pages: 226
read: 11/7-10/2019
book: 63 in 2019
When George first met her, she was an eighteen-year-old college freshman from Sweetgum, Florida. She and George became inseparable in their first fall semester, so George was devastated when he got the news that she had committed suicide over Christmas break. But, as he stood in the living room of the girl's grieving parents, he realized the girl in the photo on their mantelpiece - the one who had committed suicide - was not his girlfriend. Later, he discovered the true identity of the girl he had loved - and of the things she may have done to escape her past.
Now, twenty years later, she's back, and she's telling George that he's the only one who can help her...
MY THOUGHTS
well, you gotta give it to the man.
the title was very well fitting. i was wondering how that was going to work and i gotta say, i like what he did with it.
now,...
this book. i don't know man.
there was something about this book. like, i liked it but i wanted to hate it but that fucking ending man.
i don't know.
i usually love his open to interpretation endings but this was one was, i don't know. too much? not enough? too inconclusive? i want to know how it was done!
George was such a doofus. you cant really blame him but there were several times i wanted to smack this man over the head with anything readily available to me just to snap him the fuck out of whatever dumb shit he was thinking at the moment.
i was fighting this story for some reason. and now that I'm done i think it was because i somehow knew that i wasn't going to be TOO crazy about it.
also! i didn't look for spoilers. so i really did not know what to expect. and if you know me by now, you know i LOVE spoilers. love them!!!!
i did good for a while, anyway. and then i did look and i could not find anything about it!
gah! maybe because this is back from 2014? i don't know. this is his first book so maybe it wasnt a big hit? compared to his newer books (my fave!) i feel like this one could have been polished and sealed a little bit better.
but anyway, i didn't hate the book. i can tell you that i definitely wont be re-reading this one. at least that's how i feel about it now. i don't hate it but it just, uuuh!!! it irks me.
like all other people have said before me, you can tell this was his first book. he's only gotten better since. but this book! there is just something off about it.
i don't know.
ill leave it at this because i don't really know what else to say....other than after this read and the one coming out next year, I'm basically all caught up and that makes me sad.
jump on over for spoilers!
thanks for reading!
lets not make this one long.
Liana "was" Audrey.
Audrey didn't want to go to college but her parents were making her and Liana couldn't go because she did not have any money at all. so they struck up a deal and Liana would go for Audrey while Audrey took off to be with her boyfriend.
L goes to college. meets George, they fall in love, break comes they go their separate ways, classes start up again....turns out Audrey committed suicide. (the real Audrey not Liana. see below.)
George finds out and goes to Florida to look for her.
he ends up finding out that the Audrey he knew was not the Audrey who killed herself.
he's poking around cause he wants to find her and he learns that his Audrey was actually Liana. he finds out where she lives, he goes to her house and gets threatened.
he goes back to his motel and she calls him. lets him know that they can meet up and she will tell him the truth.
they meet up, she tells him their plan and she tells him that when she came back Audrey wanted to switch back like if she could just pick up school where Liana left off and nobody would notice.
she said that Audrey was pretty fucked up, they drove to Auds house to get her car and she guesses that she might have fallen asleep behind the wheel.
George is all "oh, okay <3"
ugh.
L lets him know that she will go see him at his hotel room the next day.
she never show up.
instead, its the cop who is trying to find her.
he lets her now that there's now a 2nd arrest warrant out for L. now this time for the murder of her father. (he was a gambling man and owed a shit load of money. and because he couldn't pay the bookies back, they struck up a deal where Liana would preform sexual favors in order to cancel out her fathers debt. so yea, maybe she killed him out of anger for being a shitty father but she also probably did it so that the bookies wouldn't hurt him much worse once she knew she had to flee.)
George is all "okay..." but goes back to college and he's been looking for her ever since. he knows shes out there somewhere.
hes out having drinks with Irene one night when he finally sees her.
he goes home, comes back, they talk.
she tells him that she stole like 5 billion dollars or some shit from some dude and she needs his help to return it because he's on the verge of killing her.
he agrees.
he returns the money and the dude is all okay but where is she and that's where George learns that the dude who beat the shit out of him is in fact not a dude employed by the dude who Liana stole money from. (the guy who originally beat the fuck out of George is actually in cahoots with Liana!)
anyway, the next day, the guy who got his money back is dead.
and now the cops are all George, wtf did you do. ....and even under oath or whatever the fuck, this idiot is still covering for L even though he basically now knows she's a dumb conniving bitch. a bad bitch. and i don't mean that in any good way.
THE PLAN
Liana needed George to return the money to homeboy so homeboy could open his safe. in the safe were some diamonds that are worth a shit load of money. when homeboy opened the safe, he was killed by the dude pretending to be one of his guards. his name is Bernie so lets call him that from now on so we dont get confused. (bernie is the guys who is in cahoots with Liana) she set it all up so that she would be the "good one" and George would basically be at fault.
then the next step was to make it seem like Bernie was doing this all on his own so he "kidnapped" Liana then George along with 2 other dead people that i wont mention because its already too much....(the meth head whos house they were using as a cover and the diamond dead man's niece i think)
Bernie takes them into the ocean where hes going to dump the bodies.
Liana tells him that she has a knife in the loop of her underwear to get it out and cut himself free. he offers to do her first but she says no.
she tells him to hurry up. that there is a gun in a box just up above them and if he can get to it, he can shoot Bernie and save them both.
so he works on himself and gets free meanwhile Bernie gets Liana ties a cylinder block to her and eventually dumps her over the boat.
he then continues to dump the other 2 bodies.
George is all fuck I'm next!
he manages to untie himself, get to the box thing and get the gun to point it at Bernie.
Bernie just laughs and tells him that there is no ammo in it (when Liana told George about the gun she told him to act quick because he'd try to talk him out of it.)
George shoots, Bernie is dead. (im assuming that yes, Liana & Bernie are in it together, but Liana is a total bitch so she takes Bernie out through George so that shes once again in the clear. honestly, after everything that she did, shes pretty smart).
George gets his shit together, turns the boat on, around and ends up running into another boat.
they call the coast guard, cops come, they interview him, they let him go.
they still question him
and the only cop that believes him asks him once more.
he retells the entire story and she believes him still but its kinda hard because of course, they found 2 diamonds in his dresser (that obvs Liana planted the night they spent the night together.)
in the prologue its about him finding a book and in it a post card to Tulum.
so the ending is of him leaving to Canada to catch a flight to Tulum to find her because he knows that she is alive. he flies from Canada to avoid getting arrested in the US because hes been told that he's basically at fault since everything is stacked against him.
and that's it.
gah!
read chapter 26. it details the entire story better than i could. you get the whole book explained to you in one chapter.
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