Another brilliant novel by Megan Abbott. This is a tail of obsession and grief set within the competitive gymnastics world. highly recommend

Megan Abbott is a prolific writer and I genuinely enjoy her books. Some not always as good as others that keep my senses ticking over.

I loved the plot, I don’t have to like characters to enjoy the book or not so this made it quite angst as the parenting was really staked out to annoy I think! I was just disappointed in the parents and disturbed which made more fascination for me and my warped mind!

The plot was good but didn’t bounce me off my chair to any heights!

Was good though.

This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

Omg talk about a roller coaster read wow this book kept me on the edge of my seat threw out I just couldn't put it down this writer keeps you hooked and once your hooked your not letting go I found this book thrilling the characters were fantastic and well thought out and the little clues all the way threw keep you guessing until the end this book stays with you long after you close the book this book is well worth the read I promise you wont be disappointed

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

You will Know Me by Megan Abbott explores the world of teenage girls in the competitive arena of gymnastics. A tale of obsession, this is a very gripping story.

Devon is a 15 year old gymnastics prodigy. Naturally talented, fierce, determined and fearless, she is on track to one day compete at Olympic level.
Parents Katie and Eric are mesmerised by their daugter’s talent and plough every penny they can into her career. 10 year old brother Drew is a studious easy going boy who is dragged along to the gym for endless training sessions and hours of practice week after week. Devon’s career is the sole focus of their family and everyone fully believes Devon will reach Olympic potential with their support and backing.
Coach T is determined to get Devon to Elite and then Olympic level. A clear cut track for her career is planned out and Devon is given the full support of the coaching team and the team of financial backers who feed their money into the gym to ensure the gymnasts have only the best equipment and the best staff available.

When a terrible accident ends with the loss of a life within the gymnastics community, tensions are high and gossip is rife. Grief tears the little community apart and whispers of secrets and lies result threaten to destroy the focus of the girls in the run up to their upcoming regionals.

Devon’s parents desperately try to keep her career on track; to not allow the distractions of the accident ruin Devon’s chances. But as rumours swirl about the accident, Katie starts to realise just how much jealousy there is over Devon’s talent and struggles to protect her daughter.
Through all of this, Katie finds a few home truths about her own family. Husband Eric is so determined to get Devon to Olympic level that he signs up to join the team of financial backers who support Devon and her gym. As more of his time is spent planning fundraising events, meetings and equipment, he is swallowed by determination and the need to do everything he can for his daughter.
Drew patiently spends his evenings and weekends waiting in the stands, doing homework there and keeping himself to himself knowing that Devon’s career comes first. He sees and hears everything but is overlooked by his parents as their focus lies on Devon.

You Will Know Me did not sound like my kind of book at all. I didn’t expect to enjoy it at all but I was pleasantly surprised! The subject is not to my interest at all so I wasn’t expecting to be sucked into this book so easily.

The book is really well written and the characters are all well established and developed. We learn everything just at the right time and you can imagine their personalities and mannerisms. I think I expected a book written solely about Devon’s career but the book actually turns into more of a whodunnit as the gym community swarms with rumours, secrets and lies about the accident.

A really enjoyable read full of secrets and rumours in a community which is rife with support and jealousy alike.

A big thank you to NetGalley, Megan Abbott and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am afraid that I did not really connect with the characters in this book. Nothing came as a real surprise and the book just left me a bit disappointed.

First time reading anything from this author. Will definitely read more of their work. Great suspense.

I was completely gripped by this story and thought the quality of writing was of a really high standard. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Thank you.

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.

Nope, not for me. I didn't warm to this at all - terrible premise; awful characters and too predictable.

The novel centers on Devon Knox, a 16-year-old gymnastics prodigy. Everyone one around her wants to help her to succeed, from her coach who dreams to take her to the Olympics to the other gymnasts who want to be like her and their parents who wishes their children were like Devon. Her family is the one who works harder: her mother Katie drives her to practice and competitions, her father Eric is at the head of the parents’ booster and spend his nights talking tactics with her coach, and her brother Drew is a smart boy who is neglected by his parents but knows everything that is going on in their lives. The mysterious death of one close to them unravels secrets and lies within the family that risks to ruin everything they worked for. The story is told from Katie’s point of view and the author does an amazing job in describing her feelings, her fears, and her suspicions and in portraying her struggle as a mother to protect her daughter and to find out the truth. The characters are very complex and, until the end, you never know who is telling the truth. I liked how Megan Abbott perfectly captures the world of teenage girls, a world of confusion, jealousy, love and sex. Full of tension and suspense, this is one of these novels that make you feel a bit uneasy because you know something terrible is about to happen and yet you can’t stop reading.

This is a story about a young girl with a talent for gymnastics which takes over the lives of the whole family. A very thought provoking story, would the child have chosen that life if not driven by the parents, probably not. It happens with prodigies in all sports, more glory for the parents than the child, a lifetime of commitment for a moment of glory. I found this a very sad book.

This is a modern fictional story. Katie and Eric have a teenage daughter Devon who has great gymnastic talent. They spend every penny they have on her coaching as she could be heading for the Olympics. When a young, local man Ryan is killed in a hit and run, everyone suspects Hailey his girlfriend. She is a trainer at the gym and the head coach's niece. The death affects everyone in the gymnastic community and gossip is rife. Katie begins to think that there is more to Ryan's death but is afraid to delve too deep. When secrets and lies are discovered, can Katie deal with the truth? I didn't enjoy the ending but the story held my interest.

A good, suspense filled dark thriller.

Good read if you are from a gymnastics back ground! I did finish this as i wanted to find out the mystery. Wouldn't recommend otherwise

When pushy is an understatement... 5 stars

Devon Knox has spent all her young life becoming a gymnast, her eyes firmly fixed on the ultimate prize of reaching the elite levels in her sport, perhaps even the Olympics. Her parents, Katie and Eric, have supported her every step of the way, making huge sacrifices of time and money to get her the best training, and organising the family's lives around her needs. She's worked with Coach T for years and has total confidence in him. Now she's a couple of months away from competing to reach Senior Elite level. But a hit-and-run accident that kills a young man connected to the gym disrupts her training schedule, and when there begins to be suspicion that Ryan's death might not have been accidental after all, the repercussions ripple out to threaten the stability of her family and of the whole community of budding gymnasts and parents attached to the gym.

Oh, how I love the way Megan Abbott writes about teenage girls! She takes us to the dark heart of them, where hormones play their twisted games, where innocence and sexuality crash head on, where everything is so intense it can feel like euphoria and despair are the only two possible states of being.

In her last few books, Abbott has told her stories through the eyes of her girls, but in this one it is Katie, the mother, whose perspective we share, though the story is told in the third person. Katie and Eric have convinced themselves they are not like the other parents, driving their children to achieve their own dreams for them. They believe it is Devon, has always been Devon, who is utterly dedicated to her sport, and that they have simply supported her. But the reader is not so sure – pressure comes in different forms, and Devon surely knows how proud her parents are to have a child they repeatedly refer to as 'exceptional'. Young Drew, Devon's little brother, certainly knows that his needs always take a back-seat, but that's how it's always been and mostly he accepts it philosophically.

In Dare Me, Abbott showed the extreme lengths to which girls would go to get on the cheerleading team. Here she does the same with gymnastics, revealing the physical and psychological costs of reaching the elite levels. Not just building strength and muscle mass, to succeed these girls must remain small and undeveloped – boyish – which in many cases requires delayed puberty. Although it doesn't play a major role in the book, Abbott hints at the methods to which some unscrupulous parents and coaches will go to achieve this. But she also tacitly suggests that the physical training itself might have this effect for the 'lucky' ones. And she takes us into the cruelty of the adolescent world, where other girls are blossoming with femininity, and where Devon's tiny, muscly body and obsessive commitment is derided as freakish. (I suspect Abbott may be overegging the pudding a little, but it's all chillingly credible, and I must admit I've had concerns myself over the years about these young children who compete at the highest levels, ending up often with their careers over before they're barely adults but with a lifetime of pain and surgeries still to come.)

Abbott also shows the parents who form the community around the gym, dedicated to the point of obsession with having their child succeed. We see the support they give each other, but also the jealousies and spite over whose child is going to do best. And when things begin to go wrong, we see how quickly loyalty breaks down in the mad scramble to ensure that their own child's prospects don't suffer, whatever may be happening to the others in the group.

The plot itself is dark indeed, and so well done that, although there are only a few possibilities, I still hadn't decided exactly where it was heading before we got there. Although so much of the book is about extremes, it still feels entirely credible because Abbott develops the psychology of the characters so brilliantly. As things get ever murkier, Katie is forced to reassess how she has behaved as a parent, to both her children, and to find her way through a maze of morally ambiguous choices.

Anyone who has loved Abbott's Dare Me or The End of Everything will almost certainly enjoy this one too. But this is written in an 'adult' voice, so if you have been put off in the past by her teen voices, then this one may work better for you. For me, I think this may be her best yet, and since I loved both those earlier ones, that's high praise indeed. It kept me on the edge of my seat, reading well past midnight and on towards dawn, and the ending left me fully satisfied. One that will certainly appear in my crime book of the year shortlist...

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Pan MacMillan.

The premise of this book was great - the idea of a family obsessed by facilitating their daughter's undoubted gymnastic skill and Olympic aspirations,thrown into freefall when a tragic hit and run accident sends their lives careering to a cliff edge. Deceit and jealousy, .love and desire all play their parts in this story. It is told through Katie's (the mother's) point of view and I have to say I found her a decidedly unlikable character which made spending time with her uncomfortable. I felt the book was compelling but uncomforatble to read and maybe varying the point of view character would have alleviated some of this angst.

It told a story, but the characters were a bit boring and predictable. There wasn’t much excitement to keep me moving from one page to the next, nothing was really keeping me reading this book aside from the fact that it was part of my reading challenge. I could have picked another book but to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of sports books so I decided to stick with this since I had invested so much time in it already.

In terms of the style of the writing, it wasn’t too bad. I would be interested to see the other works of the author to see if this was a one off, because I think it had potential. It just didn’t live up to my standards for a book that had such a specific niche.

You will know me by Megan Abbott.
A very good read with good characters.
A violent hit-and-run accident. Kate and Eric have made their daughter their world. But after the accident which shakes everyone where they live. Kate feels she needs to protect Devon. She doesn't want her getting hurt or distracted. But mother knows best........ doesn't she?
Although a little slow in places I did manage to read it. 4*. Netgalley and pan macmillan.