You Will Know Me

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.Paula Hawkins, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

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.New York Times

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.Chicago Tribune

What puts flesh on the bones of Abbott's flying cheetah of suspense is her insight into parenting, marriage and various sorts of interpersonal rivalry, here embodied in Katie and Eric Knox, their hugely talented daughter, Devon, their sweet younger son, Drew . . . "Why do you always leave me by myself?" wonders her little son, continually abandoned in the car, in the bleachers, or at home. Good question, kid. The complexity of the answer is what lifts Abbott above other writers in this genre, making her something of a Stephen King, whose work hangs right on the edge of the literary while making your skin crawl.Newsday