Kelli: Welcome back to Queer Girl Book Club! This time we read They Never Learn by Layne Fargo, a thriller which follows two women at the same university and their adventures in punishing bad men, namely those accused of sexual assault. So, let this serve as a content warning for the following topics: sexual assault, rape, abuse, suicide, and murder (does murder need a CW?).
Anyway, now that we’ve covered that: Emily, what made you choose this book?
Spoilers to follow!
Emily: Well, I guess I should start by saying I received an ARC of this book. This was one that looked interesting, but it wasn’t on my radar until I was sent the book, so many thanks to the publisher. I personally enjoy a good thriller, and a feminist revenge thriller featuring bisexual main characters very much appealed to me, so that’s why I picked this book. This one is very much in my wheelhouse, but I know this is not normally the type of book you pick up, Kelli.
Kelli: Yeah, I have been realizing lately that maybe thrillers just aren’t my thing. It seems like almost every time I read one I come away feeling very “meh” about it, even when other people who generally have similar taste to mine love the book. Recently on the podcast, I was talking about this and how I think it might be related to my lack of enthusiasm for True Crime stories… there’s something at the heart of the thriller genre that just… doesn’t thrill me. Maybe I’m broken.
Either way, I’m happy to spend a few days reading a thriller because they typically go fast for me, and I’m always hoping that I’ll find THE ONE that changes my mind. Plus, I kind of designed the ARC for this book, so… my opinions are my own, etc.
Emily: So here’s something that I thought might be a fun way to open up this discussion, since you recently wrote a blog post about Promising Young Woman, and that was a movie you and I both enjoyed. As I was reading this book, especially in the beginning, I did feel like there were some interesting comparisons to be made here. When I sat down to watch Promising Young Woman, I honestly thought the movie was going to be more like the premise of this book. I thought Carey Mulligan’s character would be killing these men who sexually assault women. But no, that’s not exactly what’s happening in that movie. It’s something a little more complicated. Part of me, however, thought, “wouldn’t it be cool if she was killing them?” And in this book, Scarlett Clarke, a professor at this college, does kill dudes who sexually assault women.
Did we just give ourselves an excuse to use Promising Young Woman gifs?
Kelli: I’m so glad that you brought this up, because I was thinking about Promising Young Woman the entire time I was reading this book. It was really hard not to, considering the timing. As you mentioned, I loved that film, partly for how unexpectedly restrained it was. “Restrained” is not a word I would use to describe They Never Learn, though, and I think that might be a contributing factor in why this book didn’t work very well for me at all. The premise is so close to Promising Young Woman that all I could do was compare the two and think about how every choice this book makes is the choice I expected it to make. Most of the twists were easy to call, except for the first big one, which is revealed about halfway (?) through the book. And as I always say: unpredictability does not necessarily make for a good or bad book, but again, with thrillers I’m like, if I can see where things are going the whole time and there is not strong enough character development or interesting enough themes to parse through… what was the point?
Emily: Yeah, I also want to mention the friendships in both Promising Young Woman and They Never Learn. Because in both stories, there’s a friendship that becomes sort of the catalyst for all the revenge activities. I am really trying to be careful here because we are trying not to spoil Promising Young Woman at the very least. Because you should definitely see that movie! And you didn’t sign up for a Promising Young Woman spoiler review today. But for me, one of the friendships was like, yeah, I can see why this would lead this girl down a revenge spiral. The other one was like, girl, get better friends. I’ll let you, dear reader, parse out which is which.
Kelli: Back to the twist: I am referring to the fact that Scarlett and Carly turned out to be the same person. Did you have any idea that was going to happen? How did it change things as you were reading (if it did)?
Emily: That’s the big twist in the book. That Carly can be a nickname for Scarlett, which, yes, was shocking to me. I had no idea.
But no, in all seriousness, I really didn’t see that twist coming, but in all fairness to the book (I think I liked it a little bit more than you did), I did think this twist worked. Because as I was reading the book, I kept thinking to myself that it was strange that the college girl Carly was listening to Weezer with her friends and watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I was full on like, wow, that seems like shit I would do in college. But I don’t feel like that’s what college kids do now. Well, come to find out, this is in the past, and Scarlett is the present timeline, so those were all little hints that work.
There was one throwaway line that was supposed to get us off the scent of the twist. When Scarlett is walking down the street, she sees two girls whom she describes as looking really similar to Carly and her friend Allison. So we’re supposed to believe this is a small moment where the two storylines are having a crossover moment. But there was one part of that little description that made me go “hmm.” She describes the Allison-looking girl as the “prettier one.” Again, this to me seemed like a small nod to the fact that this wasn’t actually Allison and Carly, but rather two girls that reminded her of Allison and herself when they were friends in college. Especially because, although Carly doesn’t see herself as pretty, it seems pretty clear based on the way that everyone else interacts with her that she’s pretty fucking hot.
For real though do youths watch this movie?
Kelli: Yeah, that was definitely the moment that made me think this was a crossover universe and then made me realize it wasn’t. I was also surprised by the twist, but it definitely changed the direction of the book for me. At first, I assumed that Carly and Scarlett were going to have some kind of Avengers moment where they meet up and become a killing duo, but as soon as I realized they were the same person it became clear that this was going to lead up to her first kill. As SOON as I realized this, I knew what the second twist would be: she was going to kill Wes. Otherwise, we would be following her story towards an inevitable conclusion where she would kill the guy who assaulted Allison, and if that were the case, it would be pretty boring. Did you feel that way too?
Emily: I actually don’t know that I thought of it in that moment, but I definitely knew it by the time it happened. I also knew that Mina was going to end up siding with her and helping her out in some way. And I knew that, in the end, it was her shitty grad student Jasper who was messing with that undergrad girl. Makayla? I don’t remember her name. I am so sorry. Layne Fargo really tried to obscure the Jasper reveal, but the fact that she hid so much about that made it all the more obvious.
Kelli: Oh yeah, that was painfully obvious, too. And I felt like all of that hiding and scheming to make us feel surprised by things really took up a lot of the book, leaving less time for other things I was craving, like more interesting characters and just… more interesting content. I do have to wonder if this book would have worked differently for me if I hadn’t just seen Promising Young Woman. Like maybe I would have been thrilled enough by the concept that it would have done more work for me if I hadn’t seen it done better a few weeks before I started reading this book.
I think Fargo is also trying to work with the idea that women can be complicit in rape culture, and she does it in a pretty similar way to Promising Young Woman where a female authority figure at the university completely downplays a reported assault. There’s also Carly’s mom, who doesn’t seem to think her father’s abusive behavior towards either of them is an issue. And then there’s Allison, who herself is a victim of assault but for a good portion of the book acts like Carly is making a big deal over nothing. What did you make of all this?
Emily: Yeah, and also Allison continues to hang out with the guy who assaulted her after all of that goes down. It just goes to show how much women are socialized to value male attention, no matter the cost. It’s the whole “he hit you because he likes you” thing.
But anyway. I think the many ways in which women are complicit in misogyny are very complicated. This gets at some of those reasons, but I feel like this is an oversimplified version of reality. Building off of that, I felt like all the men were maybe a little too shitty. And that’s not something I say often because men being shitty is usually pretty believable.
Kelli: I would agree with that. I also feel like because this book isn’t quite playing with genre and heightened reality in the way Promising Young Woman is (I swear I’ll stop bringing it up), the things that seem unrealistic here fall flat rather than working in the story’s favor — whether that’s how terrible every man in the story is or how unrealistic it is that Scarlett would get away with this many completely related murders for so long. Like, nobody even thinks there’s a serial killer until Mina comes along. How is that possible?
Emily: Yeah, I had a problem with that too. Honestly, a lot of this felt like fantasy/wish-fulfillment writing, which I’m not particularly a fan of. As dark as it was at times, ultimately this is a revenge fantasy story where all the men get what’s coming to them and all the women are incredibly hot and good at sex with one another and have multiple orgasms every day. I know this kind of positive wish-fulfillment writing works for some people, but I actually really hate it when everything goes right for characters in a story. Like, for me, I was really enjoying this story all the way until the halfway point. And I didn’t stop liking it because of the reveal. I stopped liking it because at that point it was clear to me that Scarlett was going to get everything she wanted even though that wasn’t really earned, and it made no sense that she was able to get away with all of these things. Which was disappointing for me, because the first half of the book had me intrigued and even a little excited.
And as far as Promising Young Woman is concerned, don’t apologize for bringing it up, I fucking love that movie. But there, you see, that movie has stakes and people don’t always get what they want.
Sometimes in Promising Young Woman, Alison Brie spills a glass of wine. Stakes.
Kelli: Right. There are consequences that exist in that universe, even when that universe is less realistic than the one presented in this book.
Also, Scarlett tells us (and herself) multiple times that she’s a monster, because it’s not just that she wants revenge on these men — she actually enjoys killing them. And that’s fine, TBH, I don’t feel bad for any of the guys she murders, but there’s something not quite clicking for me with this character. Are we supposed to believe she is a merciless killer who takes pleasure in what’s happening, or are we supposed to think of her as a sensitive person who just wants to find someone who understands and supports them? In some moments she seems completely capable of experiencing things like guilt and shame, and in others it’s like she’s never heard of those things before. I just had a really hard time understanding who she was, especially when it came to connecting her to the extremely shy, awkward Carly who is paralyzed by her social anxiety. Like, obviously people change and grow, but she kind of did a 180, and we don’t get to see any of what happens between who she is as a college student and who she is as an adult.
Emily: She dyed her hair red, Kelli. You know what happens when you dye your hair red. You become a femme fatale. I’m speaking from experience.
Kelli: Well, I have killed a man each time I dyed my hair red, but that’s not the point.
kelli as red-headed man slayer
emily as red-headed man slayer
Emily: Yeah, I was also curious about Carly/Scarlett’s family life. We get the vaguest of details about that, but I didn’t really understand what about her past informed the person that she was today. I didn’t need, like, a detailed grocery list of all her past abuse. But getting an idea of what her interactions with her father were like would have been helpful. What did you think about her backstory?
Kelli: I agree that we didn’t get enough of it. I also was just, like, how is it possible that you have never had a friend before? Maybe this is me being a bitch because I’m like “I can’t imagine not making friends,” but it’s weird to me that she went her entire life without ever connecting with anyone. She’s able to have pretty normal conversations with Allison and Wes within a day of starting college, so I’m not sure how it’s possible that she didn’t grow up with any friends at all. This always bothers me in books, but I guess it’s just not my personal experience. I feel like it is a common trope, though, a main character who is extremely shy and has no one in their life. How common is that as a human experience? I couldn’t tell you.
Emily: Well, I couldn’t either because I’m so fucking popular and easy to love.
Kelli: We can’t help it. This is a Cool Girl blog. Anyway, it’s unfortunate that the first person Carly finds to be friends with is Allison, because she kind of sucks, and not just because she’s a manic pixie dream theater girl. How did you feel about her?
Emily: Well, yeah… I mean, when she said she wanted to be Clementine from Eternal Sunshine for Halloween, I was like, of course she does. But you know, instead of complicating the manic pixie dream girl trope like Eternal Sunshine does, it sort of felt like this book was doing something really weird with it? Let me see if I can find the words. It’s like, okay, to me, it felt like the book was saying, “Okay, this is that perfect quirky theater girl. And not only is she the boring trope that you’d expect, but she’s also somehow emblematic of what ‘the other girls’ are like for Carly. You know, cause Carly’s ‘not like the other girls.’” So I guess, actually this book does complicate the manic pixie dream girl trope, but it also suggests that girls who act like this are just basic. And doing it for male attention.
But please tell me about the other ways she sucks. Haha.
Kelli: For sure. It is complicating it without exactly subverting it, I guess. In addition to all of that, she very deliberately plays with Carly’s feelings for her in order to a) get attention from men and b) manipulate Carly. It’s not a bad thing to have characters who do shitty things and/or are bad people, but we really get no picture of Allison’s inner life or the motivation behind any of this. We find out that her parents kicked her out for being bisexual, but that’s about it. She, much like many of the characters here, felt underdeveloped to me.
Emily: We haven’t really gotten into the queer representation in this book. Scarlett and Allison both identify as bisexual. Mina doesn’t say her sexuality, but she is married to a man at one point and she starts a relationship with Scarlett, so she’s probably bisexual or pansexual. Probably. As someone who also identifies as bisexual? How did you feel about the rep in this book?
Kelli: It was fine. I don’t really have any complaints about it but I don’t think the story really explored it much in an identity sense. Which is fine, not every book with queer stuff in it has to be ABOUT the queer stuff. Mina sounded hot tho.
Emily: And there you have it. That was Queer Girl Book Club. Should we rate this book?
Kelli: Sure! I’m gonna give it… I guess three stars, but I’m tempted to give it two. That seems mean, though. I can acknowledge that this is simply not my genre, so I’ll round up.
Emily: I also gave this book three stars. I was having a lot of fun with it for the first half. But as I mentioned, it kind of fell flat in the second half. Like you said, Kelli, I don’t need a book to be surprising, but being able to predict the exact trajectory is also kind of a bummer. You want to talk about what we’ve got up next?
Kelli: Yes!!!!!! Next up is Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers. This book seems very sweet and right up my alley, because we all know I love to choose books that take place in New York so that I can talk about how I also live in New York.
Emily: LOL. At least you’re self-aware. Anyway, yes, I’m excited about this one too! See you in a month and another month, friends!