Rose and Lacie were best friends when they were in high school, until the accident. Rose had been driving around a tricky curve in the dark, a new driver, and lost control of the car. Lacie’s boyfriend Leo was in the passenger seat of the car because they were out looking for Lacie. It was unfortunate that it was Leo’s side of the car that took the most damage. But it was Rose who had walked down the road, in the dark, to find help.
Still, Lacie wouldn’t talk to her after that.
Now, Rose is 30 and moving to Manhattan. After her years at Harvard and then Iowa, she’s decided to move to New York to finish her novel. To be a “real” writer. To be a part of the literary elite. She was crashing on a cousin’s sofa, trying to get a job tutoring rich kids and finishing the latest draft of her novel. She wasn’t expecting to hear from Lacie, but she does.
It turns out that Lacie is dating Ian, an artist who knows Rose from an artists’ retreat where she had been working on her novel and he had been working on his sculptures. They had been friends, and when Ian found out that Lacie knew Rose as a kid, he encouraged her to get back in touch. A quick lunch in the park, a chance encounter at a farmer’s market (well, it would have been chance if Rose hadn’t chosen that area knowing that Lacie lived close by), an impromptu dinner, and Rose finds herself living in the extra room at Lacie’s place.
Lacie is willing to let the past go and try this new friendship. But Rose can’t seem to help herself and slips past boundaries further into Lacie’s life. She looks around Lacie’s bedroom, borrows her clothes, reads her journals. She tries to make friends with Lacie’s friends, tries to figure out what makes Lacie so Lacie. But the more Rose blurs those lines, the more she ends up revealing her true self.
Everyone Knows How Much I Love You is a study of female friendship, of the envy that can rear its ugly head, and how it can destroy a person from the inside out. Author Kyle McCarthy’s debut novel is a deep dive into the darkness that can fester at the heart of a relationship, taking down everyone else in its wake.
I’ll be honest about this book. I was reluctant to read it. I wasn’t looking for literary fiction, for capital A Art. But I picked it up and started reading it anyway. It didn’t take long at all before I was hooked. These characters drew me in to their story, and I couldn’t look away. It was partly the beautiful prose and partly the fascination with these women that kept me hooked into this story deeply until the very end. I loved it. I was moved by it. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a powerful novel of what happens between women in friendship.
Everyone Knows How Much I Love You brought to mind Tara Isabella Burton’s Social Creature, which I also loved. Both of these books get compared to Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and deservedly so. If you are someone who seeks stories about the ways humans try to destroy each other in the name of love or friendship, who is fascinated by the inner workings of the truly envious, who loves to read brilliant fiction about narcissists or sociopaths, then you’ll want to pick up a copy of Everyone Knows How Much I Love You. And you will not be disappointed!
Galleys for Everyone Knows How Much I Love You were provided by Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine through NetGalley, with many thanks.