I Know You Know: A Novel

In I Know What You Know, Cody Swift’s best friends, Charlie and Scott, were murdered over twenty years ago when they were about ten. A man was convicted and sent to prison for the murders, but Cody is not convinced he was the actual perpetrator. He returns to his hometown and starts a podcast to try to uncover new evidence. The police handled it poorly back then so there are a lot of loose ends. Most people seem willing to find the truth, except for the lead detective, John Fletcher, and Charlie’s mom, Jess. Cody will have to overcome a lot of obstacles to find the truth, but sometimes the truth is just what we make it out to be and looks can be deceiving.

I gave this book what might appear to be a so-so rating, mostly because I was conflicted about how I felt it went. The characters were incredibly flawed and interesting, but more time was spent on them and the lies they are telling than actually getting to the bottom of the case the whole book was about. In the end, I could not even tell who actually perpetrated the crime as it was quickly glossed over in favor of showing you how terrible everyone was who was involved. So I enjoyed the character development, but it came at the expense of making the story clear. That made it feel a bit unfinished to me.

I’ve never read any other books by Gilly Macmillan, so I don’t know if this is typically how she writes books. I would imagine if you like her other ones, you would most likely enjoy this one. I’m not quite sure why there is a picture of a woman on the front since most main characters are male and the woman pictured is way younger than Jess is. Maybe that is the true mystery to be solved here.