You Will Never Be Me (spoilers) | Jesse Q Sutanto

This review contains spoilers for You Will Never Be Me, the latest psychological thriller by Jesse Q Sutanto. If you are looking for a spoiler-free review, head back to the main page. If you are looking to unpack that twist at the end, stick around!

Two best friends have a falling out when one of them takes off as an influencer, leaving the other behind. But that is only the beginning…

What is You Will Never Be Me about?

Meredith Lee and Aspen Palmer were both influencers and best friends, until success tore them apart. Meredith was more successful at the influencing game… at first. After helping Aspen learn the ins-and-outs, co-posting with her, and even giving her the name “Aspen” (soooo much better than her old name), Aspen finally took off. But it isn’t long before Aspen far surpasses Meredith in popularity. A lot of this can be contributed to her early fans responding well to her relationship, which turned into a marriage, which turned into three kids.

Now a momfluencer with millions of followers, Aspen doesn’t have a need for Meredith anymore. After a blow up fight, the two haven’t spoken for months. But when Meredith discovers Aspen’s daughter’s iPad and instant access to her life (and calendar), she realizes she has a way to get to Aspen. Some light stalking and a few changed calendar appointments later, Aspen’s life is falling apart. But she didn’t get where she was by being naïve—Aspen has plenty of tricks up her sleeve as well. Which one of these frenemies will win?

What really happened between Meredith and Aspen?

Aspen started to move on to do posts with other popular influencers after making it big. A lot of her popularity was due to her husband (attractive) and three kids (one of who has diabetes), as well as posting aspirational content. Meredith struggled after Aspen surpassed her, and thought having a baby might help. Nothing worked, and eventually her jealousy (plus Aspen’s dismissiveness at times) got to be too much for Meredith. The fault in their blow up is on Meredith—but we don’t learn that until later.

After their fight, Meredith couldn’t help but follow what Aspen was doing and feel resentful. Her spiral started with creating a fake account to post a troll comment on Aspen’s page. Over time, trolls flocked to everything Aspen posted, causing some sponsors to separate their contract with her. One day Meredith goes into Aspen’s backyard right after she leaves the house and discovers one of the twin’s iPads. Even luckier, it isn’t password protected and it links to all of Aspen’s content.

Meredith sees unedited videos by Aspen that show her how fake Aspen’s content really is. Morning “wake up” videos that were filmed in the afternoon after making the twins put their pajamas back on and get in bed. Videos of her burying carrots in her backyard only to later film herself digging them up and pretending she grew them. Meredith is disillusioned and begins to move around some of the things in Aspen’s calendar. She goes to a party at a popular influencer’s home and tells her about Aspen ending their friendship. She sees ideas for videos in Aspen’s notes app and films some of them herself (skyrocketing her followers, ironically). She goes to an open house hosted by Aspen’s husband and they kiss.

And that’s when Meredith realizes how horrible she’s been. She leaves and gets in her car and cries. Coincidentally, her phone rings and it’s Aspen calling her. The two apologize and Meredith invites Aspen to come over and talk. Aspen asks if she can stay over for the night because she and her husband Ben have been having issues and she needs a little space. Meredith is ecstatic and thinks through how to apologize and confess to Aspen.

What happens after Meredith and Aspen make up?

At first it seems to go well. Meredith apologizes for their fight and admits it is her fault. Aspen accepts and says she’s noticed Meredith’s followers going up and that she’s happy for her. Meredith wants to confess everything but can’t bring herself to do it and shatter her and Aspen’s newly mended friendship. They drink champagne and Meredith is surprised to find she feels wobbly.

Aspen admits she drugged the champagne and confronts Meredith about everything. It turns out that she saw Meredith go into the backyard and take the iPad on her security cameras. After that, she watched her accounts to see what Meredith would do. She noticed the appointments switching around and the ideas that Meredith stole She followed Meredith and saw her and Ben together. And then she plotted how to get revenge.

As Meredith watches in horror, drugged and barely able to move, Aspen picks up a pillow and suffocates Meredith to death. What?!?!?!?!

What happens after Aspen murders Meredith?

Aspen drives Meredith to a lake, puts her body in the driver’s seat, and pushes the car into the lake. She texts Meredith’s sister Clara from Mere’s phone, then sneaks back to her house and is preparing breakfast when her husband and kids wake up. A month later, Clara asks Aspen where Meredith is, but Aspen plays dumb. No one knew they “made up” or that Aspen went to Meredith’s house. Clara reports her sister missing and the police question Aspen to see if she knows anything.

Aspen has also learned that her assistant Liv is having an affair with her husband, and she confronts her. Rather than get embarrassed, Liv tells Aspen that ever since she got to know what a fake Aspen really is, she can’t see her the same way. She used to look up to Aspen, aspiring to be as good of a mother as her. Then she realized Aspen projects an unattainable life. Liv threatens to tell Aspen’s followers the truth about her, but Aspen intervenes. She offers Liv a deal to do co-branded content and help boost her followers.

When Meredith’s disappearance goes viral online, Aspen posts an emotional video about their friendship and begging for Meredith to be ok. When Ben shares the news that they found Meredith’s body, Aspen is panicked. Did she do everything she needed to cover up the murder? Another influencer comes out with a video, calling out Aspen for lying about her friendship with Meredith. Aspen struggles to do damage control, but more damning things come out. A video of her screaming at a stranger in the doctor’s office waiting room is posted. One of her unedited videos is shared, showing how fake she is. The police continue to pursue what happened, questioning Aspen The public turns on her, and more evidence comes out.

How does it end?

Aspen gets a lawyer who advises her on how to fix her brand image. Aspen begins posting about how she faked being perfect because she didn’t know how to reveal what a mess she was. She posts before and after editing videos, showing her real life. And people love it. But then a post goes viral online saying that they saw Meredith at Ben’s open house. Everyone turns on her again, accusing Aspen of murdering Meredith because she was having an affair with her husband.

Ben and Aspen get in a huge fight, and she reveals she knows he has been cheating on her their entire marriage. Ben grabs Aspen and throws her down to the floor. The next morning, Aspen sees bruises all over her body and knows that she has Ben right where she wants him. She goes to Liv’s and tells her she thinks Ben murdered Meredith. They go live online and Liv confesses to her affair with Ben. Aspen says she isn’t mad, that it isn’t the first and she put up with it because she’s scared of Ben. She shows her bruises and says she thinks Ben murdered Meredith. Ben is arrested.

What’s the twist?

Aspen planned all along to set Ben up. She hid the burner phone she used to text Meredith in his car, making it appear as though he was pretending to be Aspen to lure Meredith in. She planted his prints on the phone. The night she “reconciled” with Meredith and went to her house, she intentionally picked a fight with Ben so she had an excuse to sleep in a different room. She’d gotten rid of the beer and waited for Ben to go out to buy more. Ben went out the front door where the cameras caught him, while Aspen snuck out the back door where there were no cameras. Going back months before any of this, Aspen had been sending abusive text messages from Ben’s account to hers and then deleting them before he could see. Then she sat back and watched the flood of messages from women Ben cheated with pour in. And then Aspen watched while Ben went down for a murder that she committed.

What did I think?

I love these twisted thrillers Sutanto writes about toxic friendship. As the book went on, twists changed my perspective on everything. While I initially knew Meredith was being inappropriate by messing with Aspen’s life, I also felt for her seeing Aspen leave her behind as a friend. The flashbacks to their former friendship were touching, and made Aspen’s dismissiveness more potent.

But then Meredith admits that Aspen hadn’t been as bad as she said, and that Aspen tried to stay in touch. Meredith was blinded by her own jealousy and couldn’t take any more of it, so she yelled at her and then blocked her. Just as I felt sorry for Aspen though, the bomb is dropped… Aspen murdered Meredith. What?!?! This was a shocking twist and one that I never saw coming.

Sutanto did a good job lining up the chapters in such a way that the reader didn’t realize where the view from Meredith and Aspen actually lined up. I was shook when Aspen revealed she knew what Meredith was up to all along (if Meredith hadn’t been so drugged, she would have been just as shook). Aspen went so far as to allow Meredith to move her calendar around, and actually missed appointments. That is commitment!

One thing that was unclear to me was how far the affair between Meredith and Ben actually progressed. It looked like it was just the one kiss and moment, but Aspen says she knew about it longer because she’d been following Mere. Was it going on longer? It was hard to tell but I think not. The next big twist came when we realized that Liv hates Aspen and had been seeing Ben behind her back. Is that why she showed up at the open house where Meredith and Ben kissed? It seems likely.

The really delicious part of the reveal at the end was how much Aspen let her life fall apart in order to frame her husband. She could have banked on the police eventually giving up for lack of evidence, but Aspen couldn’t let Ben and Meredith get away with what they did. Meredith’s punishment was death, and Ben’s was life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Ruthless!

The planning it took Aspen to set him and Meredith both up shows her commitment to the long game. I don’t think I’d have been able to let it ride and damage my career and life for as long as Aspen did. She’s absolutely diabolical! Another great thriller but Jesse Q Sutanto to add to your list. I know I’m not alone in saying I can’t wait to see what completely twisted friendship she dreams up for her next book!

Looking for more book spoilers? Check out all of my spoiler reviews!