You Will Know Me

You Will Know Me

2016 • 345 pages

Ratings42

Average rating3.5

15

No. Just no. I keep a running list of books I want to read and Abbott has several entries on it. This book has made me scratch out the other titles. I was physically affected by the endless, relentless, monotonous descriptors and metaphors and adverbs and adjectives - seemingly vomited into the text at random. Scarcely a sentence escapes her 11th grade, look mom and dad, I can write! - I found my calling -writing treatment. In just one novel, how many things can be pink and spattered and meaty and knotted and greasy and shredded and tanned and puckered and rigid and muscled and ponytailed? How many times do we need to discover that Katie's ringtone is Assassin's Tango (we get it, we're not morons!) or how many times do we need to hear that the little gymnasts have powerful legs and perky bottoms and flat chests and taut, glossy ponytails? I just can't with this garbage. And, to top it off, I know that this learned author probably believes and has somehow been reinforced by a smattering of positive reviews, that she has painted a poignant vision of sports parents at the elite level and the endless quest for victory and perfection but, to me, she merely spat out a ridiculous menagerie of characters pockmarked with poorly crafted allusions and allegories and dime-a-dozen descriptions. It added nothing to my reading experience except to leave me simmering with disbelief that this passes for anything that should rise above mass market paperback fame. I hated all of these characters, knew the entire story about 50 pages in and all the “twists” it would take, and just wanted to finish it so I could wallow in it like you do with a movie that is laughably terrible - simply so you can mock it afterward. I hate that this type of schlock can be passed for anything other than a teenage writer's illformed homework. And, finally, I hate that this somehow misses the public gaze of the perpetually offended, as Abbott has managed to pigeonhole her female characters into such offensive caricatures of women and girls that she should honestly have trouble sleeping. I wish scrutinizing eyes would examine this mess and let this author know just what a disaster she has constructed.

May 5, 2019