I Know You Know

A Common Loss
Kirsten Tranter
Fiction

This is a book all about secrets. Sometimes those kind of books are intriguing and edgy. Sometimes they’re annoying. This book straddled that line.

A Common Loss is about a group of college friends—Elliot, Cameron, Brian, Tallis, and Dylan—who gather every year in Vegas to catch up. The protagonist, Elliot, isn’t sure how this year’s reunion is going to go since the figurehead of the group, Dylan, died last year. But the remaining four boys rally and manage to get their schedules together. Things are kind of weird without Dylan, and then each guy starts getting an envelope containing a secret Dylan knew about them. Turns out the envelopes are coming from Dylan’s half-brother, whom the gang never knew about. Things get even more complicated when they meet with the half-brother to find out what he wants and Elliot must decide whether he really knew the real Dylan at all.

I grew to like Elliot eventually, but I wasn’t sure of him at first. His relationship with Dylan was the most interesting part of the book, and of course, Dylan’s dead so that deflates the plot a little. What annoyed me the most, however, was the end. It was pretty anti-climactic and I was even more irritated when Elliot realizes that Tallis is keeping another secret and Elliot knows what it is but neither of them say it out loud so we don’t know what it is. Grrrr.

If you like a lot of secrets and twists and turns, this book is for you. If that stuff annoys you, I would skip this one.