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Did I Say You Could Go: A Novel Kindle Edition
When Ruth, a wealthy divorcée, offers to host the Hillside Academy kindergarten meet-and-greet, she hopes this will be a fresh start for her and her introverted daughter, Marley. Finally, they’ll be accepted into a tribe. Marley will make friends and Ruth will be welcomed by the mothers. Instead, the parents are turned off by Ruth’s ostentatious wealth and before kindergarten even begins, Ruth and Marley are outcasts.
The last guest to arrive at the meet-and-greet is Gemma, a widow and a single mother to her daughter, Bee. Ruth sets her sights on the mother-daughter duo, and soon the two families are inseparable. Ruth takes Gemma and Bee on Aspen vacations, offers VIP passes to Cirque du Soleil, and pays for dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants. For Gemma, who lives paycheck to paycheck, Ruth’s largesse is seductive, but as the years go by, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s accruing an increasingly unpayable debt. When Ruth’s affair with a married Hillside dad is exposed, and she’s publicly shunned, Gemma uses it to sever ties with Ruth.
Six years later, when Gemma finds herself embroiled in a scandal of her own—Ruth comes to her defense. Their renewed friendship rehabilitates their reputations, but once again, Gemma starts to feel trapped as Ruth grows more and more obsessed with their relationship.
A relentless page-turner, Did I Say You Could Go is the story of friendships steeped in lies and duplicity. It’s about two families who, when pushed to extremes, cross the line with devastating results.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSimon & Schuster
- Publication dateAugust 3, 2021
- File size4275 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Chillingly perfect . . . a suspense-filled winner." —PEOPLE
“Suspenseful. . . excellent. . . there’s catfishing, sabotage and other dirty dealings. . .Gideon delivers the goods.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"A novel steeped in suspense . . . like a string quartet passing the melody around . . . propelling readers through the pages." —BOOKLIST
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Is that her ex? Over there by the apples? In the faded Red Sox baseball cap pulled down low over her eyes?
Ruth Thorne ducks behind a banana display. The last time she saw her BFF was over a year ago at Rite Aid. Ruth had run in to get some dental picks, and there was Gemma waiting in line at the pharmacy. Ruth hid that time, too, in the toothpaste aisle, hoping she’d overhear the pharmacist murmur the name of Gemma’s medication. All she discovered was her co-pay was fifteen dollars.
A wave of déjà vu rolls over Ruth. Did she dream this moment into reality? She’s thought of nothing but Gemma for the last week and now here she is, practically trembling with anxiety as her hand dips into the pile of Galas, searching for the unbruised gems.
Ruth gets out her phone and refreshes the San Francisco Chronicle’s home page. The article is still the number one most-read story and has 998 comments. With Gemma standing only twenty or so feet away from her, she reads it anew, as if through Gemma’s eyes. Has she been obsessively refreshing the page for the last week like Ruth?
Study Right, Oakland and Test Prep Center, Involved in Cheating Scandal
Gemma Howard, the owner of Study Right, claims she had no idea that one of her most popular tutors, Julie Winters (Harvard, BA English, 2017), had a profitable side business taking SAT and ACT tests for nine of her clients.
Gemma rolls her cart down the produce aisle and stops at the nectarines. Ruth knows her favorite variety are the Diamond Brights, but they’ve come and gone already; she’ll have to settle for the Honey Blazes. Gemma tears a plastic bag off the roll and tries to open it, biting her lip in frustration. Finally, she licks her finger, and the edges of the bag separate. Gemma glances up, doing a quick check. Has she been made?
Ruth squats, her heart thumping wildly. Quads firing, she continues reading the article.
“?‘Julie Winters was a sole operator. A bad actor,’ said Howard. ‘I was shocked to find out she’d been running this kind of scam.’?”
Ruth mouths Gemma’s words silently. I was shocked. Julie Winters had pled guilty. And even though Gemma had been cleared of all wrongdoing, attendance at her test prep center had declined by nearly 50 percent.
Ruth skims the latest comments.
What a disgusting little cheat. Of course she was in on it.
Lying scum. Burn the place down.
She’s got a daughter. Whattya wanna bet her SAT scores are off the chart hahaha.
Bitch. She should be thrown in jail.
Jail? That’s taking it a little too far. Still, Ruth can’t help the smile that creeps across her face.
Comeuppance. She’s always loved that word. Gemma Howard is finally feeling what it’s like to be exiled from a community. To be publicly pilloried, just as she’d been, seven years ago, when Gemma and her daughter, Bee, turned their backs on Ruth and her daughter, Marley. Tossed them aside like they were strangers. Like they hadn’t been allied since that long-ago kindergarten meet and greet party that Ruth hosted at her house. Gemma was a widow and Ruth was divorced. They were the only single moms in the class and they’d bonded instantly. Within months, they were like family. They became each other’s emergency contacts. They spent Thanksgivings and Christmases together. They were inseparable until the girls were in third grade, and then Ruth hooked up with Mr. Mann on Tinder.
Mr. Mann was irresistible. A Stanford linguistics professor. Erudite and incredibly fit. He told her he did the Bar Method three times a week; she liked his long, lean muscles. They’d slept together twice before Ruth discovered Mr. Mann’s true identity: Barry Egan, father of Chance Egan, a boy in Marley’s class, very much married with three children, a wealthy contractor with a thesaurus in his back pocket. His opening gambit? Did she know the etymology of the word obsequious? No, she had not.
At the same time Ruth had discovered Mr. Mann’s identity, his wife, Sal, discovered hers. The news spread like a virus through the Momonymous pods. Momonymous was an anonymous app for mothers. In order to participate, you either had to start a mom pod (taking on the role of moderator) or be invited to join. The pods were similar to sororities, each with its own rituals and vetting processes. Members were rabid about hiding their true identities. The moderator knew who was in the group, but once the members chose a username, she was in the dark, just like everybody else. The anonymity allowed for uninhibited speech. That was the whole point of Momonymous.
In the best of cases, pods shared tips and complimented children, mothers, and teachers. In the worst of cases, the pods were cruel. They gossiped about the mothers who hadn’t been invited to join (Ruth!). About the scapegoats, the mean girls, who got their period first. Many of the pods were basically cabals. Cabals that threw Ruth Thorne to the ground and ripped out her throat.
Ruth had begged Gemma to see her side of it. Mr. Mann had lied. He said he was single and did the Bar Method (in retrospect that was a glaring red flag—how had she missed that?). And what about his accountability? He pursued her. Why was she being slut shamed? Why did he get off scot-free?
Gemma didn’t abandon them all at once. She and Bee pulled away slowly, which in the end was more painful.
Gemma leaves the produce aisle and disappears around the corner. A minute later, Ruth follows her. She’s picked up her pace, trotting past the cereal, the cleaning supplies, the toilet paper, the soda. Ruth has to walk briskly to keep up with her. Finally, Gemma makes an abrupt turn into the wine and liquor aisle and puts four large bottles of Woodbridge sauvignon blanc into her cart.
Ruth refreshes the page again. Nine hundred and ninety-nine comments. One thousand. Ding! Ding! Ding! “Buy low” is Ruth’s tenet. She sends Gemma a text.
Come to dinner Saturday night. xx
Ruth can hear Gemma’s phone chime, even though it’s buried in her bag. A clarion call straight from the Hobbit soundtrack; she’s had the same text alert for years. Gemma doesn’t pick up her phone but she startles at the sound of the notification. She hurriedly joins a line, readjusting her baseball hat so it covers her eyes completely.
I bet she wishes she could go back to the Shire, Ruth thinks.
Product details
- ASIN : B08LDWZD83
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster (August 3, 2021)
- Publication date : August 3, 2021
- Language : English
- File size : 4275 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 363 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #629,856 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,077 in Women's Psychological Fiction
- #1,716 in Domestic Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- #3,246 in Domestic Thrillers (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Melanie Gideon is the bestselling author of Valley of the Moon, Wife 22, and The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After, as well as three young adult novels. Wife 22 has been translated into 31 languages and is currently in development with Working Title Films. She was born and raised in Rhode Island and now lives in the Bay Area with her husband and son. Please visit her website at www.melaniegideon.com.
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Ruth, a wealthy divorcée, is hosting the school welcome event and she aims to impress. She is desperate for a friend. She gloms on to Gemma, a widow, who is struggling financially. Ruth imagines that she’ll be able to lure a friendship for her daughter with Gemma with extravagant vacations, events, and dinners. But things don’t always turn out as you wish. Gemma finds herself embroiled in a scandal of her own.
Lies, twists, unlikeable characters. That about sums it up. As if you needed anything more.
Did I Say You Could Go is a story about a friendship filled with obsession, lies and deception, between two mothers whose daughters are also friends, told from all four different perspectives.
Gemma Howard is a widower, a popular mom who runs a test prep center. She's fiercely devoted to her daughter Bee. She's not rich, but they scrape by. Bee Howard is popular, outgoing and a bit of a rebel.
Ruth Thorne is elegant and classy. She doesn't work - she inherited a lot of money from her grandparents. She's divorced and has one daughter, Marley, who's very shy and quiet and would rather do homework than go out.
When Ruth throws a party for her daughter and the incoming group of kindergartners and parents at Hillside Academy, she alienates most of the parents there. She finally meets Gemma and holds on tight. Soon the four are like family, going on trips and out to dinner - all of which Ruth pays for.
When the girls are in third grade, Ruth has an affair with a married man. Instead of coming to her defense, Gemma uses this as an opportunity to start to pull away. She's always been uncomfortable that Ruth pays for everything.
Six years later, it's Gemma who is caught in the scandal. Ruth comes along once again to save her. Or does she have something else in mind?
I really enjoyed this book. The ending I did not see coming at all. I liked how the author incorporated issues affecting people today - social media, cyberbullying, depression. I will add that there is one scene that could be a Trigger Warning for some.
I also have to address that it's really quite ironic that I've seen other reviews rate this book lower because of the character of Ruth. So as not to spoil anything, I'll just say the author did exceedingly well what she set out to do.
I would probably rate this 4 - 4.5. I look forward to reading more from Melanie Gideon. I would recommend this book to fans of psychological thrillers, women's fiction, Liane Moriarty and Greer Hendricks.