The less you know, the better.
"We all make mistakes, right? And almost never see the fallout coming."
— Ivy
Years ago, Ivy, Mateo and Cal spontaneously cut school and had the best day of their lives. Years of friendship followed, but then they drifted apart.
Now, with each of them dreading the day ahead for a different reason, they run into each other again and decide to recreate that day.
Out in Boston, they see a classmate who definitely shouldn't be there and follow him on impulse... right into a murder scene.
Each of them has a connection to the victim. And each of them has something to hide...
You'll Be the Death of Me is a 2021 standalone from Karen M. McManus, the author of One of Us is Lying.
Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: Averted, in contrast to other novels by McManus. It's lampshaded near the end how much simpler things might have been if the trio had just gone to an adult straight away.
- Afraid of Needles: Ivy faints at the sight of needles. When she finds Brian dead, it's not until she sees the needle he was killed with that she passes out.
- An Aesop: Actions have consequences beyond what you intended. When that happens, it's better to just tell someone.
- Berserk Button: Cal can get nasty when it's pointed out that his Student/Teacher Romance is unhealthy and abusive. This seems to be denial, as he eventually admits the relationship was toxic.
- Big Secret: Cal, Ivy and Mateo all have one.
- Cal is seeing Ms. Jamison, his art teacher, who uses the studio where Brian was murdered.
- Mateo's cousin Autumn is dealing Oxycontin to pay for her aunt's osteoarthritis medicine. The Oxy is from a stash she, Brian and Charlie found and stole.
- Ivy was responsible for the accident that lost Mateo's mother her bowling alley.
- The Chain of Harm: True to the Aesop about unintended consequences, plenty of characters have done small, innocent or petty things that have had far-reaching consequences they didn't intend.
- When he, Ivy and Mateo were friends, Cal found a bag of candy with a note from Mateo asking Ivy on a date. Afraid of being edged out, or forced to take sides in a breakup, he hid both, hoping they'd just carry on as normal. However, predictably, both of them thought they'd been ghosted and the friendship ended anyway.
- Some months previously, Ivy's brother Daniel swapped her speech notes for a steamy extract of a romance novel. Already nervous about public speaking, she panicked and ended up reading it out onstage. She's sure this made the school think of her as a joke and caused her to lose the senior class president election to Brian "Boney" Mahoney, who only ran as a joke.
- Shortly after her brother's prank, Ivy tried to get even by putting baby oil on a bowling lane, hoping he'd slip and embarrass himself. Unfortunately, another boy slipped instead and hurt himself, resulting in the bowling alley's owner - Mateo's mother - being sued and losing the business.
- After Mateo's mother loses her bowling alley, his cousin Autumn starts dealing Oxycontin to pay for her aunt's osteoarthritis medicine.
- Drugs Are Bad: Some characters dealing Oxycontin forms a major driving force of the plot, and the book does not screw around with what a problem this is. Ivy's mother is about to receive a prestigious award for her part in a recent report about opioid abuse, and when Mateo confesses that his cousin Autumn is dealing Oxy he gets a serious What the Hell, Hero? from Cal about how bad Oxy addiction is for not telling anyone. At the end, Mateo's mother makes him and Autumn volunteer in a shelter, helping people suffering from drug addiction, to make sure they get the message.
- Extremely Short Timespan: All but the last three chapters take place over the course of a single day.
- Foreshadowing:
- In Mateo's first chapter, his family is clearly in a tough financial spot, and his cousin is clearly up to something he finds shady. She's dealing Oxycontin from a stash she, Brian and Charlie found which is the motive for Brian's murder.
- Cal's skittishness about who he's seeing is because he's seeing Ms. Jamison, his art teacher, who uses the studio where Brian was murdered.
- Mateo's flashback to meeting Ms. Jamison while out with his father. The focus is on his humiliation when his father makes a lewd comment that she hears, but at the end it turns out that his father's the mysterious "D" she's been seeing.
- Girlfriend in Canada: Played with. Ivy doesn't bother telling the boys about her holiday romance with a Scottish guy called Angus McFarland, because it sounds too made up and would come off like this trope.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: In the very last chapter, Mateo and Ivy find out that Ms. Jamison is Mateo's father's new fiancée, clearly using him to further her Villain with Good Publicity campaign. The last line of the novel indicates they're going to war.Ivy: We're going scorched earth.
- Not Good with Rejection: Mateo tends to freeze in the face of rejection. An early chapter establishes that his most recent relationship might have been saved if he'd been willing to fight for it, but as soon as she mentioned breaking up he just shut down. When Cal intercepted the candy and note he left for Ivy, both of them felt they'd been ghosted, and both let the friendship go rather than say anything.Mateo: Whatever. No one likes rejection. That's science.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Neither Ivy nor her brother Daniel have been allowed to forget that time he switched her speech notes with an extract from their romance novelist aunt's latest book.
- Running Gag: When the trio first skipped school, Cal just wanted to go to the aquarium and see penguins. He says it so wistfully Ivy and Mateo keep bringing it up.
- A Tragedy of Impulsiveness:
- Cal, Ivy and Mateo could each do with a day off, so when they happen to run into each other they decide to skip school together. This leads to them spotting Brian also cutting and following him, which leads to them discovering his body.
- When the trio find Brian dead, Ivy faints at the sight of the needle. Hearing sirens, Cal and Mateo flee with an unconscious Ivy. It's only when she wakes up that they acknowledge that what they did was a crime.
- In the backstory, Ivy impulsively poured baby oil on a bowling lane to humiliate her brother Daniel in revenge for a prank on her. Instead another boy slipped, got injured and his parents sued the bowling alley until it closed. Ivy, who was abroad when the lawsuit happened, didn't hear what happened because of her actions until the lawsuit was over.
- Student/Teacher Romance: The "Lara" Cal is in a relationship with is his art teacher, a.k.a. Ms Jamison. Their relationship hasn't become sexual yet, but is clearly heading that way. He's in love, but she's just playing with him - and at least one other - behind her fiancé's back.
- Suspicious Spending: Ivy's brother Daniel and Autumn's boyfriend Gabe are suspected of involvement in a drug ring for being able to buy new sneakers and a muscle car, respectively, despite having a low-paying job and no job at all. Gabe is guilty, but Daniel just bought used sneakers, which understandably cost less.
- Villain with Good Publicity:
- Lara Jamison is a teacher who was cheating on her fiancé with a student and another guy. When the fiancé finds out and tries to frame her for murder, she's perfectly happy for Ivy to take the fall, purely because she doesn't like her. When her fiancé catches her trying to flee town and plans to just kill her, she talks him into a plan to kill Cal and Ivy and run off together. After being arrested, she's able to explain everything away and trade off the information she has on her fiancé's drug ring. At the end, she's on the verge of becoming a Karma Houdini - but not if Ivy has anything to say about it.
- Her fiancé, Coach Kendall, is a trusted public figure who's running a drug ring on the side. When some of his product is stolen he kills one of the thieves and tries to frame his cheating fiancée. When that fails, he goes to Plan B which involves framing her for the drug ring instead and framing Ivy for her murder.
