You'll Thank Me for This

A Novel

By: Nina Siegal

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

This pulse-pounding psychological thriller takes roots from the Dutch tradition of blindfolding and dropping your adolescent child in the middle of the wilderness - and shows what happens when it goes horribly wrong.

Twelve-year old Karin is blindfolded and dropped into the Hoge Veluwe National Forest with three other children. With nothing but a few basic supplies and emergency food, the children are tasked with working together to navigate one of the Netherlands' most beautiful and wild locations and return home to where their families are anxiously waiting. The youngest of the group, and distracted by her own thoughts, Karin lags behind, suddenly looking up to see that the other children have vanished. As Karin struggles against the elements to find her way back, she soon realizes that something far more sinister lurks in the woods.

Meanwhile, the parents are reeling from the knowledge that none of the children have returned. The authorities are alerted, and the news media descends, turning the disappearances into a public frenzy. Amidst the chaos and hysteria, Karin's mother, Grace, is facing threats of her own, making her doubt who she can trust. Will she be able to untangle this web of false leads and fake news to find her daughter - before it's too late?

©2021 Nina Siegal (P)2021 Mulholland Books

Critic reviews

“When I heard Nina Siegal’s You’ll Thank Me for This was based on the Dutch tradition of dropping kids in the forest to find their own way home - yes, it’s real, and yes, it still happens - I pushed it to the tippy top of my pile. What begins with every parent’s worst nightmare quickly evolves into a twisty, stay-up-too-late stunner, a tense and atmospheric tale that will make you take another look at the people you think you know.” (Kimberly Belle, author of Dear Wife and Stranger in the Lake)

“An adrenaline rush of a novel. I tore through You’ll Thank Me for This by Nina Siegal in one nail-biting sitting.... Gripping and fast-paced, this is a novel not to be missed.” (Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times best-selling author of The Weight of Silence and This Is How I Lied)

story best with out cuss words

please, this would have been perfect IF you would leave out the cuss words . I want my children to be able to listen to the story. I think they would like it.

Pretty good *spoilers*

I bought this the day it dropped. I binged it in one go over the workday. The author definitely built suspense well. I really wanted to know what was going on and how everything would come out in the end.

*mild spoilers ahead*
That being said the characters are a little shaky. The daughter is 12 but she makes decisions and has perceptions that seem well under that age range, to a really frustrating degree. Maybe I just wasn’t a very sheltered kid but if I came across a bunch of drug addicts living in the woods, I don’t think I’d confuse them for mythical creatures. I may not know a meth user from a heroin user on sight but it would be pretty easy to tell I’ve just run into a bunch of drug addicts living rough and I sure as sh*t wouldn’t flee from what’s clearly the police breaking them up when I was otherwise lost in the woods.

There’s several other loose ends around the plot when it comes to characters motivations and decisions. So many points of conflict and frustration that slow down the plot could have been resolved with simple and direct conversations. Grace spends a large portion of the book gaslighting herself instead of just talking to other adults like an adult would. When she gets pulled over by the police she wastes time apologizing and then explaining half the issue then gets frustrated when she is patronized by the cop. But she didn’t exactly lead with “My kid is missing and the only evidence we found so far is her shirt covered in blood. I need to get where I am going as fast as I can”

Still worth the credit and the work hours of binging. Especially if you need something to listen to that doesn’t require a lot of visualization or heavy detail memory on the part of the reader/listener.

Good short story with over dramatic reading. Relax

Narrating was too dramatic. Too exciteful. Story was good but simple and short. A bit more calm in the reading would go a long way.

Girl Power

Defective men and strong women. The narrator did an excellent job. Coherent plot with no huge surprises.