When I Am Through with You

by Stephanie Kuehn Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

Overview

A gripping story of survival and the razor's-edge difference between perfect cruelty and perfect love.
*
“This isn't meant to be a confession. Not in any spiritual sense of the word. Yes, I'm in jail at the moment. I imagine I'll be here for a long time, considering. But I'm not writing this down for absolution and I'm not seeking forgiveness, not even from myself. Because I'm not sorry for what I did to Rose. I'm just not. Not for any of it.”
*
Ben Gibson is many things, but he's not sorry and he's not a liar. He will tell you exactly about what happened on what started as a simple school camping trip in the mountains. About who lived and who died. About who killed and who had the best of intentions. But he's going to tell you in his own time. Because after what happened on that mountain, time is the one thing he has plenty of.
*
Smart, dark, and twisty, When I Am Through With You will leave readers wondering what it really means to do the right thing.
*

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

05/29/2017
Early on in this relentlessly tense thriller, 17-year-old narrator Ben Gibson reveals that he killed his girlfriend, Rose, and is currently in jail. These revelations do nothing to lessen the suspense of the story that unfolds, which—like Kuehn’s (The Smaller Evil) previous books—delves into the psyches of conflicted and traumatized teens. Ben is less forthcoming about other information, such as the source of his debilitating migraine headaches, which slowly comes to the surface during an orienteering trip with several classmates, including Rosa, and a teacher on a nearby California mountain. The expedition does not go well, and personality clashes and questionable decisions give way to an encounter with a potentially dangerous group of strangers and a freak storm. And one of the teens has a gun. It’s a harrowing story that succeeds in keeping readers off-balance from start to finish as it explores the collision between desire and action in unpredictable physical and psychological landscapes. Ideal for fans of literary thrillers like Paul Griffin’s Adrift or Justine Larbalestier’s My Sister Rosa. Ages 14–up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

"A tense, masterful thriller that gripped me from the first page.”—Kara Thomas, author of The Darkest Corners

“Complex and compelling, When I Am Through With You takes a hard look at the dark intensity boiling beneath the surface of an everyday teenage boy.”—Edgar-Award Winning author Mindy McGinnis

★ "Taut plotting combines with prose that’s by turns delicately plush and trenchantly foulmouthed for a riveting experience. Full of secrets and plot twists, Kuehn’s latest is a satisfying, sophisticated study in complicated relationships."—Kirkus, starred review

"[A] harrowing story that succeeds in keeping readers off-balance from start to finish as it explores the collision between desire and action in unpredictable physical and psychological landscapes.”—Publishers Weekly


Praise for The Smaller Evil
★”Kuehn’s specialty in depicting mental illness and her sharp, quick writing are on display in her latest novel, but it is her satirical integration of New Age hippie rituals with the pseudoscientific jargon of the self-help retreat world that is the most compelling addition. Fans of the author’s work will find familiar material in this book. Readers interested in a Gillian Flynn–style take on cults and self-help retreats will also be intrigued.”—SLJ, starred review

“Suspenseful and enigmatic, bristling with Stephanie Kuehn’s vivid prose and sharp-eyed characterizations, The Smaller Evil kept me guessing till the very last page. I immediately flipped back to the first page to read it again, and so will you.” —Laura Ruby, Michael L. Printz Award winning author of Bone Gap.
 
"The Smaller Evil, with an engaging main character, precise, vivid writing and a continuous rushing train of tensions, is a captivating thriller." —2015 PEN/Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Working Writer Fellowship Judges
 

School Library Journal

07/01/2017
Gr 10 Up—The nightmarish story of a school camping trip gone wrong is told in slow, dread-soaked detail by Ben Gibson, a high school senior who is incarcerated for the murder of his girlfriend, Rose—one of a handful of people who didn't survive the trip. Eight students and their faculty advisor head into the California mountains for a three-day orientation trip, each with emotional baggage, secrets, and motives. They cross paths with a band of squirrelly adults who seem to be protecting a secret of their own, and things go downhill fast. Ben's history of trauma and his continuing abuse and their toll on his psyche are revealed layer by layer as the campers' situation becomes increasingly desperate. These teens are hyperaware of one another's pain and emotional needs, and the dialogue is sophisticated and a bit implausible. But the complicated actions they, especially the girls, take in the name of trying to push and save one another feel honest. Kuehn's trademark direct and taut prose and her unflinching examination of the aftermath of trauma keep the pages turning toward an ending that's muted and explosive, just like Ben. VERDICT A tense survival story and a grim exploration of pain, guilt, and choice. Purchase where the author's thrillers are popular.—Beth McIntyre, Madison Public Library, WI

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-05-10
A multiethnic group of teenagers goes camping on a school trip, but not all of them make it home alive.Ben Gibson, a white teenager, is writing his story from jail. Straight off the bat, he throws readers a curveball with two pieces of crucial information: he loved brown-skinned Rose, his French-Peruvian girlfriend of two years, and he killed her. What follows next is a measured and uncensored narrative leading up to that exact moment. With a disabled mother to care for, Ben doesn't have much hope for the future. The only spot of color in his life is Rose, but lately, their connection has been rocky. When he is asked to help lead a camping trip to the mountains for his school's orienteering club, he embraces the challenge. With Rose and six other classmates in tow, the adventure begins—and quickly falls apart. Bad decisions, questionable motives, and possible fugitives hiding out in the mountain trap the teens in a train wreck readers can't look away from. Hindsight is 20/20 as Ben explores his actions, and the more he reveals, the harder it is to take sides. Taut plotting combines with prose that's by turns delicately plush and trenchantly foulmouthed for a riveting experience. Full of secrets and plot twists, Kuehn's latest is a satisfying, sophisticated study in complicated relationships. (Thriller. 14-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169122817
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

I’m not sure what else to say about Rose. If you know me at all, then I doubt that’s surprising. I suppose I could tell you more about how we got to know each other. How she took me to the inn that afternoon, where we sat outside in the shade of the redwood trees, and I told her how much I liked her shoes—they were made of this bright camel-brown leather and were shinier than anything I’d ever seen. Rose smiled when I said this, pleasing me that I’d pleased her. Plus, she was pretty like her shoes—shiny and rare and right in front of me; I was entranced, watching feverishly as her lips moved and her legs crossed while she rambled on about life with her French-Peruvian parents and dour-faced twin brother, who, she hinted, in a provocative voice, had serious issues of some mysterious nature.

I could tell you how she pined daily for the city she’d left behind. The people. The music. The food. The culture. Being able to see a first-run movie every now and then. Owning the inn might’ve been her parents’ dream, but Rose thought for sure she was going to leave this place someday. The town of Teyber was just a way station on her march to Somewhere, and I supposed I was, too. Rose had plans for college. Graduate school. To be special. Be the best. That’s one way we were different. From my vantage point, there was no hope for escape; I’d reached my zenith, a dim, low-slung, fatherless arc, and had long stopped believing in more.

I could also tell you how, in the two years we dated, Rose was my first everything. First kiss, first touch, first girl to see me naked and lustful without bursting into laughter (although she was the first to do that, too). We did more eventually. We did everything. Whatever she wanted. Rose dictated the rhyme and rhythm of our sexual awakening, and I loved that. I never had to make up my mind when I was with her.

By the way, I have no problem admitting I was nervous as hell the first time we actually did it—both of us offering up our so-called innocence during an awkward Thanksgiving Day fumbling that happened on the floor of the locked linen closet at the inn. For an awful moment, right before, as I hovered above her on the very edge of a promise, I feared I wouldn’t be able to—my ambivalence runs deep—but Rose stayed calm. In her steady, guiding voice, she told me what to do and just how to do it. I was eager to listen. I was eager to be what she needed.

I don’t know. There’s more to say, of course, much more. Two years is a long time in a short life, especially when you’re in high school. But that’s not the Rose anybody wants to read about, is it? Tragedy is infinitely more interesting than bliss. That’s the allure of self-destruction. Or so I’ve found.

But I’ll end with this: I miss Rose. I’m even glad I met her, despite what happened on that mountain. There were bad parts, yes; if I had my own days of darkness and suffering and pain-imposed sensory dep­rivation on account of my headaches, then in between her moments of verve and brashness, Rose had her own kind of darkness—bleak and savage, like a circling wildcat waiting to eat her up. What she needed during those times was for me to keep her alive, and for two years, that’s exactly what I did. And whether I did it by making her laugh or making her come or shielding her from her fears of tomorrow by giving her all my todays, I did it because she told me to and because I loved her. Truly.

So why’d I kill her?

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