REVIEW: Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott

Hello, everyone!

Before I start my review, I just wanted to make a quick little introduction, since this is my first post! My name is Kristen. I’m a 23-year-old from New England with a degree in English, and I have had a love for books, reading, and writing since I can remember. This blog is intended to be a more in-depth version of my bookstagram, @bookishkristen, plus some little extra lifestyle blogging as I see fit! I’m pretty much a jack of all trades when it comes to my reading interests, but recently I’ve been gravitating toward women-centric reads and short story collections. Since Halloween is right around the corner, I’ve been looking into some spookier versions of these genres, and GIVE ME YOUR HAND is certainly a bit of a creepy, psychological thriller that will get you in the mood for fall.

A friend of mine recommended that I start reading Megan Abbott, so one day as I was browsing the “new fiction” shelves at the front of my town library, GIVE ME YOUR HAND immediately caught my eye.

GIVE ME YOUR HAND by Megan Abbott

RATING: ★★★★☆

SIMILAR READS: THE GIRLS by Emma Cline, GIRLS ON FIRE by Robin Wasserman, TIPS FOR LIVING by Reneé Shafransky.

She had done this thing to me, burdened me with this vile, howling thing. And now it shuddered in me always and I’d felt I might have to live with it forever. I was right.

Kit Owens is a scientist at the famed Dr. Severin’s lab, vying for a position on her team to investigate the mysterious disease that haunts (cis) women: PMDD, or premenstrual dysmorphic disorder, a severe form of premenstrual syndrome that forces women to be irritable, depressed, and pained. In extreme cases, PMDD has caused women to hallucinate and even forced them to be violent. Kit prides herself in being the one other woman in the lab, and devotes her life to her work, spending most of her day doing research; the first one to get to the lab in the morning and the last to leave at night.

But Kit is harboring a dark secret about her former best friend, Diane Fleming. In high school, the pair were inseparable: both had ambitions of becoming scientists and one day working with Dr. Severin, pushing each other to succeed so that one day, their ambitions would come true. But Diane’s secret shattered their relationship forever.

As the day of the team selection approaches, Dr. Severin announces a newcomer to the lab: Diane. And with her return into Kit’s life, she begins worrying for her own safety, not only in a physical sense, but in a professional sense: Diane was always one step ahead of Kit, just a tiny bit smarter, a tiny bit faster…and if Diane’s secret doesn’t take her down, Diane will herself.

I have read few women-centric books where the protagonist is a woman in science (I didn’t include this in the similar reads section because this isn’t a thriller, but if you are looking for more “women in STEM” reads, DAPHNE by Will Boast is excellent), and this adds such an extra element to this story. Kit experiences a lot of sexism in the office, which is not too surprising, even when the lab deals with a (cis) woman-centric topic such as PMDD. Dr. Severin, Kit, and Diane are all similarly ruthless in their claiming of the male-dominated space, and we see how that’s perceived as ruthless, cold, and unfeminine throughout the novel, but it isn’t meant to be a marker of how evil or bad any of the characters are: it’s merely an added dimension to the already complex and thrilling narrative that is unfolding with Kit and Diane’s secret colliding in a literal and physical way.

Highly recommend GIVE ME YOUR HAND, and I think I may be on a bit of a Megan Abbott kick now, at least during the spookier months…;)

Thanks for reading, and until next time, fellow bookies!