautionary tale!
Great stuff from an author I always admire and a genre I need to read more of. The dark secrets are always there, just under the surface. Compelling.
The book kept me reading, it is a page Turner. I did not want to put it down
This eye-opening novel treats the lives of a teenager in an Olympic training program and her immediate family. There’s a surprising twist at the end.
Megan Abbott is a stellar writer, just enormously talented. Her prose, characterizations and the mesmerizing plot of this book are nothing short of hypnotic. I couldn’t stop reading — even when I wanted to.
This is the second Megan Abbot book I have read and I liked even more that the first which was “The End of Everything”. I have become a big fan of Megan Abbot after reading this one. This book is a bit different because it is told from an adult point of view except for one section near the end. The Knox family lives and breathes through teenage daughter Devon, a phenom on her way to becoming an Olympic gymnast. In fact their whole little gymnast community lives and breathes through Devon. They all want her to succeed so that maybe, just maybe their daughters can. One night everything changes, a young man dies a violent death and the world they all live in is thrust into chaos.
Now, let me start by saying this book reads different than her other books or at least the one I read. Megan Abbot excels in writing teenage girls and just how devious and yet innocent they can all be so, I was curious to see if she could write for an adult women in the same way and let me assure you that she does. In some ways the feel of this novel reminded me of Jodi Picoult. Yes, this is a mystery but more so in how something happen then a whodunnit. I think you will figure that out pretty fast. I read an interview with Megan and she said she talked to many in the gymnastics community ad you can really feel it. You can feel the tension, the desire and the need throughout the book. The feeling you get from the parents who want and in a way need for their daughters to be something special, no matter how much they deny it to each other, the other parents and even themselves and you can feel it in the little snippets you get from their world.
I know that the reviews for this have been hit or miss but I really enjoyed it all the way through and finished it in two sittings. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I worked in the publishing business for a couple of decades before I started writing novels, and I still pay a lot of attention to books that are loudly buzzed about pre-publication, like this one, when a big commercial publishing house seems to be making a big commercial push to break out a well-regarded established writer into a mega-bestseller. It almost never works! But the same can be said of hitting home runs too, but that doesn’t stop batters from swinging for the fences, because that’s the ballgame, isn’t it?
Here, I don’t know if Megan’s publisher realized their out-of-the-park dreams. But I definitely think that she put a great swing on the ball with YOU WILL KNOW ME, and that’s really all an author can do. I firmly believe that mega-bestsellerdom is a publishing achievement–that is, a business success–not a writing one. Plenty of wonderfully executed commercial novels don’t find a sizable audience; plenty of crap is comfortably ensconced on lofty bestseller-list perches. To place a book high up the list, at least a few people need to have done awfully good jobs of something, but those people don’t always have to include the author.
Have enjoyed Meg Abbott’s other work; cannot recommend this one.
A shocking look at how far parents will go to push their kids to succeed in competitive sports, from withholding food to administering adolescence-delaying drugs such that one girl “still has her baby teeth at twelve.” A page-turning thriller with a horrifying whodunit twist, my only complaint was that it ended a little abruptly and I wanted a tiny bit more resolution. 4.9 stars, highly recommended. This thriller will have you thinking about the plot and characters long after the book is finished.
Creepy in the best possible way this one drew me in from the get go. I was almost nervous reading this the dread was so palpable.
I just loved the way it gripped me from the first page to the last
Never did I think the world of competitive gymnastics could be the focal point of such a powerful family drama. With flawlessly flawed characters revealing their deepest secrets with every turn of the page, I raced to the end of this uniquely twisted novel.