Latest / Rachel Oates / Tiktok's Favourite Writes The WORST Thriller Yet

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Tiktok's Favourite Writes The WORST Thriller Yet · Rachel Oates

• 0:00
  I recently made another video where I was going over Freedom
• 0:02
  Mcfadden's history of blog posts, and honestly, I found it
• 0:05
  kind of fascinating. I found a whole new level of
• 0:08
  respect and empathy for her, but I also found myself incredibly
• 0:11
  infuriated by her at times. However, I still haven't talked
• 0:14
  to myself enough. So today we are reading her
• 0:15
  latest book which came out January 2026, which is titled
• 0:19
  Dear Debbie. For those of you who don't know,
• 0:20
  Freda McFadden is the pen name of a woman who prefers to keep
• 0:23
  her real name anonymous. But she used to be a doctor
• 0:26
  working in physical medicine and rehabilitation.
• 0:28
  But from what I can tell based on her blogs, she hated that
• 0:31
  job. I don't know if she still works
• 0:33
  or not, it's hard to say, but she now writes thriller novels
• 0:36
  and spits out three to four books per year.
• 0:38
  Somehow, I don't know how. They're all terrible quality.
• 0:42
  I haven't exactly heaped praise on her before In my other videos
• 0:46
  we've covered Ward D, we've covered the teacher, and now
• 0:49
  we're doing Dear Debbie. Her books are known for being
• 0:51
  pretty blatant RIP offs of other books, something I touch on more
• 0:55
  in my other videos on her or you know, they're known for having
• 0:59
  ridiculous plot twists, massive plot holes or being a little bit
• 1:02
  dangerous. Like I say in the two of review
• 1:04
  from her so far we've had justification of child sexual
• 1:07
  abuse and lots and lots of ableism towards people with
• 1:11
  mental health issues. So doesn't necessarily bode well
• 1:14
  for this book. Let's see what we have in store.
• 1:17
  Also, hi, if you're new here, my name is Rachel and it's
• 1:19
  absolutely wonderful to have you.
• 1:20
  I'm going to be filming this video in a couple of parts
• 1:22
  because I have to leave in about half an hour.
• 1:24
  Go see a band I really, really love.
• 1:25
  I'm seeing the feeling up at Leeds Beckett Student Union,
• 1:28
  which is going to be really exciting.
• 1:29
  I've got the like extra sound check package.
• 1:31
  So basically like you go in two hours early and you see the band
• 1:34
  sound check and they do a little small set for like small
• 1:37
  audience and the QA with a band and you get like a couple of
• 1:40
  goodies and stuff. So I'm really excited for it and
• 1:42
  it's a 12 and home 20th anniversary tour which I'm
• 1:44
  really, really excited about. I remember this album coming out
• 1:47
  in 2006 and it was incredible. It's fantastic.
• 1:50
  If you're a UK indie kid back then you will absolutely know
• 1:53
  the album. It was iconic.
• 1:54
  So excited to see them. So half an hour I'm going to be
• 1:56
  jumping in an Uber, I'm going to go go up there.
• 1:59
  But for now I'm going to film what I can.
• 2:01
  So if you haven't seen my videos before, when I review Thrillers
• 2:03
  on my channel I like to write my script as I read the book.
• 2:06
  So you get my real time reactions and you can guess
• 2:08
  along with me what's going to happen and what the twists are.
• 2:11
  The thing is, I'm not sure I'd actually called as the thriller
• 2:13
  because as we'll get to another part of the video, it was
• 2:16
  missing quite a few of the kind of thriller genre conventions.
• 2:19
  There was no mystery. There was no like, there was
• 2:22
  nothing really to guess. There were no, like, big
• 2:24
  theories I could come up with because, like, it wasn't really
• 2:26
  like, anything mysterious was happening.
• 2:28
  Like, it was just a series of bad things, of bad people doing
• 2:32
  bad things. And then there was a twist.
• 2:34
  But it was like, well, I think this may be Freda's worst book
• 2:39
  yet, and that is saying something, at least worst of the
• 2:41
  ones I've read so far. So let's first start with what
• 2:44
  is this book about? Let's read the summary.
• 2:46
  Sometimes enough is enough. Debbie Mullen is losing it.
• 2:49
  For years, she has compiled all her best advice into her column,
• 2:51
  Dear Debbie, where the wives of New England come for sympathy
• 2:54
  and neighbly advice. Through her work, Debbie has
• 2:56
  heard from countless women who are ignored, belittled and even
• 2:59
  and abused by their husbands, and Debbie does her best to
• 3:01
  guide them in the right direction.
• 3:03
  Or at least she did. These days, Debbie's life seems
• 3:05
  to be spiralling out of control. She just lost her job, something
• 3:08
  strange is happening with her teenage daughters, and her
• 3:10
  husband is keeping secrets, according to the tracking app
• 3:12
  she installed on his phone. Now, Debbie's done being the
• 3:14
  bigger person, and she's done being reasonable and practical.
• 3:17
  It's time to take her own advice.
• 3:18
  Now it's time to pay back against all the people in her
• 3:20
  life who deserve it the most. And you know what, I actually
• 3:23
  thought This is the first time I've ever liked the sound of a
• 3:26
  Freedom McFadden protagonist from the verb of the book, like
• 3:30
  a woman who helps others escape from abuse.
• 3:32
  Amazing. And as I covered in the video on
• 3:35
  Freda's blogs, and she's she's done this in her personal life
• 3:39
  as well. She's actually advocated for a
• 3:41
  victim of CSA in real life to like not be living with her
• 3:44
  abuser and stuff like that. I think I think that's great.
• 3:46
  And while I have had issues with Debbie kind of justifying CSA in
• 3:51
  some books, like the teacher and I can, I do think that like in
• 3:54
  real life, she does care about this stuff.
• 3:56
  And I went into this book with like really high hopes, thinking
• 3:58
  she's going to handle this hopefully well, she's going to
• 4:01
  handle this sensitively. And I think this is going to be
• 4:03
  great. It was not handled sensitively.
• 4:05
  It was not great. The last part of the blip was
• 4:08
  kind of off putting to me. You know, the idea of tracking
• 4:10
  your partner with an app, something I'm not a fan of as
• 4:12
  someone who's had their partner track them quite a lot before
• 4:16
  and control them in that way, I'm not a fan of it.
• 4:18
  But I don't know, I was like, we'll have to see how this is
• 4:20
  executed. I'm intrigued.
• 4:21
  Here we go. OK, before we go any further, I
• 4:24
  very quickly need to tell you about the amazing sponsor of
• 4:26
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• 4:29
  And if you're like me and you love your good mysteries and
• 4:31
  thrillers, which I mean if you're watching this video, I'm
• 4:33
  pretty sure you do, you are going to absolutely adore this
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• 4:38
  object mystery game set in the 20s where you follow the main
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  character June as she tries to solve her sister's murder.
• 4:44
  Along the way, she uncovers all these like crazy deep dark
• 4:47
  family secrets as well. I usually like to listen to
• 4:49
  audiobooks in the background as I can like, relax and play
• 4:52
  mobile games, but with Jean's Journey, I was so invested in
• 4:54
  both the puzzles and the story itself.
• 4:56
  I was like, Nana, I am all in on this.
• 4:58
  I'm I'm immersing myself. I'm not even that far into this
• 5:01
  game yet and I'm already busy coming up with my own theories
• 5:03
  about who did it and what everyone's secret is that
• 5:05
  they're hiding and who's a little bit suspicious and who do
• 5:08
  we trust. The hidden object scenes
• 5:10
  themselves are beautifully designed and provide really,
• 5:12
  really fun little challenges as you go through and you find that
• 5:15
  the hidden objects, some of which are clues to the story,
• 5:18
  which is adorable. We need an ice bucket.
• 5:21
  We need a bust. We need what's a handbag?
• 5:24
  Handbag. There's a handbag, a Peacock
• 5:27
  feather, a briefcase, a music stand.
• 5:31
  No, I'm gonna lose my bonus. I wasn't quick enough.
• 5:37
  There we go. Got it.
• 5:39
  Eventually, I have to say, accumulating the scores and get
• 5:42
  opening the rewards is very, very satisfying.
• 5:45
  But what I also really love is that in between levels, you get
• 5:48
  a chance to decorate your island, upgrade your house.
• 5:50
  You can get really creative with it as the game progresses and
• 5:53
  it's just so much fun. So I've got a cute little like
• 5:55
  Moat in my garden that's going to go around my house.
• 5:59
  I've got a statue over here and a fountain and this little Tulip
• 6:02
  path that's being built. It's adorable.
• 6:04
  It's really, really cute. I'm having so much fun with
• 6:06
  this. I'm really making it my island.
• 6:08
  You know how cute this is? It's adorable.
• 6:12
  I did that, plus they're always mixing things up with special
• 6:15
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• 6:18
  to the game and getting unique rewards each time.
• 6:20
  So if you want to try out June's Journey for yourself, you can
• 6:23
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• 6:26
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• 6:29
  which is on screen right now. Just scan it and you'll be taken
• 6:31
  to a page where you can download the game completely for free and
• 6:34
  give it a try and let me know what you think.
• 6:36
  Once again, thank you to June's Journey for sponsoring this
• 6:38
  video. I love working with brands that
• 6:40
  love all the fun stuff that I do, and I feel like this is a
• 6:43
  game that you guys are going to absolutely love.
• 6:45
  Right off the bat. Though, I do need to commend
• 6:47
  Freda for opening this book with with an author's note about
• 6:50
  content warnings. She says.
• 6:51
  Even though my books are thrillers, a genre that
• 6:53
  traditionally has dark elements, I do my best to keep them as
• 6:55
  family friendly as I possibly can.
• 6:57
  You're not going to come across any graphic scenes of violence
• 6:59
  or SEX, mostly because I know my family members will be reading.
• 7:02
  However, people have emotional responses to different things,
• 7:05
  and some of my books delve into more controversial topics.
• 7:08
  For this reason, I create a list of content warnings for all my
• 7:10
  thrillers, which can be found linked off the top of my
• 7:13
  website, breedamacfadden.com. This is a resource that can be
• 7:16
  used by readers who need to protect their mental health, as
• 7:19
  well As for adults whose kids are reading my books.
• 7:21
  Please also keep in mind that in a few cases, these contact
• 7:24
  warnings are major spoilers for twists that take place in the
• 7:26
  book. With that in mind, I hope you
• 7:28
  safely enjoy this journey into my imagination.
• 7:30
  Content warnings like this are annoyingly far less common than
• 7:33
  I think they should be, but I'm glad she's doing it.
• 7:35
  I did cringe a little at her inability to write the word sex.
• 7:39
  She has to say SEX, but maybe that's a me problem.
• 7:42
  There's a lot about Freda that seems a little immature and this
• 7:45
  is just one of them. And it did bother me a bit
• 7:47
  though, that instead of listing the actual trigger warnings in
• 7:49
  the book, she makes you go to her website.
• 7:51
  So if you're reading the physical book, then you have to
• 7:52
  go get a phone or a laptop or a tablet, then go to the website
• 7:55
  and then try and find it. And actually it was surprisingly
• 7:57
  hard to find on the website. You have to go through like a
• 7:59
  whole bunch of menus and then like go down then anyway, I had
• 8:03
  to search around a bit, but better than nothing.
• 8:05
  At least this book has content warnings for murder essay and
• 8:08
  substance abuse. Chapter 1 is from Debbie's draft
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  files, so this is a response to a letter she received for one
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  that hasn't been published yet. We open with a woman right to
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  Debbie asking how to get her family to sit down and enjoy a
• 8:20
  nice breakfast together. All completely normal so far,
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  except Debbie's response is unhinged right off the bat.
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  A healthy breakfast is important.
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  Try and find out what everyone likes, blah blah blah.
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  And then and if that doesn't work, I would recommend
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  installing a padlock on the front and back door of your
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  house first thing in the morning.
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  Lock both doors from the inside and keep the key in your pocket.
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  Let everyone know that they will not be leaving the house until
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  they have consumed a healthy breakfast.
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  If they seem hesitant, a simple threat to swallow the key unless
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  they sit down and eat will surely move things along.
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  I have no doubt you will soon be enjoying a wonderful daily
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  breakfast with your family. So Frieda, once again, is not
• 8:52
  subtle. Like she's not subtle in her
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  writing. We're not going to see a slow,
• 8:56
  steady mental decline of this woman.
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  She's just throwing all the crazy out there from the first
• 9:00
  page. I was thinking, would it not be
• 9:02
  more impactful to show this slow decline?
• 9:04
  Show some of her old columns first, You know, show why she
• 9:07
  got so popular in the 1st place. Show us giving her the good
• 9:10
  quality, sensible advice so we can see her decline steadily on
• 9:14
  the page, you know, instead of just being told about it in the
• 9:16
  blurb and not seeing it for ourselves.
• 9:17
  Like, show us Freda's first column.
• 9:19
  Show her being like, here's how to get red wine out of your
• 9:22
  carpet, blah, blah, blah. Here's how to prepare the
• 9:25
  perfect roast chicken. Here's a bit.
• 9:26
  And then she's, you know, she's giving like this wonderful
• 9:28
  advice. And then she slowly gets more
• 9:30
  and more unhinged. Like, show us that.
• 9:32
  Not just this from the first page.
• 9:34
  You know, I kind of feel like if you hadn't read the blurb, you
• 9:37
  wouldn't miss half the story. Do you know what I mean?
• 9:39
  And that's that's the problem for me.
• 9:41
  In Chapter 2, we get straight to Debbie's narration and we
• 9:43
  learned that she has a poor relationship with her eldest
• 9:46
  daughter, Lexi or Alexa. And she said, and I'm conflicted
• 9:50
  in this. I'm caught between this is
• 9:51
  typical teenage behaviour and Oh my God, what did you do to make
• 9:54
  your daughter hate you so much? You know what I mean?
• 9:57
  I've been forbidden to speak to my daughter Lexi in the morning.
• 9:59
  Lexi imposed this rule around when she started high school.
• 10:01
  And now that she's a senior, it remains rigidly in place.
• 10:04
  The rule was implemented when Lexi decided she didn't like it
• 10:07
  when I dare to ask, how are you first thing in the morning?
• 10:09
  And she simply didn't feel like talking right now.
• 10:11
  My God, mum. So midway through freshman year,
• 10:13
  Lexi officially announced I was no longer permitted to speak to
• 10:16
  her during the early morning hours.
• 10:18
  And if and if I attempt any form of communication, verbal or
• 10:20
  nonverbal, she will snap at me and say, what did I tell you?
• 10:23
  Or possibly worse, glare at me with that look.
• 10:26
  You know what look I mean. At least if you have teenagers,
• 10:28
  you know. Lexi has her hair and messy
• 10:30
  ponytail that looks as though she tied it last night or
• 10:32
  perhaps even several days ago, and hasn't got around to adjust
• 10:35
  knit. She's wearing an oversized
• 10:36
  hoodie which looks like something one might sleep in,
• 10:38
  and that impression is not helped by the fact she's wearing
• 10:40
  Plaid pyjama pants. It's not pyjama day at school or
• 10:43
  anything. This is what kids wear now.
• 10:44
  I find it distasteful, but on the other hand I'm also jealous.
• 10:47
  I wish I could wear pyjama pants every day.
• 10:49
  So either it's what kids wear now, or alternatively, your
• 10:52
  daughter has major issues with depression and you're just
• 10:55
  ignoring it and not helping her. I mean, I know I don't spend
• 10:58
  anytime around teenagers, but I think unwashed, messy hair,
• 11:00
  wearing pyjamas, oversized look like that's a major sign of
• 11:03
  depression. Right?
• 11:04
  Today Debbie is dressed up more than usual and is wearing
• 11:06
  lipstick. Shock horror because she's
• 11:08
  having photos taken of her garden for a gardening magazine
• 11:12
  and it all feels very brief under camp.
• 11:14
  Throughout this I kept making Desperate Housewives comparisons
• 11:16
  because same vibes. Debbie has two daughters.
• 11:19
  Like I say, Alexa or Lexie is the one who won't speak to her
• 11:22
  and is 17 and like me, she might be a little too smart for her
• 11:25
  own good. And then there's Izzy who is 14
• 11:27
  or 15 and she runs a lot. Unlike me and Lexie, Izzy has
• 11:30
  always been very athletic. I have hypothesised that the
• 11:33
  endorphins might make her more pleasant than her sister.
• 11:35
  That's my running theory anyway. If I didn't force myself to go
• 11:37
  to the gym several times a week, I would murder everyone on my
• 11:40
  block. Debbie does not sound like a
• 11:42
  pleasant person to be honest, but also she sounds a lot like
• 11:44
  real life Freda, you know what I mean?
• 11:46
  If you see my video on her blogs you'll know what I mean.
• 11:49
  I do think she is a self insert for Freda so like on her blog
• 11:52
  she admits she does this a lot. And since she's currently 45 and
• 11:55
  had her first kid at 27 and the second round 30, the ages of
• 11:59
  these fictional children match up with her own children who I
• 12:02
  also believe are two girls. Debbie's character is the same
• 12:05
  age as Freda and you know, like The thing is like if I was her
• 12:08
  husband and kids reading this, knowing she writes self inserts
• 12:12
  and she's writing this, I'd be a bit offended.
• 12:13
  Just saying. We found out that Izzy has been
• 12:15
  kicked off her school football team.
• 12:17
  That's soccer to you Americans. And in this book it's called
• 12:20
  soccer. But I can't bring myself to say
• 12:21
  it because it just sounds wrong coming out of my English mouth.
• 12:24
  Football it is. And but she won't tell her mum
• 12:26
  why. And I was like, oh, we get a
• 12:28
  mystery, except it doesn't really remain a mystery for that
• 12:30
  long. So Izzy says please don't call
• 12:32
  him mum. Her eyes are full of
• 12:33
  desperation. Promise me you won't call him
• 12:34
  mum. She means the coach.
• 12:36
  I promise I won't call him, but I didn't promise I won't go to
• 12:38
  his office and ask him what the hell he was thinking when he cut
• 12:41
  my from the team. Or, you know, you could respect
• 12:43
  your daughter's wishes and wait until she feels comfortable
• 12:45
  enough to talk to you about it herself.
• 12:47
  No, no. OK, OK then.
• 12:48
  Lexi, the older daughter reveals.
• 12:50
  And she's better off ditching that team anyway.
• 12:52
  Coach Pike is such a perv. A perv.
• 12:55
  She rolls her eyes, irritated that she has to take time to
• 12:57
  explain every little thing to me.
• 12:59
  My friend Mira was on the soccer team and she said he was always
• 13:01
  like accidentally walking into the locker rooms when the girls
• 13:04
  were changing. He says sorry and leave right
• 13:05
  away, but well, that doesn't sound like an accident to me.
• 13:07
  Strangely, Debbie is shocked by this, but she doesn't do
• 13:10
  anything about and just let her kids leave and go to school.
• 13:13
  And like, if that was me, I'd be like right on the phone with
• 13:15
  that school and be like, excuse me, what the hell, I've heard
• 13:18
  this, can you sort it out? You know what I mean?
• 13:20
  But no. Chapter 3 starts with a
• 13:22
  neighbour, Brett Carlson, storming around to Debbie's
• 13:24
  house to confront her and she calls him a drama queen.
• 13:27
  Open up, He shouts as he slams his first uselessly against our
• 13:30
  door right this minute. What a drama queen.
• 13:32
  Ben Carlson. No.
• 13:33
  Brett Carlson. Keep calling him Ben Nana.
• 13:35
  Brett Carlson moved into our neighbourhood about a year ago.
• 13:37
  I know most of our neighbours fairly well, but I barely know
• 13:40
  Brett. All I know is he works in
• 13:41
  finance, drives a sports car much too fast and blasts his
• 13:44
  music in his Home Office while he's working loud enough to
• 13:46
  bother the whole neighbourhood. He always seems to manage to
• 13:48
  turn it down just before the police arrive for noise
• 13:50
  complaints. Taking my time, I open the door,
• 13:52
  but before I do, I snatch the box cutter that we keep in a
• 13:55
  cabinet in the foyer and slip small pocket in the skirt of my
• 13:57
  dress, just in case. Most unbelievable thing in this
• 14:00
  book so far. A dress with pockets.
• 14:02
  We can only dream, can't we ladies?
• 14:04
  Also, I wrote in my original notes.
• 14:05
  Why does every adult in this book seem unhinged so far?
• 14:08
  And Oh my God, it only gets worse from here.
• 14:10
  I was so, so right at this point.
• 14:12
  Everyone else is awful as well. It doesn't get better.
• 14:14
  My fuse box. He clarifies.
• 14:16
  You went into my basement and snapped off the switch from my
• 14:19
  office. I've got no power in that room.
• 14:20
  This is going to cost me thousands of dollars to fix.
• 14:23
  I clasp my hand to my chest. Oh my, Oh my.
• 14:26
  Brett repeats mockingly. You're so full of poop.
• 14:28
  You hate how loud I play my music.
• 14:29
  So you cut the power. He narrows his eyes at me.
• 14:31
  I know you're the one who did it, and I know you're going to
• 14:33
  pay for it one way or another. He looks like he's attempting to
• 14:35
  shoulder his way inside the house to continue the
• 14:37
  conversation. I block his entrance Ray to pull
• 14:39
  out that box cutter if I need it won't come to that though.
• 14:41
  Brett is all taught. So she feigns innocence.
• 14:43
  But like, obviously she definitely did it right.
• 14:45
  Like we're not into your minds. We know she did it.
• 14:48
  I think that's obvious. Why else would it be in here?
• 14:50
  And again, I feel like if we'd started off this book with a
• 14:53
  more stable and rational character of Debbie and seeing
• 14:57
  this descent into this insane behaviour, it would be more
• 15:00
  impact. But all we know is from page
• 15:02
  one, from chapter 1, Debbie is unhinged.
• 15:04
  Like she's just doing it from the first page and that makes
• 15:06
  her unlikable. We don't feel this sympathy
• 15:08
  because we don't see her descent.
• 15:09
  We don't see her being normal. And then declining, we just see
• 15:12
  her as unhinged and mean. You know what I mean?
• 15:14
  In Chapter 4, we learned that Debbie is a secret genius who
• 15:16
  dropped out of college. MIT, which even I know is
• 15:19
  supposed to be a good one. And this whole thing about
• 15:21
  Debbie being a genius, like, it's repeated so much and we're
• 15:23
  constantly told she's a genius. She's a genius, but we don't
• 15:26
  really see her genius. Like, well, I'll come to it.
• 15:29
  Of course, when I started college at MIT nearly 30 years
• 15:31
  ago, majoring in computer science, I would never believed
• 15:34
  my primary employment would be as a newspaper advice columnist.
• 15:37
  I still think we're in programming, though.
• 15:38
  I've actually created some apps for the smartphone, although
• 15:41
  nobody uses them except for our immediate family.
• 15:43
  The one I'm most proud of is an app called Findly, which is a
• 15:45
  highly accurate tracker of friends and family.
• 15:47
  Izzy and Lexi both have finally installed on their phones, which
• 15:50
  means that not only do I know where they are, but I'm also
• 15:52
  able to download a history of their prior locations.
• 15:54
  My children are safer when I know where they are.
• 15:56
  I've got a tracker on my husband's phone too, with his
• 15:58
  permission of course. I get that Frida's trying to
• 16:01
  show that like she's meant to be clever, but why is her way of
• 16:04
  demonstrating this by showing her making an app that already
• 16:07
  exists? There's already so many tracking
• 16:09
  apps out there, you don't need another one.
• 16:11
  It's not like innovative genius to create an app that already
• 16:14
  exists. Like, and why would she go to
• 16:15
  all the trouble of making an app when she can just download one
• 16:18
  and use one that's already there that does the exact same thing?
• 16:20
  There's likely hundreds out there that already exist.
• 16:22
  Like, it makes no sense. If she was a real genius, if she
• 16:25
  was that clever, she'd work smarter, not harder.
• 16:27
  You know, this app literally doesn't do anything that the
• 16:30
  hundreds of other apps out there do.
• 16:31
  You know, it's not until 7% of the way through this book that
• 16:34
  we meet Debbie's husband. His name is Cooper.
• 16:36
  He sleeps in late while she deals with getting the kids to
• 16:38
  school and then appears and heads off to work.
• 16:40
  But it's OK because he's one of the good guys.
• 16:43
  Sure, he laughed self consciously.
• 16:44
  Cooper was raised well, which means he's happy to do chores.
• 16:47
  He was shocked when we first got married and I offered to do his
• 16:49
  laundry for him going forward, but it made sense since he was
• 16:52
  working and I wasn't. If I could make his life easier,
• 16:54
  why not? It's not like I had anything
• 16:55
  better to do. He's also apparently not into
• 16:57
  tech, and Debbie says it's one of the things I love about him.
• 17:00
  He's the opposite of what I used to be.
• 17:02
  Not sure this sounds completely healthy, but OK, we'll run with
• 17:04
  it. We do get a mystery with him
• 17:06
  though. I mean, yeah, it's a myth.
• 17:08
  Like, it's the one mystery that kind of runs throughout the
• 17:10
  book, but it's not not a satisfying one.
• 17:12
  It's not an interesting one, I'll give you that.
• 17:13
  Cooper guns us down at the screen of his phone and frowns.
• 17:16
  His gaze flicks up at me for a millisecond and I can't help but
• 17:18
  notice the way he angles the phone so I can't see the screen.
• 17:22
  He silences the call and shoves the phone back in his pocket.
• 17:24
  So it's definitely an affair, right?
• 17:26
  Or a whole second family or something dodgy?
• 17:28
  That's what I was thinking. She tries to give some
• 17:31
  background to their relationship, and while she's
• 17:33
  trying to make out that they still have a healthy sex life,
• 17:35
  how they met feels a bit like a creepy abuse of power to me.
• 17:38
  I don't like it. Cooper and I have been married
• 17:41
  for close to 20 years now, and even after all that time, he
• 17:43
  always makes me feel like I'm just as attractive as the day we
• 17:46
  met. He acts like I'm still that same
• 17:48
  receptionist in my early 20s, going over the company's books
• 17:51
  with him while he tries to pretend he wasn't looking at my
• 17:53
  legs. When he asked me out, I almost
• 17:55
  said no automatically. I was so close to shutting him
• 17:58
  down. I wasn't dating back then, but
• 17:59
  there was something in his eyes that changed my mind now.
• 18:02
  After all, Now, all these years later, I have no regrets.
• 18:05
  Not about him, anyway. Cooper is going to go ask for a
• 18:08
  big pay rise in promotion at work, but Debbie in her
• 18:11
  narration complaints that he's not ambitious enough for her.
• 18:15
  Chapter 5 then switches to Cooper's perspective and he
• 18:17
  starts once again by telling us what a genius Debbie is.
• 18:20
  Again, it would be nice to actually be shown this instead
• 18:23
  of repeatedly just being told it, but we don't expect decent
• 18:26
  writing from Friedre at this point, do we?
• 18:28
  So what do we expect? It's Alltel not show.
• 18:31
  My wife is good at everything she tries, She's a genius.
• 18:34
  She's created multiple apps for our phones that actually work.
• 18:37
  She writes them herself. I can barely figure out how to
• 18:41
  use most of the crap on my phone and here she is creating apps
• 18:44
  out of nothing. Honestly, I wonder sometimes how
• 18:47
  she ended up in this life married to a schlub like me.
• 18:50
  Then there's more shoving obvious stuff down our throats
• 18:53
  while I eat. I rest my hand protectively of
• 18:55
  my pocket when my phone is nestled.
• 18:57
  I try not to let on, but that unaccepted phone call threw me
• 18:59
  off my game. How could she call me when she
• 19:01
  knows I'm still home, likely in the middle of breakfast if
• 19:04
  Debbie had seen it. I don't want to think about it.
• 19:07
  Just feels repetitive at this point, you know?
• 19:09
  We get another confrontation with the angry neighbour and
• 19:12
  it's just another chance to be told that Debbie is a genius.
• 19:14
  I put my key out the lock in time to see my neighbour Brett
• 19:16
  Carlson standing on our front lawn, his boots crushing the
• 19:19
  green grass that my wife has spent so much time keeping lush
• 19:22
  and healthy. I don't know how Debbie does it.
• 19:24
  She's some kind of plant genius. I mean this in the nicest way,
• 19:28
  but I don't think making a few apps that are copies of apps
• 19:31
  that already exist and managing a lawn and growing a few flowers
• 19:36
  makes someone a superhuman, intimidating genius like we're
• 19:39
  meant to believe Debbie is. But I don't know, maybe my
• 19:42
  standards are too high. I don't know, the neighbour
• 19:45
  Brett tells husband Cooper. Let me tell you, Cooper, you
• 19:48
  better keep a close eye on that wife of yours.
• 19:50
  She's dangerous. And I was like, why do I feel
• 19:54
  like he's the only normal person in the book so far?
• 19:56
  And I actually think he's a bit of a douchebag, but he's a
• 19:58
  normal person, you know? And then we never see him again.
• 20:02
  He doesn't come up again in this entire book.
• 20:04
  He's just forgotten about. Other than this line, though,
• 20:07
  the chapter felt entirely unnecessary and repetitive.
• 20:10
  Chapter 6 is another Dear Debbie draft, and this one has a woman
• 20:14
  asking what to do about her husband who always wants to
• 20:16
  listen to different music to her.
• 20:18
  And Debbie's advice is? Marriage is all about
• 20:21
  compromise, so this is a good place to start before your next
• 20:24
  long drive. Try to think of a few artists
• 20:26
  that you both like to listen to and make a playlist featuring
• 20:28
  those artists. That way you can both enjoy the
• 20:31
  music. If your husband is not agreeable
• 20:33
  to his compromise, it's time to get out of that sewing kit.
• 20:36
  Slip an over the counter antihistamine into his wine at
• 20:38
  night and while he's sleeping you can make a hole in his
• 20:42
  eardrum using the needle from the kit.
• 20:44
  They're so handy. When you've completed the first
• 20:46
  ear, move on to the second. It can be a little tedious, but
• 20:50
  it's a fairly simple procedure. After that, he definitely won't
• 20:52
  mind what you listen to in the car anymore.
• 20:54
  So one, she's unhinged and needs help, and two, this again would
• 20:59
  be more shocking if we'd seen the slow decline into her
• 21:03
  madness and being unhinged and her anger and so on.
• 21:06
  Like if we'd seen it happening over the years or even months.
• 21:09
  It would be more impactful than shove it all, than just shoving
• 21:12
  it all at us at once, wouldn't it?
• 21:13
  You know, also three, this isn't my script, but I don't think
• 21:18
  that would work. Like, I mean, I Pierce in the
• 21:20
  adrum, yeah, that would be bad. But the antihistamine thing, no,
• 21:23
  like you still wake up when you take those.
• 21:26
  So like when, when my cubes was ill and she was like, you know,
• 21:31
  having seizures and she had like a lot of medication and stuff
• 21:33
  and she was struggling. I had like a lot of anxiety
• 21:36
  about falling asleep because I was constantly worrying about
• 21:38
  her. And I just, I wasn't sleeping at
• 21:40
  night. So I was an absolute wreck.
• 21:41
  It would take me until like 3:00 AM to fall asleep because like
• 21:44
  every time she moved in the night, I'd be like, Oh my God,
• 21:46
  what's happening? Is she OK?
• 21:47
  Is she not? And so it took me forever and
• 21:49
  forever to fall asleep. And then she was waking up at
• 21:51
  like 6:00 AM because she needed to go out to the toilet because
• 21:54
  the medication she was on was making her pee constantly.
• 21:57
  And so I was getting like 3 hours sleep a night for like 4
• 21:59
  months and I was a mess, an absolute mess.
• 22:02
  So my doctor gave me often sleeping tablets which can just
• 22:06
  knock you out and make you drowsy like throughout the day
• 22:08
  and stuff. And you can get dependent on
• 22:10
  them and there's issues. My doctor prescribed me an
• 22:12
  antihistamine, like a really strong antihistamine, and she
• 22:16
  was like, this will help because I'll make you drowsy enough to
• 22:18
  fall asleep at a reasonable time.
• 22:20
  But if Kyra needs you in the night, like if she has another C
• 22:23
  shape she wants to go out, she'll still be able to wake
• 22:25
  you. It doesn't knock you out in
• 22:27
  terms of like you can't wake up from it.
• 22:28
  It just helps you drowsy enough to fall asleep in the 1st place.
• 22:31
  It's like when you're anxious and can't sleep, it'll help with
• 22:33
  that, but you'll still be able to wake up.
• 22:35
  And I was like, Oh my God, thank you.
• 22:37
  So that's the same thing that she's suggesting they put.
• 22:39
  Oh, actually the wine. Maybe it's the wine because
• 22:43
  you're not meant to drink on them.
• 22:45
  Maybe that's the thing. If you have the antihistamines
• 22:48
  with alcohol, it can make you more drowsy, less likely to wake
• 22:52
  up. And it can, but that's really
• 22:55
  dangerous because it can also like, slow your breathing to a
• 22:57
  point where you know you're dying.
• 23:03
  Anyway, I feel about this too much.
• 23:04
  This is not the point anyway. What I'm trying to say though,
• 23:07
  like if this was me and I was writing this book and I was
• 23:10
  interspersing these Dear Debbie articles through the chapters, I
• 23:13
  would do this differently. Like I said earlier, I'd start
• 23:16
  with like her first ever column and then one like a few years
• 23:18
  into her career. Then show like the one that got
• 23:20
  her like popularity and fame and whatever, like that, you know,
• 23:23
  show the genuinely good advice. And then as time passes, like
• 23:27
  start to show her being like a little bit more out there and
• 23:29
  out there and out there until you start seeing these unhinged
• 23:32
  and hopefully never published draughts towards the end of the
• 23:34
  book. That's the way I do it.
• 23:36
  And you showed the progression, like, I don't know, because
• 23:41
  like, like I say, other than being explicitly told several
• 23:44
  times, and again, Debbie's a genius and people give her
• 23:46
  advice, we never actually see this in the book.
• 23:49
  We never actually see Debbie giving good advice.
• 23:51
  We never see people liking her advice or listening to her.
• 23:55
  We don't understand why people think she's smart.
• 23:57
  We don't understand why people trust her.
• 23:59
  We're told they do and we're told she is, but we never see it
• 24:02
  for ourselves. And I need to see it to believe
• 24:05
  it. You know what I mean?
• 24:06
  I don't know, I'm rambling at this point, OK?
• 24:09
  At this point I'm going to pause filming because I need to leave
• 24:11
  and go to my show. But I'll be back tomorrow to
• 24:15
  film a little bit more before tomorrow night.
• 24:16
  I'm going to see Lily Allen in Sheffield.
• 24:18
  I'm so excited. It's going to be great.
• 24:20
  But yeah, I'll do some filming tomorrow before I go to that.
• 24:23
  But for now, thank you and I'll see you again in a little bit.
• 24:25
  All right. Hi everyone.
• 24:26
  Welcome back to Part 2 of Trying to Film this Video.
• 24:28
  It's actually been over a week since I filmed that last bit.
• 24:32
  I yeah, editing that last video was a nightmare, and the Fried
• 24:36
  Macfallan blog one took me forever, especially with all my
• 24:40
  emotional stuff right now. Where were we?
• 24:42
  I think we're just about to start Chapter 7, which is back
• 24:44
  to Debbie's perspective, and it opens in a really weird way.
• 24:48
  I take one last glance at my garden to make sure it looks
• 24:50
  perfect. I know roses are very popular,
• 24:52
  like the ones in John, like the ones in Joe Dolan's garden down
• 24:54
  the road, but I have a beautiful mix of vivid pink, red and
• 24:57
  Violet flowers. When the journalists asked me
• 24:59
  what type of flowers they were, I said they were wind flowers
• 25:01
  because that's what they look like, but they're not really.
• 25:03
  If I told them what the flowers really were, I wouldn't be in
• 25:06
  the magazine. Even Cooper doesn't know at this
• 25:08
  point. I was like, what the hell?
• 25:08
  What type of flowers would a gardening magazine not want to
• 25:11
  publish? Because I can't imagine they'd
• 25:13
  really avoid any type of plant in particular unless it's like
• 25:16
  an illegal or invasive species. Like if it's something like a
• 25:19
  marijuana plant, I can see them not wanting to publish that.
• 25:21
  If it's like an invasive species that's like illegal to have in
• 25:24
  America, what's set? I can see them not wanting to
• 25:26
  have that. But anything else, I'm like,
• 25:27
  what the hell? I said in my original script,
• 25:30
  maybe she's alluding to the fact it's some sort of plant that can
• 25:33
  be used to make drugs or poison. But then I don't know because
• 25:35
  like windflowers themselves, like, but then I was like, that
• 25:38
  makes no sense because windflowers themselves can be
• 25:40
  poisonous to humans. Like they can give you a dodgy
• 25:44
  tummy and to cats and dogs they can kill them like so
• 25:46
  windflowers are poisonous. So I was like, she wouldn't be
• 25:48
  pretending to not have one poisonous flower by growing
• 25:51
  another poisonous flower. That doesn't make any sense.
• 25:53
  And also, do you not think a journalist for a gardening
• 25:56
  magazine would know the difference between windflowers
• 25:58
  and whatever these are? They probably wouldn't need to
• 26:00
  ask, you know, I don't know. Anyway, I said, I bet the twist
• 26:03
  is going to be that Debbie's growing poisonous plants to kill
• 26:05
  someone, for example, her husband or the coach from the
• 26:08
  school or the neighbour that was annoying her or something like
• 26:10
  that. But at the minute it just
• 26:11
  doesn't make sense because if you're going to grow poisonous
• 26:14
  flowers, don't pretend they're another poisonous flower.
• 26:16
  Wild. So my partner's a really keen
• 26:18
  gardener and he's, Oh my God, he's amazing.
• 26:20
  He can grow anything. He's wonderful.
• 26:22
  He gave me a little succulent plant for Christmas and I've
• 26:25
  accidentally already killed it and I was really, really upset
• 26:27
  by it because I am not a gardener.
• 26:28
  I cannot keep anything alive, even a plant that barely needs
• 26:31
  watering. I'm useless.
• 26:33
  But he's wonderful. His house is full of plants.
• 26:35
  He. Yeah, he's great.
• 26:37
  So I asked him and I said, help me out with this for a video,
• 26:39
  please. And I sent him that extract from
• 26:40
  the story. I said, so this woman's
• 26:42
  supposed, And that's him texting now.
• 26:43
  I'm just going to mute my phone for a little bit while I film.
• 26:46
  Bless him. He's in Italy this week and he's
• 26:48
  very excitedly sending me all the photos.
• 26:49
  It looks gorgeous. So I said to him, so this
• 26:52
  woman's supposed to be a genius when it comes to tech and
• 26:54
  plants, and she's having a garden photograph for a famous
• 26:57
  gardening magazine for some reason.
• 26:58
  The journalist in a gardening magazine doesn't know what the
• 27:01
  plants are in the garden and just accepts this woman's
• 27:03
  answer. So she's hinting that they're
• 27:05
  actually something else. So I'm thinking something
• 27:06
  poisonous. But I've Googled it and one,
• 27:08
  windflowers are poisonous in there and right.
• 27:10
  And two, there's nothing illegal or poisonous or used to make
• 27:12
  drugs that look like what A that look like a windflower that I
• 27:15
  can see, unless you know something that does.
• 27:17
  And he said that's so stupid, literally makes no sense.
• 27:19
  Why would the journalists not know?
• 27:20
  Unless they're opium poppies, which have those colours and a
• 27:23
  passing resemblance to windflowers but not exactly an
• 27:27
  obscure flower. And I said yeah I feel like
• 27:29
  anyone, even me would recognise a poppy.
• 27:31
  They have pretty distinctive centres.
• 27:33
  So like we agreed this was stupid because like I say, one
• 27:35
  who wouldn't recognise a poppy 2A gardening journalist would
• 27:38
  definitely recognise a poppy. 3 Sure windflowers and poppies
• 27:42
  have slightly like similar looking petals and could be the
• 27:46
  same colours, but their centres are very very distinctive and
• 27:49
  you probably wouldn't easily get one mixed up for the other
• 27:51
  because they look so different. 4 It's not illegal or irregular
• 27:55
  to grow poppies so why would you lie in field?
• 27:57
  Need to hide this. Like in the UK they just grow
• 28:00
  wild in random places and you can absolutely grow poppies
• 28:03
  specifically like opium poppies in any garden, it's not a big
• 28:07
  deal. And five, this is my main point.
• 28:09
  Let's say it was poppies and she is extracting opium from them.
• 28:12
  Most commercially available types of opium poppy have
• 28:15
  actually been bred so they barely produce any pot, any
• 28:18
  actual opium. And those that do extracting,
• 28:21
  it's not exactly an easy process.
• 28:23
  And it involves like having to collect the latex produced by
• 28:26
  the seed pods, dry it. And then even then what you
• 28:29
  collect is stinky and gross and a bit sticky.
• 28:32
  You'd barely get any opium from like a whole garden full of
• 28:35
  poppies. And what you have is like very
• 28:37
  distinctive. So you couldn't exactly like
• 28:39
  just give it to someone or hide eating food or anything like
• 28:42
  that because it's, it's gross. Like I just, I anyway, in my
• 28:46
  original script, I said, All in all, if she's going down this
• 28:49
  route, it's stupid. So shout out to Alex and big
• 28:52
  thank you for him for helping me with that.
• 28:55
  Let's read another passage. I can't stand at my watch.
• 28:57
  Still 10 more minutes. Time seems to be moving in slow
• 29:00
  motion. It suddenly occurs to me that
• 29:02
  they'll want coffee. So I get a pot brewing using the
• 29:05
  state-of-the-art coffee machine we received as a house warming
• 29:07
  gift, which Cooper immediately deemed too complicated.
• 29:10
  He now gets his coffee at work. But it's hardly nuclear physics,
• 29:14
  which is actually nowhere near as difficult as my Advanced
• 29:17
  Database Systems class in college.
• 29:20
  This is not how and intelligent people talk.
• 29:22
  I pour the coffee grounds into the machine and press a button
• 29:25
  that makes the machines spring to life.
• 29:26
  There, the coffee is now forthcoming.
• 29:29
  Ah yes, Debbie is a true genius. She knows physics, databases,
• 29:35
  and coffee machines. Oh my God, she's written so
• 29:39
  funny. I feel like Freda has never
• 29:41
  actually, well, she's a doctor, of course.
• 29:43
  She's been around very intelligent people, and yet she
• 29:45
  still doesn't know how to write that.
• 29:47
  It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre.
• 29:49
  Anyway, the photographer doesn't show up, so Debbie phones the
• 29:51
  magazine. And in the least believable part
• 29:54
  yet, the hold music is a Taylor Swift song.
• 29:57
  I generally like Taylor Swift music, but I am not in the mood
• 30:00
  right now. Sorry, but a gardening magazine
• 30:03
  would not be able to afford the licencing fee for a Taylor Swift
• 30:06
  song to use as their hold music. I don't believe it.
• 30:12
  Anyway, Debbie's neighbour Jo, it turns out, has swooped in and
• 30:15
  stolen her photo shoot and just no one bothered to tell Debbie
• 30:19
  because OK, Well, she says, meaning the journalist.
• 30:23
  When we were leaving your house, we ran into your neighbour
• 30:25
  Josephine Dolan. We saw her Rose Garden and roses
• 30:28
  are just so classic. I thought it would be a nice
• 30:31
  throwback look for the photo spread.
• 30:33
  My jaw drops. I'm absolutely stunned.
• 30:35
  Jo stole my photo shoot and this is just so Desperate Housewives,
• 30:40
  isn't it? This feels like, you know, when
• 30:41
  there's that whole rivalry between like Brie and Catherine
• 30:44
  and they're all like, well, my recipe is better than your
• 30:46
  recipe. Like it feels like that.
• 30:49
  And I said what we bet in this goes full Desperate Housewives
• 30:52
  and Debbie ends up poisoning Joe Sadly, I was certainly wrong
• 30:54
  about that, but she does do the whole petty revenge thing.
• 30:57
  So here we are, right? Also, in the last chapter, I
• 31:01
  think I missed this bit out, but Debbie went on a run about the
• 31:03
  best way to kill weeds, which in her opinion was my absolute
• 31:07
  favourite way to kill weeds is to take a pot of boiling water
• 31:10
  and scold the little devils. So I was like, ah, we're going
• 31:13
  to have a throwback. She's going to go and pour
• 31:15
  boiling water over Joe's roses at night, right?
• 31:18
  No, of course she doesn't. That'll be too obvious.
• 31:20
  That'll be too good writing to actually have like, you know, a
• 31:23
  Chekhov's gun thing happening. Of course we're not going to do
• 31:25
  that. This is Frida McFadden, and
• 31:27
  Debbie is sad, and in what's meant to show us that she is
• 31:30
  desperate and at rock bottom or something, she decides to do the
• 31:34
  most despicable things she can imagine and day drink.
• 31:38
  Shocking, I know. She decides to open up a bottle
• 31:42
  of wine she's been saving since last Christmas, and she says the
• 31:46
  first thing I notice about the bottle of wine is that the cork
• 31:48
  has been dislodged. That's not so strange though.
• 31:52
  Maybe Cooper had a glass at some point.
• 31:53
  Although when I hold it up the bottle looks completely full.
• 31:56
  Did someone open the bottle then fail to drink anything?
• 32:00
  So anyone who's ever drunk white wine, and this is white wine by
• 32:02
  the way, not red, she makes points.
• 32:04
  It's white wine, it doesn't keep once it's opened.
• 32:08
  It gets so vinegary so quickly it gets nasty.
• 32:11
  You do not want to drink from a bottle of wine.
• 32:14
  White wine that's been open malls in a day or so.
• 32:16
  It just grim, absolutely grim. No matter how desperate you are,
• 32:19
  it's not worth it. It tastes manky as hell and also
• 32:22
  it's been kept on top of the fridge, not in the fridge.
• 32:25
  Again, no one wants room temperature white wine.
• 32:28
  No white wine should be served chilled, even when you're sad
• 32:32
  and desperate, you know? Yes, I am a white wine snow, but
• 32:36
  I make no apologies. She says.
• 32:38
  When I take a swirl of the wine, I get a big surprise.
• 32:41
  There are no fruity undertones or pleasant numbing buzz.
• 32:44
  There's nothing. It tastes like water.
• 32:47
  OK, editing me jumping in. I'm just at my parents' house.
• 32:50
  But I feel like it would be so much more believable at this
• 32:52
  point if she'd, instead of gone with white wine, gone with
• 32:54
  vodka, because that would make more sense for the actual reveal
• 32:57
  at the end of the book of who drank of who drank it.
• 33:00
  It would make sense that it had been touched less because I
• 33:03
  guess, like, the average person doesn't really drink spirits
• 33:05
  regularly. I guess it would make more sense
• 33:09
  that she didn't notice it was replaced with water because when
• 33:12
  you pour it, it looks exactly like water, whereas white wine
• 33:15
  doesn't. And yeah, there's just, it would
• 33:18
  have made so much. And if it had been open a while,
• 33:21
  like, vodka keeps white wine, doesn't it?
• 33:23
  Just these little things kind of take you out of it because the
• 33:26
  white wine thing makes no sense. If it was vodka, it would have
• 33:29
  made so much more sense. Anyway, someone drank my wine
• 33:35
  then replaced it with water, so I wouldn't know who would have
• 33:37
  done something like that. Love, you've got two teenagers
• 33:41
  in the house, clearly it was one of them, right?
• 33:44
  But no, instead she's like, ah, it must be Lexi's boyfriend
• 33:47
  because I don't like him so it must have been him.
• 33:50
  Like not one of her own kids. With the jolt of 100% certainty,
• 33:54
  I know who it must have been. Zane.
• 33:57
  Lexie Boyfriend. I already knew that kid was bad
• 33:59
  news, and now that little creep is actually drinking our alcohol
• 34:03
  on top of everything else. Of course, if I say anything to
• 34:06
  Lexie, she'll deny it. She thinks her boyfriend walks
• 34:09
  on water. All I can do is make sure
• 34:10
  there's no other alcohol in the house for him to steal.
• 34:13
  And like, this is what, like, kind of shocks me because the
• 34:16
  boyfriend's meant to be 18. In any other country around the
• 34:18
  world except, like, America, he would be allowed to buy alcohol
• 34:21
  for himself. Teenagers are going to drink.
• 34:23
  The best thing you can do is make sure they're safe, you're
• 34:25
  looking after them, and they can trust you enough to ask for help
• 34:28
  if they need it. You know what I mean?
• 34:29
  Like, anyway, Chapter 8 Debbie goes to confront Joe, her garden
• 34:35
  rival, her very young Katherine Mayfair if you will, and they
• 34:39
  sling some cat remarks back and forth and then Debbie says
• 34:42
  there's such a thing as karma, you know.
• 34:45
  She waves her hand. I don't care about that hippie
• 34:47
  nonsense. Do you know what karma means?
• 34:50
  No, and I don't care. My jaw, my jaw Titans.
• 34:53
  It means what goes around comes around.
• 34:56
  And I find it very hard to believe that any person in this
• 34:58
  date and age doesn't know what karma means.
• 35:00
  Like I reckon even my 75 year old dad who's never left
• 35:03
  Yorkshire in his life knows what karma means.
• 35:05
  You know it because are Frida just feels very out of touch and
• 35:08
  a lot of the things she writes In the next chapter, Debbie
• 35:11
  starts to get her revenge. She goes to buy Japanese beetle
• 35:14
  traps. Basically, she doesn't write any
• 35:16
  of this or explain it. But how they work for people who
• 35:19
  don't know is that they release pheromones and scents which
• 35:22
  attract the beetles and then the beetles fall into a bag and they
• 35:26
  get trapped so they can't eat and damage your plants.
• 35:28
  And these beetles are also known commonly for going after roses
• 35:33
  and eating a lot of roses. Debbie only buys the refills,
• 35:36
  which is the bit that releases the pheromones and not the bag
• 35:39
  for the trapping. And so I'm thinking, oh, she's
• 35:41
  clearly going to go and spread this stuff around Joe's garden
• 35:44
  to try and get the beetles to be attracted to the roses and eat
• 35:48
  the roses. And I think we're supposed to
• 35:50
  think this is some sort of like, complex evil genius plan.
• 35:53
  But it's just a bit of a basic mean girl move, isn't it?
• 35:55
  It's the gardening equivalent of Katie giving Regina those
• 35:58
  protein bars and Mean Girls. You know, it's not necessarily a
• 36:02
  clever, smart, genius thing to do.
• 36:04
  It's just mean. Debbie also starts experiencing
• 36:07
  this like buzzing in her head when she gets angry.
• 36:09
  She had it with Joe in the last chapter and now with a woman who
• 36:12
  pushes in front of her at the till.
• 36:14
  I thought this was meant to be like, oh, maybe this is like,
• 36:19
  well, I thought it was going to have some relevance.
• 36:20
  Like maybe, oh, she's going to black out when she gets the
• 36:23
  buzzing and do something bad or I don't know, because like it's,
• 36:28
  I guess you could say it's like a portrayal of anxiety and
• 36:32
  emotion or whatever, but it, I don't know, there's just such an
• 36:35
  emphasis put on it and nothing ever comes of it.
• 36:37
  It's completely irrelevant. And I, I don't know.
• 36:41
  Anyway, next chapter, Debbie goes to the gym where she meets
• 36:44
  her cool friend Harley. She's the first friend I've had
• 36:47
  in a long time who doesn't have children, which I count as a
• 36:49
  major plus she has a lot more free time.
• 36:52
  Plus we're allowed to talk about other things besides, well,
• 36:55
  kids. It's refreshing.
• 36:57
  Plus Harley is cool. I think I'm about as old as my
• 37:00
  kids when I say that, but in my 40 plus years of friendship I've
• 37:03
  never had a friend like Harley. She's got multiple piercings in
• 37:07
  each ear and there's a pink streak glazed through her blonde
• 37:09
  hair. I always assumed anybody that
• 37:12
  hip wouldn't want to spend time with me.
• 37:14
  When I was younger I was a massive nerd obsessed with
• 37:16
  computers and studying non-stop. And now, well, at my age, if I
• 37:21
  ever had a chance to be cool, those years are long behind me.
• 37:24
  Not to keep comparing 40 something year old Freda with my
• 37:28
  mum, what with my parents are in their 70s, but my mum's almost
• 37:32
  71 and even she wouldn't say something is hip that's outdated
• 37:37
  even by her standards. So it's just, it's odd to read.
• 37:41
  Very odd. Debbie then goes on to complain
• 37:44
  that she doesn't actually like anyone in the book club that she
• 37:46
  goes to, saying I wasn't sure if I should invite Holly because we
• 37:50
  feel like mixing universes, but I also desperately need
• 37:52
  reinforcements during these book club meetings.
• 37:55
  One of my favourite things is discussing complex books with
• 37:57
  other adults, but I've come to realise that I'm not very fond
• 38:00
  of any of the women at my book club.
• 38:03
  Debbie seems incredibly unpleasant, so I'm not sure why
• 38:05
  anyone's inviting her to anything or like why she's even
• 38:08
  in this book club. But also, like, you're an adult,
• 38:11
  if you don't like the people you around, just stop hanging around
• 38:15
  with them. If you don't feel comfortable at
• 38:16
  this book club, just don't go to the book club.
• 38:18
  Find another one it anyway. We also find out at this point
• 38:23
  that Harley as has an allergy to avocados.
• 38:26
  Nothing deadly, but it does bring her out in a rash.
• 38:29
  And I said who wants to bet she does something to annoy Debbie
• 38:32
  and avocado just accidentally ends up in her food.
• 38:36
  And I said in my original script I really hope Freda doesn't
• 38:39
  write a plot point like this because messing around with
• 38:40
  allergies is so damn dangerous. I know because I have a pretty
• 38:44
  severe shellfish and mollusk allergy which means I can't eat
• 38:47
  them. Makes my tongue swell up and I
• 38:49
  also have like quite bad skin allergies.
• 38:51
  So like a couple of weeks back I was visiting my parents and I
• 38:56
  didn't realise my mum had changed washing detergent that
• 38:58
  she uses and the day after I like had slept on the bed
• 39:02
  sheets. I got even thinking about it's
• 39:04
  making me itch and I had a full body like rash of just like red
• 39:09
  arms, red legs, red tummy. My face all around here got so
• 39:13
  red my skin was like puffing up around my eyes and on my cheeks.
• 39:16
  I looked ridiculous. I was itching all over it all it
• 39:19
  was horrible. Sometimes when I have a bad
• 39:21
  reaction, I I itch and so much and scratch so much that I make
• 39:25
  my arms and legs bleed. It's horrific.
• 39:28
  I just, God, you should have seen my face.
• 39:30
  I've never had an allergic reaction on my face that bad
• 39:33
  before. But literally like all of this
• 39:35
  was just swollen. It oh, it was horrible.
• 39:37
  Anyway, yeah, my point is, don't mess around with allergies.
• 39:40
  I would hope, seeing as Freda's supposed to be a doctor, she
• 39:44
  wouldn't write this in as a plot point, but I don't know.
• 39:49
  Spoiler Thankfully she doesn't. She doesn't feed anyone anything
• 39:52
  they're allergic to, so that is something I'm thankful for for
• 39:55
  Frida not writing, if that makes sense.
• 39:58
  Harley says I'm looking forward to this.
• 40:00
  I've never been to a book club before.
• 40:01
  Oh, it's really fun. Except that's a lie.
• 40:03
  I'm sure there are book clubs out there that are actually
• 40:05
  enjoyable, but the one I've been attending in my neighbourhood is
• 40:08
  not the slightest bit of fun. But if I say that to Harley, she
• 40:11
  might decide not to come again. Why do you keep going?
• 40:15
  And why would you invite someone you like to something that you
• 40:18
  hate? You're an adult, you have
• 40:20
  agency. You don't have to go to things
• 40:22
  you don't want to go to. You don't need to socialise with
• 40:25
  people you don't like. I don't understand.
• 40:28
  It's not even like she has some obligation to do it because
• 40:30
  like, oh, it's a school thing. Oh, and our friends, sorry, our
• 40:35
  kids are friends, so when they hang out, we have to.
• 40:37
  It's nothing like that. There's no reason she has to go.
• 40:41
  She can just stop. We're on to Chapter 11 now and
• 40:45
  20% and 20% of the way through the book and we finally get
• 40:48
  another Cooper chapter. He's moaning that his boss
• 40:51
  doesn't want to be friends with him.
• 40:52
  And Cooper's colleague called Jesse tries to motivate him
• 40:56
  ahead of his meeting, asking for emotion for a promotion and pay
• 40:59
  rise today. And Cooper just narrates more
• 41:02
  about how wonderful Debbie is. So Jesse says just get in there
• 41:05
  and make sure you don't come out till he gives you what you
• 41:07
  deserve. And Cooper writes what I
• 41:10
  deserve. I already have more than what I
• 41:13
  deserve. When I was in college, my whole
• 41:15
  world was going down the toilet, but I somehow turned it around.
• 41:18
  And then I met Debbie. Jessie's met Debbie a handful of
• 41:22
  times, but he barely knows her and he doesn't realise she's way
• 41:25
  too good for me. He doesn't know that I've done a
• 41:27
  lot of things in our marriage that have proven that she
• 41:29
  deserves better. I only want this promotion so I
• 41:32
  can live up to that impossible standard.
• 41:34
  I need this for her. There's a lot of vagueness to
• 41:38
  this. He and other characters go on
• 41:40
  about how great Debbie is and how wonderful she is, but they
• 41:42
  never get specific. They don't tell us why she's so
• 41:44
  great and we never see why she's so great.
• 41:47
  We never see her being a horrible person.
• 41:48
  So it's a lot of telling and not showing.
• 41:51
  And it's, I mean, to me, from what I've seen this book so far,
• 41:55
  she seems grumpy, manipulative, mean, conniving, rude, not that
• 42:01
  smart. Like, why do so many people love
• 42:04
  her so much? I don't get it.
• 42:06
  And there's absolutely no indication that she's not always
• 42:09
  been this way. Again, if we'd seen this
• 42:11
  development and there's or rather this devolvement of her
• 42:14
  into anger and craziness and. But like, that would make sense.
• 42:18
  But anyway, yeah, it takes Cooper forever to actually get
• 42:23
  into the meeting because, like Debbie, he has to spend whole
• 42:26
  paragraphs judging people. The receptionist is too good at
• 42:29
  her job but doesn't smile enough, his boss is balding and
• 42:32
  it makes him look older than he is, blah blah blah.
• 42:34
  It's just judgy for the sake of being judgy.
• 42:36
  It's unpleasant to read. I'm not a fan of it.
• 42:38
  And his boss immediately shoots him down from the promotion and
• 42:41
  says you do well enough as a worker bee.
• 42:43
  But a leader? No, definitely not.
• 42:45
  Certainly not a partner. Ouch.
• 42:49
  And honestly, yeah, like, we've not seen him take any initiative
• 42:53
  for himself so far. He only does what Debbie tells
• 42:55
  him to do. So I can see why his boss
• 42:57
  wouldn't give him the promotion. I know I'm meant to feel sorry
• 43:00
  for him, but like, in my mind as a reader, he's not done anything
• 43:04
  to deserve it. So I'm not exactly rooting for
• 43:07
  him, you know? So Cooper does the stupid thing
• 43:09
  and he quits his job on the spot with no other plan and he gives
• 43:13
  us two weeks notice and it's like mate you've got two kids.
• 43:16
  This is so damn irresponsible like and you're the only one
• 43:19
  making money really. Anyway, That said, his boss does
• 43:24
  just seem mean for the sake of it.
• 43:26
  Like everyone in this book is a horrible person except Harley.
• 43:29
  She seems nice so far but don't worry, Freda will ruin her too.
• 43:32
  But it's just so hard to, like, root for anyone when everyone's
• 43:36
  so horrible and not even in, like, justifiable or
• 43:39
  understandable ways. They're just nasty for the sake
• 43:41
  of being nasty. And the bad guys are all these,
• 43:43
  like, insane caricatures. It's just, yeah, I don't know.
• 43:48
  Why do I keep calling Connor, what's his name?
• 43:51
  Cooper. Cooper.
• 43:51
  Yeah, it is Cooper. And so Cooper narrates.
• 43:56
  My head is spinning as I stumble out of Ken's office.
• 43:58
  What just happened in there? Did I really just quit my job?
• 44:01
  How am I going to pay for my kids to go to college?
• 44:03
  What are we going to do about our mortgage, our health
• 44:05
  insurance? Oh, Christ, What am I going to
• 44:07
  tell Debbie? She's going to be furious.
• 44:10
  And I'm like, oh, you think I'd be furious if, like, the only
• 44:14
  person I was relying on for income just suddenly quit their
• 44:16
  job without telling me? Like, yeah, I'd be mad, too.
• 44:19
  Not that I'd ever let myself get in that situation again, but
• 44:21
  like, yeah. Next chapter we get back to
• 44:25
  Debbie. Her and Holly are on the way to
• 44:26
  the book club when Freda decides to ruin Holly's character for
• 44:30
  me, and she says you should see the dump where I live.
• 44:33
  She sighs tight and pace. Crap.
• 44:35
  It must be nice having a man to take care of you.
• 44:38
  Yeah, can we not? Funnily enough though, this is
• 44:41
  the least bad thing Holly ends up doing.
• 44:43
  Debbie says. I don't comment on that.
• 44:45
  I never wanted to be in a position where I had to rely on
• 44:47
  a man to support me. That's why I worked so hard in
• 44:49
  school and went to a top college.
• 44:51
  But she's exactly right. Cooper is the breadwinner in our
• 44:54
  family. Unfortunately, Cooper's income
• 44:56
  is nothing to brag about. Money's always been tight in our
• 44:58
  family, although I strongly suspect that will change in the
• 45:01
  very near future. And like, I have mixed feelings
• 45:03
  about this, right? So I'm just going to read what I
• 45:06
  wrote in my original script because my thoughts were a bit
• 45:08
  jumbled at the minute. So I said I feel like since we
• 45:12
  haven't yet been given a reason why Debbie dropped out of
• 45:14
  college, it's probably going to be something tragic and trauma
• 45:16
  related. I feel like knowing Frida she's
• 45:18
  probably going to do the cliche thing of young smart woman goes
• 45:21
  to college but is raped by evil man and she's too traumatised to
• 45:24
  continue. So she takes a low paying job
• 45:26
  where she meets an older man, her boss, and realises he's one
• 45:29
  of the good ones and can take care of her.
• 45:31
  But she's never addressed her trauma, and it turns her into
• 45:34
  this crazy person who tortures everyone around her.
• 45:36
  I hope to God she's not done that, because it feels like a
• 45:38
  bit of a kick in her teeth to survivors to portray them in
• 45:41
  that way. But I wouldn't put it past
• 45:42
  Frieda. I really hope I'm wrong.
• 45:46
  Yeah. At the book club, the host
• 45:48
  Rochelle is also horrible. But like, cartoonishly horrible.
• 45:52
  Again, she's like a caricature. It's ridiculous.
• 45:55
  She judges people being poorer than her, and then she judges
• 45:58
  Debbie for making sandwiches. Like, it's bizarre.
• 46:01
  It's annoying. I know she's meant to be
• 46:03
  bizarre. Bizarre.
• 46:06
  I know she's meant to be annoying, but when all the
• 46:10
  characters this horrible, like I said earlier, it's just
• 46:13
  frustrating and unenjoyable to read.
• 46:16
  Of course Debbie's sandwiches contain avocado.
• 46:19
  So at this point I was like, wait, is she trying to poison
• 46:21
  Harley or is she trying to make sure Harley doesn't eat the
• 46:24
  poison? Because clearly there's some
• 46:26
  sort of poison in here, right? Has to be.
• 46:29
  Did she make the sandwiches yourself?
• 46:30
  Rochelle asks, stifling a giggle of her own.
• 46:33
  I did, I'm trying to keep the defensive edge out of my voice
• 46:36
  but it's hard on talking to Rochelle.
• 46:38
  It's Turkey and avocado with sun dried tomato spread.
• 46:40
  How cute. Sloan, one of the women
• 46:42
  exclaims. Holly frowns at me.
• 46:45
  Debbie, didn't I mention I'm allergic to avocados?
• 46:48
  I clasp my hand over my mouth. Oh my God, you did.
• 46:51
  I can't believe I forgot. I'm so sorry Holly.
• 46:54
  Like you literally just had the conversation about an allergy an
• 46:57
  hour ago. You would not forget that
• 46:58
  quickly like. And you made sure.
• 47:01
  And also, correct me if I'm wrong, I mean I'm from Yorkshire
• 47:05
  like and a poor part of Yorkshire, but Turkey and
• 47:07
  avocado isn't that common of a combination, is it?
• 47:10
  I feel like you have to go out of your way to make that.
• 47:12
  So she clearly did this on purpose to put it in there.
• 47:14
  Either she was trying to poison Harley, but then if she was
• 47:16
  trying to poison Harley she wouldn't mention it had avocado.
• 47:19
  So she's trying to stop Harley eating the sandwiches I guess.
• 47:23
  But it's played off as a silly mistake.
• 47:25
  I hope you'll try my sandwiches, though, I say to Rochelle.
• 47:28
  I also will. Rochelle picks up a triangle
• 47:30
  triangulate slice of one of the sandwiches that I painstakingly
• 47:33
  put together after I got back from the gym.
• 47:35
  Like I said, they're adorable. You can just tell that homemade.
• 47:39
  She nibbles on the edge, which encourages the other woman to
• 47:41
  take a piece, too. I'm so pleased they're trying my
• 47:44
  sandwiches. I certainly wouldn't want all
• 47:46
  that hard work to go to waste, so I said theory.
• 47:49
  At this point she's poisoned sandwiches or put like laxatives
• 47:52
  in the sun, dried tomato pastel something.
• 47:53
  But she didn't want Holly to get ill because she likes her, which
• 47:56
  is why she purposely put the avocado in.
• 47:58
  Still still a horrible thing to do, but at least in this case
• 48:02
  she's not trying to purposely cause an allergic reaction in
• 48:04
  someone. So that's a win.
• 48:07
  And the next chapter surprised me because we got a Harley
• 48:09
  chapter out of nowhere and I was like oh OK this is fun.
• 48:13
  But while I liked her before the first time we saw her, she's
• 48:16
  horrible when she's narrating and she just gets worse and
• 48:18
  worse throughout the book. Her chapter literally starts
• 48:21
  with her going rich bitches. That's why I keep calling these
• 48:25
  women in my head. I've been chanting it over and
• 48:27
  over again, especially when Rachelle starts pontificating
• 48:30
  about this stupid, boring book that I didn't actually manage to
• 48:33
  read. Rich bitches, rich bitches, rich
• 48:37
  bitches. It helps the words rhyme.
• 48:40
  I just think the Velvet Moon is so clearly a take off on King
• 48:43
  Leah. Rachelle says there's the
• 48:45
  elderly father and the three daughters vying for his favour.
• 48:48
  It's such an obvious retelling. Rich bitches, rich bitches, rich
• 48:52
  bitches, rich bitches, right? Freda has his horrible habit of
• 48:58
  calling other women bitches. Both real people she knows in
• 49:01
  her personal life, on her blogs and in her books.
• 49:04
  And I'm just not a fan of it. Like, for me, it's kind of
• 49:07
  steeped in misogyny and I'm not a big fan.
• 49:10
  As I got older, like, I realised like, it's just not a word I
• 49:12
  want to use to describe other people.
• 49:14
  Like, it's just, it's just not very nice.
• 49:17
  And I mean, these women that she's complaining about, yeah,
• 49:20
  they're not very nice. They're snobby, they're rude.
• 49:22
  But I think you can point that out without resorting to
• 49:24
  misogynistic insults. Do you know what I mean?
• 49:27
  But what's funny is that, like, Freda has complained on her blog
• 49:29
  about, like, media, like on TV and stuff, using the word bitch
• 49:33
  too freely. She's like, oh, it's
• 49:35
  disgraceful. We don't swear in this house.
• 49:37
  And I'm like, but you, you do use, use that word so much and
• 49:42
  yet you complain one of the media uses it.
• 49:44
  So it's like, interesting. I don't know.
• 49:47
  Holly says about Debbie. Debbie is actually nice.
• 49:49
  Sometimes it seems like she doesn't have much going on
• 49:52
  upstairs, but she tries her best.
• 49:54
  I've not seen any proof of this niceness.
• 49:56
  It's not been present once in this story.
• 49:59
  And so far she has come across as nasty, manipulative, cruel
• 50:02
  and constantly bragging about how smart she is, None of which
• 50:06
  is nice. As the chapter goes on, the book
• 50:09
  club women are all mean. And then, Oh my God, they
• 50:11
  suddenly have to throw up, almost like their food's been
• 50:15
  poisoned. Who saw that coming except all
• 50:18
  of us? Debbie says to Holly.
• 50:21
  As you can see, there's a bad book going round.
• 50:23
  I hope Rochelle doesn't have to cancel her lovely party tonight
• 50:25
  with the mayor. Debbie, I said quietly.
• 50:28
  It seems like they have, you know, food poisoning.
• 50:32
  She blinks at me, her wide eyed stare completely blank.
• 50:35
  Gee, she says. You think so?
• 50:37
  I almost asked if there's any chance it could have been
• 50:39
  something in the sandwiches she made.
• 50:41
  Then again, it would be rude to imply, my friend, that something
• 50:44
  she made with her own hands, with her own two hands, caused
• 50:47
  three women to go into fits of vomiting, even if it could be
• 50:49
  true. And then the chapter ends.
• 50:51
  Harley, love, your friend is a psychopath.
• 50:54
  We all know it. Just stay away from her.
• 50:58
  I think the only reason we had Harley narrating this instead of
• 51:00
  Debbie was to maintain some level of like plausible
• 51:04
  deniability for Debbie here and keep the audience wondering
• 51:06
  whether she actually did it or not.
• 51:08
  But like, yeah, of course it's her.
• 51:11
  We don't need any kind of like, we don't need any like vagueness
• 51:16
  also to see she did it. We know this like and spoil it.
• 51:20
  She did do it. She did.
• 51:21
  So I I don't know. I don't know.
• 51:23
  This book is just nonsense. If you can't tell, I really
• 51:27
  dislike this book. I think it's the worst Freedom
• 51:29
  McFadden book I've read. Actually, it's terrible.
• 51:32
  We get another Debbie letter and I've been married for over 20
• 51:35
  years now, and although in many ways it's a happy marriage,
• 51:38
  there are certain aspects I'm unhappy with.
• 51:40
  I'm hoping you could give me some advice.
• 51:42
  When we first got married, my husband was very adamant that he
• 51:44
  didn't want me to work. I thought this was very sweet
• 51:47
  and when my children were young it made sense.
• 51:49
  I loved how he provided for us, but it could also be
• 51:51
  frustrating. For example, he set up our
• 51:53
  credit card so that he had to approve every purchase.
• 51:56
  When I wanted to buy something, I would have to call him about
• 51:58
  it and get his verbal approval beforehand, or else the card, or
• 52:02
  else the card would be declined. Similarly, we only have one
• 52:05
  joint bank account, and it only has a small amount of money that
• 52:08
  is my allowance. Since I'm the one who buys
• 52:10
  groceries, most of the money must be spent on that, and if I
• 52:14
  want any other purchases, I have to ask him to add money to the
• 52:17
  account. He insists that I save the money
• 52:19
  from my tiny allowance. If my shoes were out and I need
• 52:21
  a new pair, I have to save for months to buy them.
• 52:24
  This is financial abuse. I believe him.
• 52:26
  Debbie should be pointing this out to the woman and pointing
• 52:30
  her to resources that will help her leave an abusive
• 52:32
  relationship. But instead we get this which is
• 52:35
  it has some good points and also some bad points.
• 52:37
  What you are describing is financial abuse.
• 52:39
  Your husband is using money as a way to control you and he
• 52:42
  deserves to suffer crossed out. You don't need his permission to
• 52:45
  get a job. You don't need his permission
• 52:46
  for anything. My advice is that you should
• 52:49
  slip poison into his wine at dinner crossed out speak to a
• 52:53
  divorce lawyer. I'd be happy to give you more
• 52:55
  information on poisons that are unlikely to be detected on autos
• 52:59
  on autopsy, crossed out local legal options.
• 53:02
  If you'd like to contact me through my e-mail address on the
• 53:04
  website. So great calling it what it is
• 53:07
  great offering to provide resources, but why not just
• 53:10
  provide these resources publicly so that you're helping other
• 53:13
  women in the same situation? Why gatekeep?
• 53:16
  Why be like, well, you have to e-mail me if you want them.
• 53:18
  Like, I guess that Freda just didn't want to actually write it
• 53:22
  out, but I don't know. It's annoying.
• 53:25
  It's annoying as hell. And also with those crossed
• 53:27
  outlines of like, he deserves to suffer, you should poison him.
• 53:30
  I said clearly Freda's going with the whole growing a poison
• 53:33
  garden thing, isn't she? Chapter 15 Debbie goes for a
• 53:36
  meeting with her boss at the newspaper that she writes for.
• 53:38
  And he's mad because she told the financial abuse woman to
• 53:41
  leave her husband and he says, well, she left him.
• 53:46
  I know. Pleased good, not good.
• 53:49
  Garrett looks at me like I've lost my mind.
• 53:50
  Debbie, what were you thinking? You can't.
• 53:52
  You can't tell complete strangers to leave their
• 53:54
  husbands. Isn't it my job to give advice,
• 53:56
  right, about gardening or getting stains out of shirts?
• 53:59
  His voice is completely exasperated.
• 54:01
  You can't tell a woman you've never even met to get a divorce?
• 54:04
  I can If he's so clearly abusive.
• 54:06
  You don't know that. Sorry.
• 54:07
  But when this woman's so clearly describing abuse, you can call
• 54:11
  that abuse. You can.
• 54:13
  And this editor goes like, it's none of your business, Debbie,
• 54:17
  Like, sorry, but that is enabling abuse and allowing
• 54:19
  abusers to keep abusing this man is part of the problem.
• 54:21
  If you don't call it out, victims might never be able to
• 54:24
  leave. You know what I mean?
• 54:25
  Yes, absolutely call it abuse. Like, I know when I was trapped
• 54:29
  in an abusive relationship, I kept trying to leave him and it
• 54:31
  kept convincing me to take him back and come up with excuses
• 54:34
  and being like, well, I'll stop the drinking, I'll go to
• 54:36
  therapy, I'll do this. And he never did.
• 54:37
  He never did any of it. And it would get better for like
• 54:40
  a couple of days and then it would be back be back to being
• 54:42
  bad again and often worse than it was before.
• 54:45
  And the only reason I finally, finally, finally actually got
• 54:49
  away was because one of my friends called what he was doing
• 54:53
  abuse and said it for what it was.
• 54:56
  And and that's how it clicked in my head that, like, what he was
• 55:00
  doing to me wasn't right. And regardless of what he was
• 55:03
  telling me, I didn't actually deserve to be treated the way he
• 55:06
  was treating me. You know what I mean?
• 55:07
  So I'd argue, like if you're writing an advice column for
• 55:11
  women and someone comes to you describing textbook abuse, it is
• 55:14
  your responsibility to call it what it is and provide them with
• 55:17
  the resources they need to get to safety, you know?
• 55:21
  Anyway, this guy, the editor, he's a bit for pig and he fires
• 55:24
  her because of course he does. Garrett let's out alongside and
• 55:27
  massages his temples. The husband is threatening to
• 55:29
  sue us. This guy means business.
• 55:31
  The only way he would retract the lawsuit is if I fired you
• 55:34
  and Bernice, who's like her boss.
• 55:36
  And see, this is where this is where you lose me.
• 55:38
  Again. The letter to Debbie was
• 55:40
  anonymous, right? So how did this guy know that it
• 55:42
  was his wife who'd written it? Like, I feel like they surely
• 55:45
  can't be legitimate. No, like I, I don't know, like
• 55:50
  if she'd given bad advice and this woman ended up in more
• 55:54
  trouble or danger or whatever. I reckon Debbie might have been
• 55:57
  sued for negligence or something, but I don't see how
• 55:59
  like a whole newspaper can be sued for writing an anonymous
• 56:03
  advice piece. I just, I, it doesn't make sense
• 56:05
  to me. It absolutely doesn't like if a
• 56:07
  woman reads like, if a woman reads about abuse on a charity
• 56:12
  website, like like, say, refuges website whether, and then
• 56:15
  decides to lead her husband, leave her husband because of
• 56:17
  that, he can't then sue the charity.
• 56:20
  Like, so why would he sue a newspaper for replying to an
• 56:25
  anonymous letter? It doesn't, it doesn't make
• 56:27
  sense to me. None of this makes sense.
• 56:29
  It's unbelievable, right? Isn't it?
• 56:31
  I I feel like my brain's malfunctioning.
• 56:33
  It's so silly. Debbie says it was good advice.
• 56:36
  I clutched the hem of my skirt in my fists, which have suddenly
• 56:39
  grown sweaty. That woman needed help and I
• 56:41
  told her the truth. You're really going to find me
• 56:43
  for helping a woman who was being abused?
• 56:45
  This is a family oriented paper. Garrett reminds me.
• 56:48
  That's what our advertisers expect.
• 56:50
  You can't tell people to get a divorce.
• 56:52
  You just can't. Debbie, that's so stupid.
• 56:54
  Family oriented doesn't mean enabling abusers.
• 56:59
  But you know what? At least this guy is a
• 57:01
  believable villain. This editor, because there's so
• 57:04
  many messed up people out there like him.
• 57:06
  So I I kind of find him the most believable character in the
• 57:09
  book. But even the receptionist is
• 57:11
  stupid. She says, well, it's just so
• 57:13
  important that the paper is family oriented, she says, the
• 57:16
  sanctity of marriage, You know, there's nothing more important
• 57:20
  than the bonds of marriage, Sierra says sagely.
• 57:23
  So you can't violate that by telling a woman to leave her
• 57:25
  husband. And our advertisers feel the
• 57:28
  same. Without them, the paper will be
• 57:30
  done. You know that.
• 57:32
  Hate this book. Sierra walks me all the way back
• 57:35
  to the door and make sure that I leave without a fuss.
• 57:37
  As I trudge back to my car with my meagre belongings, I can't
• 57:40
  suppress a jolt of sadness. Even though it was just a silly
• 57:43
  local paper, I enjoyed my job. I like giving advice.
• 57:46
  My own life has felt like a mess, but when it came to other
• 57:48
  people, I always seem to know exactly what they should do.
• 57:51
  It's time to start taking my own advice.
• 57:53
  And again, this confused me because isn't this what you've
• 57:55
  already been doing with the fuse box, with the poison sandwiches,
• 57:58
  with the beetle pheromones? Like you can't just pretend this
• 58:01
  is some turning point or inciting incident when we've
• 58:04
  already seen or at least suspected you of doing these
• 58:07
  horrible things. Like you're already taking your
• 58:10
  own advice. Maybe if like she'd been like
• 58:14
  nice and good up to this point and then this was the inciting
• 58:17
  incident and then we saw her downfall, it would make more
• 58:19
  sense. But such a stupid book in the
• 58:22
  next chapter. Is he the eldest daughter comes
• 58:24
  home and she still want to know the youngest daughter is he's
• 58:27
  the youngest daughter. Anyway, she comes home.
• 58:28
  She still want to talk to her mom.
• 58:30
  Debbie making suspicious brownies back to Cooper.
• 58:32
  He's at the gym, his colleague or soon to be ex colleague I
• 58:37
  guess. Jesse suggests that they do
• 58:38
  something together on the weekend to stop him moping about
• 58:41
  quitting his job. Cooper suggests they go shooting
• 58:43
  together and says yes, I do own a gun.
• 58:47
  One of the major sources of discord in my marriage is the
• 58:49
  fact that I purchased one a few years ago after there were a few
• 58:52
  burglaries in our neighbourhood. Debbie was adamantly against it,
• 58:55
  citing admittedly accurate statistics about how people who
• 58:59
  own a gun are more likely to shoot a family member than an
• 59:02
  intruder. But in the end, I went out and
• 59:04
  bought it. The compromise is that I keep it
• 59:06
  in the garage locked up and only use it at the firing range.
• 59:09
  The kids don't even know it's there, and I enjoy firing the
• 59:12
  gun. After everything that happened
• 59:14
  this week, it will feel good to quite literally blow off a
• 59:15
  little steam. Cooper creepily cheques out some
• 59:18
  other women and then heads home. I was like, this is a waste of a
• 59:21
  chapter except setting up the fact that a gun exists in the
• 59:23
  house and he's a creep who, like, sexualizes women in
• 59:26
  public. I thought the gun thing will
• 59:28
  come into play later. It does, I guess, kind of.
• 59:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 59:32
  OK. I guess.
• 59:33
  Yeah. Next chapter, we're back to
• 59:34
  Debbie. She goes down to her kids school
• 59:36
  to, one, take some canned food to a charity thing.
• 59:39
  So, you know, she's such a good person, she gives to charity,
• 59:41
  right. It's like the only nice thing
• 59:43
  she does in the entire book. And two, she goes to confront
• 59:46
  the football coach, who may or may not be a creep.
• 59:49
  I assume that the possibly poison brownies are for him at
• 59:52
  this point. When the receptionist let's her
• 59:54
  in, Debbie says she trusts me. She doesn't think there's that
• 59:57
  there's any chance I'm going to do something I shouldn't.
• 59:59
  But in my defence, I'm not going to do anything terrible.
• 1:00:02
  I would just like to have a conversation with the soccer
• 1:00:04
  coach about why he felt the need to cut his best player.
• 1:00:07
  If that's not an honourable intention, I don't know what is.
• 1:00:10
  After all, what's more honourable than protecting your
• 1:00:12
  child? If my parents have protected me
• 1:00:14
  better, well, no point thinking about that right now.
• 1:00:18
  Hey, OK, and see we jump in here.
• 1:00:19
  Good to say that. I think this line is really,
• 1:00:21
  really unfair actually. Debbie's tragic back story is
• 1:00:24
  not the fault of her parents. There's nothing her parents
• 1:00:27
  could have done really to stop this happening.
• 1:00:29
  So putting the blame on the parents like this, not fair at
• 1:00:31
  all. I don't like this line, no.
• 1:00:35
  And there we go. Childhood trauma causing all
• 1:00:37
  this. We all knew it was coming.
• 1:00:40
  When she gets to the coach there's more judginess about how
• 1:00:44
  he is bold or bolding or something.
• 1:00:46
  Like Freda just seems to have a thing about being really nasty
• 1:00:49
  to bold men in this book. Like all these bad evil men are
• 1:00:54
  bold and she judges them for it and talks about how it makes
• 1:00:57
  them look older and so there's nothing wrong with a man being
• 1:00:59
  bold. Like it's just unnecessary.
• 1:01:02
  Isn't it wild? He's in his 50s and I'm pretty
• 1:01:05
  sure he's bald or at least balding but I can't know for
• 1:01:08
  certain since I've never seen him without a baseball cap in
• 1:01:10
  his head. He's got a Hingham Prep T-shirt
• 1:01:13
  on which stretches off the folds of his belly.
• 1:01:15
  He actually seems to be in poor shape for someone who coaches
• 1:01:18
  sport. But who am I to judge exactly?
• 1:01:20
  Who are you to judge? So stop it.
• 1:01:23
  This whole thing could have just been left out and you could have
• 1:01:25
  just given him a like a non judgey description anyway.
• 1:01:28
  You know, judging for being a creep around kids, not for his
• 1:01:31
  physical appearance. Turns out he's a piece of crap
• 1:01:34
  for different reasons than we thought.
• 1:01:36
  And at the end of last season, Pike tells me, I told Izzy that
• 1:01:38
  she was too slow and she needed to lose some weight before the
• 1:01:41
  next season. 15 lbs at least, but 20 would be better.
• 1:01:44
  My jaw drops. You told my 15 year old daughter
• 1:01:47
  that she needs to drop 20 lbs. I told her she needs to be
• 1:01:50
  faster. He corrects me and I suggested
• 1:01:52
  that losing weight might be a way to be faster, but she's not
• 1:01:55
  any faster. And on top of that, she's gave
• 1:01:57
  gained 5 lbs more than she was last year at this time.
• 1:02:00
  We've got two extra girls on the team and someone had to go, so I
• 1:02:03
  had to cut her. The best way to get faster is to
• 1:02:05
  lose weight. The treadmill won't cut it.
• 1:02:07
  He pauses to fault his arms across his chest.
• 1:02:09
  And anyway. And anyway, no one wants to
• 1:02:11
  watch a bunch of chubby girls running around the soccer field.
• 1:02:14
  That eyeful isn't going to make any crowd happy.
• 1:02:16
  Hell, I don't want to see that. So you know what?
• 1:02:18
  Absolute creep. And at this point I said if she
• 1:02:21
  wants to poison this guy, I'm actually fine with it.
• 1:02:23
  You go for it, love. So the one time in this book I'm
• 1:02:25
  going to support Debbie. You poison this creep.
• 1:02:28
  Thank you. She leaves him with the brownies
• 1:02:30
  and we get the next chapter, Chapter 19.
• 1:02:32
  We're back to Cooper. He is surprised when Debbie
• 1:02:35
  isn't home when he gets in, but he's happy that she won't be
• 1:02:37
  questioning him about the promotion slash quitting his
• 1:02:41
  job. He gets anxious as hell and says
• 1:02:44
  the thought of it makes a cold sweat break out along my
• 1:02:47
  hairline. It's a familiar feeling, one
• 1:02:49
  I've grown to hate. All I can think is that there's
• 1:02:51
  only one thing that will make me feel better.
• 1:02:53
  There's only one place I can go right now.
• 1:02:55
  I've got to get out of here. So in my original script, I was
• 1:02:57
  like, what are we thinking? His secret is?
• 1:02:59
  And I'll tell you this now, I didn't actually guess it.
• 1:03:02
  This is something that I did not predict.
• 1:03:04
  So my thoughts were he has a mystery phone call from a woman
• 1:03:07
  and now this. I'm hoping it's something
• 1:03:09
  interesting. But if it turns out he's like
• 1:03:11
  seeing this is what I was thinking.
• 1:03:13
  I'm still thinking Desperate Housewives in my head and I'm
• 1:03:15
  thinking he's like Rex and season 1, right?
• 1:03:17
  I said if it turns out he's seeing some dominatrix in
• 1:03:20
  secret, then this is straight out of Desperate Housewives and
• 1:03:23
  Friedra is not beating those plagiarism rumours.
• 1:03:25
  However, it's not that. Thankfully, we're not.
• 1:03:27
  We're not doing a Rex storyline. We're OK, But that's how my head
• 1:03:32
  was going because Freda's so known for her blatant
• 1:03:35
  plagiarism. It just.
• 1:03:37
  Yeah. I'll tell you now, though, it
• 1:03:39
  wasn't that. I did not guess what it was
• 1:03:42
  like, where he was going and what his problem was.
• 1:03:44
  So unpredictable. Yes.
• 1:03:47
  Does it make sense? Yeah.
• 1:03:50
  Also, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  Does it make for a good and interesting story?
• 1:03:54
  No Is it something that is handled with the sensitivity it
• 1:03:57
  deserves? Also no.
• 1:03:59
  But before he can leave, Debbie comes home anyway.
• 1:04:02
  Debbie lies to him about the photos shoot and says that it
• 1:04:04
  happened. And Cooper proves once again
• 1:04:06
  that he has no personality of his own.
• 1:04:08
  I can't wait either. I'm not into gardening like
• 1:04:10
  Debbie is. The truth is, I find plants
• 1:04:13
  boring in the same way that other people find tax codes
• 1:04:15
  boring. But I'm excited because she's
• 1:04:17
  excited. Maybe I can get one of the
• 1:04:19
  photos professionally framed so we can hang it in the hallway.
• 1:04:21
  I can do it as a surprise when the article comes out, like, OK,
• 1:04:24
  we get it. You have no interest in
• 1:04:26
  anything. You have no ambition, and the
• 1:04:27
  only thing you're ever positive about is when you're talking.
• 1:04:30
  And the only time you're positive is when you're talking
• 1:04:32
  about how great your wife is. Maybe you'd feel like you
• 1:04:35
  deserved it a little bit better if you've got a personality of
• 1:04:38
  your own and some hobbies and like, just, you know, you're a
• 1:04:41
  person in your own own right. Cooper also lies to Debbie and
• 1:04:45
  doesn't tell him that he quit his job.
• 1:04:46
  So yay, if we're unhealthy marriages and a lack of
• 1:04:49
  communication. Debbie likes to Cooper and says
• 1:04:52
  she was at the supermarket, but Cooper doesn't believe her.
• 1:04:54
  And then he grumbles to himself, because dinner isn't ready yet.
• 1:04:58
  Your big strongman doesn't know how to cook for himself.
• 1:05:02
  So he's like, I'm going to go and get fast food.
• 1:05:04
  And Debbie, like, yeah, that's fine.
• 1:05:06
  Me and the kids will have sandwiches.
• 1:05:07
  Like, sorry, what? You're just going to go out and
• 1:05:10
  get food for yourself and not the rest of your family, and
• 1:05:13
  you're just going to leave your wife at home to make food for
• 1:05:15
  her and her kids by yourself? What about thinking about your
• 1:05:18
  partner and family too? Why couldn't you just be like,
• 1:05:20
  oh, don't worry about it, I'll go get fast food for all of us
• 1:05:23
  and bring it back. I'll go get a takeaway and bring
• 1:05:25
  it home. Or don't worry love, since I'm
• 1:05:27
  home now, I'll help you cook food.
• 1:05:28
  What? What about any of that?
• 1:05:30
  I don't like Cooper at all. Before he heads out he sends a
• 1:05:33
  sneaky text message and says last year Debbie, who I might
• 1:05:36
  have mentioned is a genius, I can't stand this.
• 1:05:39
  Installed an app on our phones called Findly.
• 1:05:42
  It's sort of like Find My Friends, but with much more
• 1:05:44
  impressive accuracy. Jesse was shocked when I told
• 1:05:47
  him there was a tracking app on my phone that allowed my wife to
• 1:05:49
  know where I was at all times. He announced that I must be
• 1:05:51
  pretty whipped to allow her to install something like that.
• 1:05:54
  At the time, I couldn't imagine anything I would be doing that I
• 1:05:57
  wouldn't want Debbie to know about.
• 1:05:58
  And now as I walk out the front door, I toggle off.
• 1:06:00
  Finally. If she asks, I'll tell her I
• 1:06:02
  must have been in a dead zone, but I'm sure as hell I'll not
• 1:06:05
  share my location with her for the next couple of hours.
• 1:06:07
  She can't know where I'm going. And I was like, shut up about
• 1:06:10
  the genius thing for one minute please.
• 1:06:12
  I don't believe it for a second. It's annoying.
• 1:06:14
  And this is the problem, isn't it, With writing like genius
• 1:06:17
  characters. In reality, your characters can
• 1:06:20
  only be as smart as the person writing them to some extent.
• 1:06:24
  And I find it different. And maybe that's why I find it
• 1:06:26
  difficult to believe that Frida can write a believable genius.
• 1:06:29
  Like, I don't mean that in AI. Don't.
• 1:06:32
  This is coming out wrong. I don't mean that to be snarky.
• 1:06:34
  Who are you think food is? I don't mean that.
• 1:06:36
  I just think Frida herself has said that, like, she's always
• 1:06:39
  been this kind of person who had, like, very average grades.
• 1:06:42
  She's never really excelled in anything.
• 1:06:44
  Like, yeah, she got into Med school, which means, yeah, she's
• 1:06:46
  she must be quite smart. But while she was there, her
• 1:06:49
  grades weren't anything special. By her own admission.
• 1:06:52
  She never had any ambition, she says herself.
• 1:06:55
  She never had any intellectual curiosity.
• 1:06:57
  Her words like she is. And again, I don't say this to
• 1:07:02
  be snarky. I'm I'm saying how Frida
• 1:07:04
  describes herself like she's very average in terms of
• 1:07:07
  intelligence and achievements and below average in terms of
• 1:07:11
  just curiosity and excitement and wanting to learn more.
• 1:07:15
  So when she's like that herself, of of course it's going to be
• 1:07:19
  difficult for her to write this character who's supposedly like
• 1:07:21
  a genius who's interested in everything and excited about the
• 1:07:25
  world and constantly learning more and doing more and creating
• 1:07:28
  more. Because like, Freda herself
• 1:07:30
  isn't like that. So I don't think she knows what
• 1:07:32
  it's like to have that mindset and be that kind of person.
• 1:07:35
  So I think that's why I find Debbie such an unbelievable
• 1:07:38
  character. And we keep getting told she's a
• 1:07:40
  genius, but we never see it. And I think it's because Freda
• 1:07:43
  just doesn't know how to write it, you know?
• 1:07:44
  And again, I don't say any of that stuff to be mean.
• 1:07:47
  I say it because this is how Freda's described herself.
• 1:07:50
  And we know she's like this because she says about herself,
• 1:07:53
  you know, chapter 20. And we go back to Harley.
• 1:07:57
  And I said in my original script, turns out that she's the
• 1:08:00
  one that Cooper text and he turns up at her house.
• 1:08:03
  Can I come over? I tap out my reply.
• 1:08:05
  Absolutely. ETA 15 minutes.
• 1:08:08
  Oh yay, that will give me just enough time to blow dry my hair
• 1:08:11
  and apply some makeup for the perfect no makeup look.
• 1:08:14
  I'll get dressed, but there's no need to bother with too many
• 1:08:16
  clothes considering they'll be coming off again shortly, if you
• 1:08:18
  know what I mean. When I'm done dolling myself up,
• 1:08:21
  I look over in the full length mirror in my bedroom.
• 1:08:24
  Just enough makeup, Check. Hair sexily tussled, check.
• 1:08:28
  Tank top showing just a little too much cleavage, Check.
• 1:08:31
  I look hot, much hotter than her.
• 1:08:34
  I mean, it isn't even close. So I don't know how much to say
• 1:08:39
  without giving too many spoilers to the end of the book, But I
• 1:08:42
  will say there's some misdirection here that I didn't
• 1:08:44
  see coming. I'll just say that what I really
• 1:08:46
  disliked about this point though, was the fact that we
• 1:08:48
  have another female character comparing herself to other women
• 1:08:51
  and judging them for their looks and being like, well, I'm better
• 1:08:54
  than her because I'm hotter. Like I'm so tired of reading
• 1:08:57
  women like this. We have it all the time in Freda
• 1:09:00
  McFadden, in Colleen Hoover, in Geneva Rose.
• 1:09:03
  They all write these pick me characters.
• 1:09:05
  And it's kind of annoying as well because like again, Freda's
• 1:09:07
  had a habit of doing doing this in her blogs, but kind of like
• 1:09:10
  reverse. So she wrote a lot in her blogs
• 1:09:13
  about how like she worked with these women who were, they were
• 1:09:15
  beautiful. She called them like beauty
• 1:09:17
  Queens and stuff like that. And she seemed jealous of them.
• 1:09:19
  She seemed to put them down. If they were beautiful, they
• 1:09:22
  were dumb. You know, these real actual
• 1:09:24
  people she worked with. She thought they were dumb if
• 1:09:27
  she if she viewed them as more attractive than her.
• 1:09:31
  And and it's just kind of sad to see her still feeling this way
• 1:09:35
  and putting it into her writing. And anyway, man turns up at her
• 1:09:39
  door and he pauses one more beat and then steps inside the
• 1:09:42
  apartment. He doesn't waste another second
• 1:09:43
  before kissing me. His wife will be expecting him
• 1:09:46
  home soon, so there isn't a tonne of time for foreplay.
• 1:09:48
  I might be his first affair, but he's not my first married man,
• 1:09:52
  not even close. I know the score.
• 1:09:54
  When is Debbie expecting you back?
• 1:09:56
  I ask him as he kisses my neck. I hate to talk about her while
• 1:09:59
  we're having sexy time, but I need to be practical.
• 1:10:02
  Yes, you heard that right, sexy time.
• 1:10:05
  So one, I get it. You want us to think Harley is
• 1:10:09
  this horrible harlot who preys upon married men and he's just a
• 1:10:12
  silly little man making a mistake.
• 1:10:14
  He's been seduced by the nasty woman.
• 1:10:17
  And two, do you really think a woman in her mid 30s like Harley
• 1:10:21
  would unironically use the phrase sexy time?
• 1:10:24
  As someone quickly approaching her mid 30s, I can ensure you we
• 1:10:27
  would not. They have sex in a thankfully
• 1:10:29
  fade to black moment. Next chapter is still Harley.
• 1:10:33
  I know what you're thinking. I'm a terrible person, a home
• 1:10:36
  wrecker, and you wouldn't be wrong.
• 1:10:39
  But the truth of the matter is that humans are not meant to be
• 1:10:41
  monogamous, especially men. Biologically they have a
• 1:10:45
  compulsion to spread their seed as to as many women as possible.
• 1:10:48
  And also biologically Debbie has passed her child bearing years
• 1:10:52
  whereas Cooper at 46 years old has many reproductive years
• 1:10:56
  ahead of him. Biologically.
• 1:10:57
  Cooper is designed to want me. No he doesn't.
• 1:11:00
  At 46 he's also passed his prime love.
• 1:11:03
  I'd have thought as a doctor Debbie would have known this and
• 1:11:05
  not written this nonsense. But yeah, men's fertility
• 1:11:08
  declines as they age too and the older man is the more of a
• 1:11:11
  chance there are of his sperm causing birth defects if he
• 1:11:14
  doesn't impregnate someone or there being other problems with
• 1:11:17
  the pregnancy and dangers to it. And when I read this after, in
• 1:11:22
  that video I made on Frida's blogs, after reading years of
• 1:11:25
  Frida ranting about how women should have kids as early as
• 1:11:28
  possible and as many kids as possible.
• 1:11:30
  And then, you know, her judging people when they're past their
• 1:11:33
  childbearing years and stuff like that.
• 1:11:35
  And I'm worrying about fertility and stuff like that knowing
• 1:11:38
  Frida actually thinks that way. I can't tell if she's writing
• 1:11:42
  Harley saying this because she's trying to villainize all the
• 1:11:44
  women who can't have kids anymore or she's just trying to
• 1:11:46
  make Carly cartoonishly evil, or maybe both.
• 1:11:49
  I kind of feel like she's using Holly to like, say, some of her
• 1:11:53
  own views. But also I, I don't, I don't
• 1:11:55
  know. I don't know.
• 1:11:57
  I know I said I liked Holly as a character before now.
• 1:11:59
  Absolutely not like she's as awful as everyone else.
• 1:12:03
  Free does not subtle either. She just makes every single
• 1:12:05
  adult character in this book so awful they don't feel real.
• 1:12:08
  It's cartoonish, it's over the top.
• 1:12:11
  It's not fun to read and like, because it's not even like
• 1:12:13
  everyone's evil in like a fun camp way.
• 1:12:15
  It's just everyone's evil in like, Oh my God, they're off
• 1:12:17
  again. They're so annoying kind of way.
• 1:12:19
  Cooper shakes his head. I've dated a lot of married men
• 1:12:22
  and I know they'll tell me what I what they think I want to
• 1:12:24
  hear. But I truly believe that he
• 1:12:26
  doesn't love Debbie anymore. He hasn't in a long time.
• 1:12:29
  He's been sleeping in the guest room for years, but he still
• 1:12:31
  can't leave. She's not stable and a divorce
• 1:12:34
  would send her off the deep end. And I, and now that I've gotten
• 1:12:37
  to know Debbie, I know what he means.
• 1:12:39
  The woman poisoned her neighbours, after all.
• 1:12:41
  And I was like, yeah, I mean, Debbie is awful, I get that.
• 1:12:43
  But this just contradicts what Cooper's been saying in his
• 1:12:46
  narration about how much he loves Debbie and wants her and
• 1:12:48
  admires her and is still attracted to her.
• 1:12:50
  So either he's lying to Harley and he's more awful than we
• 1:12:53
  thought, or the narration is lying to the reader, which we
• 1:12:57
  know from the Geneva Rose book is a massive pet peeve of mine
• 1:13:01
  and I hate it. In thrillers or what, what is
• 1:13:05
  kind of like, how do I put this without spoiling things?
• 1:13:08
  And I thought at this point these were plot holes, but
• 1:13:11
  they're not. They're actually clues to a
• 1:13:13
  thing at the end, A twist that I didn't see coming.
• 1:13:15
  And I don't hate the twist. It does make sense.
• 1:13:18
  I just didn't really find it enjoyable either.
• 1:13:20
  I it's fine. These are point like we should
• 1:13:24
  be pointing out these inconsistencies because they're
• 1:13:26
  relevant. That's what I'm trying to say.
• 1:13:28
  Harley talks about befriending Debbie after she started
• 1:13:31
  sleeping with Cooper, and she says Even so, I just meant to
• 1:13:34
  have a conversation with her. But every time she mentioned
• 1:13:36
  Cooper's name, I found myself hanging on her every word.
• 1:13:39
  She seemed to have no idea how much trouble her marriage was
• 1:13:41
  in, or else she was trying to hide it from me.
• 1:13:43
  After all, you don't go around telling strangers that you
• 1:13:45
  haven't had sex with your husband in two years, she says.
• 1:13:48
  It's not easy being the other woman.
• 1:13:49
  I know, I know, Crimea River, but it's a hard life.
• 1:13:52
  We can't be seen in public and when all the major holidays are
• 1:13:55
  all around, I'm alone. Forget about double dates, but
• 1:13:58
  very but very soon I won't be the other woman anymore.
• 1:14:01
  Cooper is the one. The more time I spend with him,
• 1:14:03
  the more certain I am that it's true.
• 1:14:05
  And very soon Debbie will know too.
• 1:14:07
  And I was like, ah, Debbie's going to kill both of them,
• 1:14:09
  isn't she? I was close, very, very close.
• 1:14:13
  Right. I'm going to go take a little
• 1:14:14
  break and have some food. Okie, pokie.
• 1:14:16
  Day three of filming and let's just jump straight into this.
• 1:14:19
  So in our next chapter, Debbie is spying on her eldest daughter
• 1:14:22
  Lexie, when she sees her boyfriend grab her arm.
• 1:14:24
  As in Lexie's boyfriend grabs her by the arm.
• 1:14:27
  So it seemed to me that she was setting up some sort of like
• 1:14:30
  domestic violence or abuse type story here with the with the kid
• 1:14:34
  and the boyfriend and that Debbie was going to end up
• 1:14:36
  killing the boyfriend because he hurt her daughter.
• 1:14:38
  Something like that. And Zayn is his name.
• 1:14:42
  I think there's a lot of characters in this that don't
• 1:14:45
  really get much development. They're very much like, he's the
• 1:14:49
  abusive boyfriend, she's the annoying neighbour, he's the
• 1:14:53
  annoying neighbour, like, and there's not anything more to
• 1:14:56
  them. So yeah, it's a lot.
• 1:14:59
  Anyway, that's what that's where I was thinking this was going
• 1:15:02
  and I was kind of on the right lines.
• 1:15:06
  We'll get there. So what I was thinking at this
• 1:15:08
  point was here's what's going to happen.
• 1:15:10
  Debbie's going to kill her neighbour's roses, then she's
• 1:15:12
  going to kill her husband. She's going to kill his mistress
• 1:15:15
  Harley. She's going to poison the school
• 1:15:17
  coach and poison or kill Zayn too.
• 1:15:19
  And she gets away with it all because she's so smart.
• 1:15:21
  She's a total genius or something like that.
• 1:15:24
  That was my prediction at this point.
• 1:15:28
  Yeah. You know what Wasn't far off
• 1:15:30
  with a lot of them, but we'll get there.
• 1:15:33
  Debbie ends this chapter by saying.
• 1:15:34
  And if he does anything to hurt her, he'll be very sorry.
• 1:15:36
  Being insane. So Yep, she's definitely setting
• 1:15:39
  something like that up. But like, he's already grabbed
• 1:15:41
  her arm and been, like, violent with her.
• 1:15:44
  He's already done something to hurt her.
• 1:15:45
  So anyway, Cooper finally comes home 2 hours late and Debbie
• 1:15:51
  tells us that this isn't the first time he has disappeared
• 1:15:54
  off somewhere and how he always has his and how he always has
• 1:15:58
  his location sharing off. When he does he lies that he's
• 1:16:01
  just been driving around and she doesn't bother to confront him
• 1:16:05
  about the location being off thing.
• 1:16:06
  Like oh oh does she? If she does he's just like oh
• 1:16:08
  she's just new dead zone. There's no signal something like
• 1:16:11
  that. But she doesn't push it.
• 1:16:13
  And he instead of like telling her where he's been and coming
• 1:16:16
  clean with that stuff, he distracts her by telling her
• 1:16:19
  finally that he quit his job. Debbie's furious and ends this
• 1:16:22
  chapter by saying trust me, Ken Bryant, his boss, is going to
• 1:16:27
  regret letting you go deeply. Cooper seems a bit sceptical,
• 1:16:32
  but I know what I'm talking about.
• 1:16:33
  Sooner than he thinks, Ken is going to be sorry for what he's
• 1:16:35
  done, so clearly she's going after him too and she's going to
• 1:16:38
  kill him too. We're currently 38% of the way
• 1:16:41
  into this book and everything is awful and Debbie is unhinged and
• 1:16:45
  also awful and I'm not rooting for anyone, you know?
• 1:16:49
  Also, it's very repetitive and boring at this point.
• 1:16:51
  It's just like, oh, Debbie's a crazy person, here's someone in
• 1:16:55
  her life who wronged her, she promises to get revenge.
• 1:16:58
  Oh, here's another person who wronged her, she promises to get
• 1:17:01
  revenge. Here's another person who
• 1:17:03
  wronged her, she promises to get revenge.
• 1:17:05
  And it's just very, very savy, you know?
• 1:17:07
  And we've not seen any character development.
• 1:17:09
  Like I say, I know I keep coming back to this point, but if we'd
• 1:17:12
  actually seen Debbie's evolution from like perfect little happy
• 1:17:17
  housewife to like crazed unhinged maniac and we were
• 1:17:21
  like, we saw this happening, this slow decline and we saw how
• 1:17:24
  she got there instead of just starting with her already there,
• 1:17:27
  she'd be a lot more sympathetic and I'd be a lot more invested
• 1:17:30
  in this story. You know, I do think this book
• 1:17:34
  is just one big self insert revenge fantasy for Frida so she
• 1:17:38
  can imagine killing a bunch of people she knows.
• 1:17:41
  Just saying. We get another Dear Debbie draft
• 1:17:43
  in which Debbie recommends suffocating a husband who
• 1:17:45
  snores. Fun, fun, fun.
• 1:17:48
  The next time your husband wakes up from his snoring, take your
• 1:17:50
  pillow off the bed and hold over his face.
• 1:17:52
  Then, with your hands, apply medium to firm pressure over the
• 1:17:55
  centre of the pillow. The noise level may briefly
• 1:17:57
  intensify, but I guarantee that within 5 minutes the snoring
• 1:18:00
  will have stopped permanently. Happy sleeping.
• 1:18:04
  I think Freda genuinely thinks this stuff is funny and I'm just
• 1:18:07
  like, but it's not. Again, the Dear Debbie letters
• 1:18:12
  could have been really insightful into showing her slow
• 1:18:14
  decline, but instead they're just very repetitive and boring.
• 1:18:17
  They all do the same thing, there's no need for so many of
• 1:18:20
  them. I feel like she was going for
• 1:18:21
  the Colleen Hoover gimmick thing.
• 1:18:23
  You know how like Colleen Hoover always has a gimmick to her
• 1:18:25
  books like the the the letters to Ellen or the slam poetry or
• 1:18:35
  something about like times and counting down.
• 1:18:37
  So I can't remember them all off the top of my head now.
• 1:18:39
  But you know how she always has a gimmick in her books?
• 1:18:41
  I feel like Freda was going for something like that with this
• 1:18:43
  and her gimmick are these dear Debbie letters.
• 1:18:45
  But it just like with Colin Hoover, it just doesn't work.
• 1:18:48
  It doesn't add anything to the story because it's not done
• 1:18:50
  well. You know, chapter 25.
• 1:18:52
  I went back to Debbie's narration and OK, anyone who's
• 1:18:58
  seen what I'm about to tell you is not going to be able to get
• 1:19:01
  this out of their head now. So I've been watching a lot of
• 1:19:04
  Yonderland recently. It's been like my comfort
• 1:19:07
  programme because it was the last programme that I've watched
• 1:19:09
  in full with Kyra before I lost her.
• 1:19:12
  So I've been going back and re watching a lot of it because
• 1:19:14
  like it's nice memories are sitting here struggled with her
• 1:19:17
  and like, you know, oh God, I'm going to cry.
• 1:19:20
  Oh God. OK, that was a close one.
• 1:19:21
  I'm fine, just walled up a bit. And yeah, so I've been it's like
• 1:19:25
  my comfort programme. I've been watching a lot of
• 1:19:27
  Yonderland and the main character is called Debbie.
• 1:19:30
  But there's this character called Vex who whenever he says
• 1:19:35
  Debbie, he says it like Debbie interrupt the whole book.
• 1:19:39
  That was all I could hear in my head every time I read the word
• 1:19:42
  Debbie. So for now on, every time you
• 1:19:44
  hear me say, Debbie, you're not going to be able to unhear
• 1:19:47
  Debbie. Gosh.
• 1:19:49
  Anyway, sorry about that. And I didn't mean to get teary.
• 1:19:52
  It's anyone who's lost someone close to them knows, like, the
• 1:19:56
  grief just, like, creeps upon you sometimes.
• 1:19:59
  And you can be feeling absolutely fine one minute and
• 1:20:01
  then the next just sobbing. And it's just, yeah, I'm trying
• 1:20:04
  to not let myself let into those sobs quite as often.
• 1:20:09
  Especially when I'm working, you know?
• 1:20:10
  So Debbie wakes up in the night and informs us that she put
• 1:20:14
  opium in Cooper's drink last night to make sure he slept
• 1:20:16
  through the night. And it's the stupidest reveal
• 1:20:19
  ever because like, this means yes, my Alex was right and it
• 1:20:23
  was opium she's growing. But this is whole all stupid.
• 1:20:26
  It doesn't make any sense because like she gave him like a
• 1:20:28
  Diet Coke or something, but he'd have definitely noticed if she'd
• 1:20:33
  slipped it into his drink, right?
• 1:20:35
  Because like, opium is, like I said earlier, it's like, in that
• 1:20:39
  form where you get, like, it's stinky and sticky and it's got
• 1:20:42
  this, like, bitter taste, like you would taste it in a drink if
• 1:20:45
  it was enough to knock you out. I don't know.
• 1:20:47
  I don't know. Anyway, Cooper doesn't stare as
• 1:20:49
  I climb out of bed. He's generally a sound sleeper,
• 1:20:52
  but it helps that I put some opium in the diet soda I poured
• 1:20:54
  him when we were eating the French fries.
• 1:20:56
  The cauliflowers in my garden look a lot like wind flowers,
• 1:20:59
  but that's not what they are. Yes, I grow opium poppies in my
• 1:21:04
  garden. Technically it's not illegal to
• 1:21:06
  grow them in your own backyard. It's only when the quantity
• 1:21:09
  reaches the level of acres and your manufacturing opium to sell
• 1:21:11
  to others that it becomes problematic.
• 1:21:14
  I suspect the neighbours would frown on it and God knows what
• 1:21:16
  Zane would do if he knew. So I tell everyone their wind
• 1:21:19
  flowers. Am I crazy?
• 1:21:21
  But like, no one would frown at growing poppies.
• 1:21:24
  They're poppies. They're one of like the most
• 1:21:26
  common flowers ever, right? So bizarre.
• 1:21:29
  And also, no teenage boy would go to the trouble of like,
• 1:21:33
  learning how to extract opium from poppies and collecting them
• 1:21:37
  and drying them out and blah, blah, blah, just to get like the
• 1:21:39
  minimal amount of latex you can get from a handful of plants.
• 1:21:42
  Like a teenage boy would not do that.
• 1:21:44
  And like I said earlier, most opium poppies that you can buy
• 1:21:47
  these days have been specifically bred, so they
• 1:21:49
  barely produce any actual opium it it anyway.
• 1:21:53
  I started harvesting the opium out of curiosity.
• 1:21:55
  What can I say? I get bored easily, especially
• 1:21:57
  now the kids are teenagers and don't need me every moment of
• 1:22:00
  the day. I watched a video about it
• 1:22:01
  online which taught me what to do.
• 1:22:03
  You make vertical cuts in the poppy pod in order to bleed out
• 1:22:06
  the opium. I've been doing it for years
• 1:22:08
  now, and I've accumulated quite the little stash.
• 1:22:11
  I suppose this is what happens when somebody has an IQ of 178
• 1:22:14
  and no job except for writing a weekly advice column.
• 1:22:18
  I do write those apps for our phones, but I've become so quick
• 1:22:20
  in it they don't take much work anymore.
• 1:22:22
  My brain is screaming for stimulation.
• 1:22:25
  Freda doesn't know how to write intelligent people, I swear.
• 1:22:27
  But OK. Yes, this accumulating over
• 1:22:30
  years thing does answer our problem of like how you get so
• 1:22:34
  much opium to like knock someone out when you get such a tiny
• 1:22:37
  amount from each each poppy, but it still doesn't account for
• 1:22:40
  distinct and the bitter taste he'd have had to notice in his
• 1:22:43
  drink. Surely he's not that dumb.
• 1:22:45
  Ah also is anyone else sick of the cliche of like, oh I'm an
• 1:22:50
  under stimulated genius so I must turn to crime in like books
• 1:22:54
  and stuff? I'm tired of it.
• 1:22:56
  I'm really tired of it. Like if you're that bored, get a
• 1:22:58
  job or like get a hobby, at least you don't need to turn to
• 1:23:02
  crime and knocking people out, you know?
• 1:23:04
  I. Anyway, Debbie sneaks out the
• 1:23:06
  house and goes to Joe's house. And who's Joe again?
• 1:23:10
  Oh, Joe, Joe's the neighbour with the roses, right?
• 1:23:12
  OK, Debbie sneaks out and goes to Joe's house and it's like,
• 1:23:15
  why doesn't she have cameras in her house?
• 1:23:17
  I do, blah blah blah. She's not someone who mounts
• 1:23:20
  cameras on her property. She really ought to though.
• 1:23:22
  It took me less than 5 minutes to install our door cameras, one
• 1:23:25
  in the front and one in the back, and install the software
• 1:23:27
  on my phone to monitor them all times.
• 1:23:29
  It's a good source of security and also a great way to spy on
• 1:23:32
  my older daughter when she's out on the porch with her boyfriend.
• 1:23:35
  Well if that's true, why in the last chapter were you spying her
• 1:23:38
  awkwardly through the windows twitching at the curtains and be
• 1:23:41
  like oh she's going to see me when you could have apparently
• 1:23:43
  just looked at your phone. You make no sense.
• 1:23:46
  Just use the cameras you want to brag about.
• 1:23:48
  You don't need book is so annoying.
• 1:23:51
  As I suspected, as we all suspected, because we're not
• 1:23:54
  stupid. She leaves the beetle trap
• 1:23:57
  liquid in Joe's garden. But where I thought she was
• 1:23:59
  going to like spread the liquid around, what she actually does
• 1:24:02
  is like takes the whole bags of it and buries it in the garden,
• 1:24:06
  which seems silly to me because they're like leaving evidence
• 1:24:09
  and like if she digs up, she's going to find it and know that
• 1:24:11
  you purposely put it there. Whereas I thought, like, if you
• 1:24:13
  spread the liquid around, she's not going to know where it is.
• 1:24:16
  She's not going to know that anyone's done it.
• 1:24:18
  It's just going to be suddenly swarming with Beetle.
• 1:24:20
  There's nothing to find, there's nothing to incriminate you.
• 1:24:23
  I, I don't know. Anyway, the point is, Debbie
• 1:24:27
  does this to destroy the roses and Freda is nothing if not
• 1:24:31
  predictable, is she? Debbie then goes home and she
• 1:24:33
  decides to drive someone new and even with her IQ of 178, she's
• 1:24:38
  an idiot. I recognise there's some risk in
• 1:24:40
  programming the address of my next destination into my GPS,
• 1:24:43
  but I have to take that chance. Massachusetts is impossible to
• 1:24:47
  navigate without Agps and it would be far worse to wonder the
• 1:24:50
  streets in the middle of the night.
• 1:24:51
  Besides, my final destination is only a 15 minute drive away in
• 1:24:55
  Weymouth. Like excuse me, but you're meant
• 1:24:57
  to be a genius. Like you could just follow a
• 1:25:00
  regular map like we did back in the day before we had little
• 1:25:03
  GPSS in cars. You're incriminating yourself by
• 1:25:07
  leaving it there in the car's memory and having this like
• 1:25:09
  literal track of your journey and how long you're there and
• 1:25:12
  all of that. Like you're incriminating
• 1:25:14
  yourself for no other reason than laziness and stupidity.
• 1:25:19
  Get out your A to said, find your route, follow it.
• 1:25:22
  Following a map is not hard. Debbie has gone to the coaches
• 1:25:26
  house. How she found his address I'll
• 1:25:28
  never know. Like, that's never explained.
• 1:25:31
  I guess we put it down to some sort of storytelling miracle or
• 1:25:34
  magic genius powers. Yeah.
• 1:25:36
  Because with an IQ of 178, you apparently know where everyone
• 1:25:39
  you've ever glanced at lives or something.
• 1:25:42
  I I don't know. Anyway, so she breaks into the
• 1:25:45
  house, having found a spare key hidden on his lawn, and she
• 1:25:48
  admits that she drugged his brownies earlier with opium.
• 1:25:51
  This one I find a little more believable because I do think if
• 1:25:54
  you sweeten the brownies enough, that would have masked the
• 1:25:57
  bitterness of the opium. So this one I find a bit more
• 1:25:59
  believable. Umm so she enters his house
• 1:26:03
  before we can find out what she's doing.
• 1:26:05
  Bam, fade to black. It's meant to be a cliffhanger
• 1:26:07
  type thing and it cuts to Coopers chapter.
• 1:26:10
  He wakes up feeling ill, because of course he does.
• 1:26:12
  He's been drugged, but apparently he hasn't been
• 1:26:14
  drugged enough because he wakes up in the middle of the night
• 1:26:18
  and Oh my God, Debbie isn't in bed with him.
• 1:26:21
  He pukes in the toilet and then he heads downstairs and he
• 1:26:23
  finally starts to think something's off about his wife.
• 1:26:26
  Over the last several months, Debbie has been acting
• 1:26:28
  strangely. I can't quite put my finger on
• 1:26:30
  what it is, but it's something. Every single day since we first
• 1:26:33
  started living together, Debbie has made the bed after we got up
• 1:26:35
  for the day. Then, six months ago, she
• 1:26:37
  suddenly stopped making the bed. And now she forgot my lunch this
• 1:26:40
  morning and tied my tie like a kindergartener might do.
• 1:26:43
  It feels like she's keeping something from me, like there's
• 1:26:45
  some sort of unspoken distance between us that's growing wider
• 1:26:48
  every day. I could blame it on the secrets
• 1:26:50
  I've kept from her, but everything I've done recently is
• 1:26:52
  because of the distance. See again, I'm I'm sorry I'm
• 1:26:55
  sounding so repetitive here, but her change in behaviour would be
• 1:26:58
  so much more impactful if we'd seen it for ourself on the page
• 1:27:01
  instead of just being told about it like this in like throw away
• 1:27:05
  lines like imagine, right? This book opens with this
• 1:27:08
  perfect housewife. She wakes up precisely 6:00 AM
• 1:27:11
  and cooks breakfast for her family of happy, loving kids.
• 1:27:15
  She packs all their lunches. She kisses them goodbye.
• 1:27:18
  They're like bye mom, love you and you me.
• 1:27:20
  She helps her man child of her husband get dressed.
• 1:27:23
  She perfectly ties his tie and he's like, oh, goodbye babe,
• 1:27:26
  love you. And she's like, goodbye, baby,
• 1:27:28
  love you. And then she makes the bed, she
• 1:27:30
  tidies the house. She tends to her perfect garden.
• 1:27:33
  She helps her neighbours who all love her and think she's the
• 1:27:36
  perfect neighbour. She writes her newspaper column
• 1:27:38
  giving out basic but helpful advice.
• 1:27:41
  Here's how you get a stain out of such and such a fabric.
• 1:27:45
  Here's how to make the perfect roast chicken.
• 1:27:47
  And so on. Then she prepares an evening
• 1:27:50
  meal for her family. And blah, blah, blah, picture
• 1:27:52
  perfect family life. We see it on the page.
• 1:27:55
  Show us this. And then over time, over the
• 1:27:58
  next few chapters, things slowly start changing.
• 1:28:02
  Her kids start pulling away more and getting quieter.
• 1:28:05
  They don't let her kiss them goodbye anymore.
• 1:28:08
  Her husband one night doesn't show up on time, and then the
• 1:28:11
  next night he's a bit later and the next night he's a bit later.
• 1:28:14
  Show us things slowly going wrong in her garden, in her
• 1:28:17
  kitchen, her friends becoming nastier and nastier of a time
• 1:28:20
  and she doesn't necessarily understand why.
• 1:28:22
  Show us her slowly breaking down and becoming more and more
• 1:28:25
  miserable, letting her standards slip day by day.
• 1:28:28
  One day she, she burns the eggs, one day she forgets to make the
• 1:28:32
  bed. One day she doesn't do this and
• 1:28:34
  this and this and so on. Shows her getting her
• 1:28:36
  frustrations out by writing snarkier and snarkier dear
• 1:28:39
  Debbie letters over time and then throwing them out and
• 1:28:41
  writing something proper until one day she just snaps.
• 1:28:44
  And she finally is like, no, he's being abusive.
• 1:28:47
  You have to leave. And then that's like her being
• 1:28:51
  like, yes, I'm standing up, I'm, I'm making a change.
• 1:28:53
  I'm doing this and then it backfires.
• 1:28:55
  Obviously, you know, show us that slow decline into madness
• 1:28:59
  as she becomes more and more desperate and she like searches
• 1:29:02
  for a way out of this hell that her life has become.
• 1:29:05
  That is the book I want to read. Not just Debbie the genius woke
• 1:29:09
  up, everyone is miserable. All the bad things happen in one
• 1:29:12
  day, and now Debbie the genius is mad and getting revenge using
• 1:29:16
  her magic genius powers. The end.
• 1:29:18
  Because that's what this book is.
• 1:29:19
  And that's not the book I want to read anyway.
• 1:29:23
  Cooper decides in the middle of the night this is the perfect
• 1:29:25
  time to come clean to Debbie about his secret.
• 1:29:27
  And he says, I know how it looks, but I swear I'm not a bad
• 1:29:29
  guy. All I want is to be a good
• 1:29:31
  husband. That's all I want.
• 1:29:33
  I just, I just screwed up. I love Debbie.
• 1:29:35
  Isn't that what matters? And I said in my original
• 1:29:37
  script, doubt, shut up. That's not what you've been
• 1:29:40
  telling your mistress, is it? But it turns out Freda's doing
• 1:29:43
  that kind of like lying to her audience by omission thing,
• 1:29:47
  which I don't hate as much because it's not a direct lie to
• 1:29:50
  the audience, but it's still a bit stupid.
• 1:29:53
  But anyway, we finally got told it's around 3:00 AM and he
• 1:29:56
  realised not only is Debbie gone from the house, but her car is
• 1:29:59
  gone. And he also realises.
• 1:30:01
  A wave of dizziness washes over me, but I do my best to push it
• 1:30:04
  away. I don't know why I feel so sick.
• 1:30:06
  Yes, it's the middle of the night, but I don't feel like I'm
• 1:30:09
  tired. I feel, I feel drugged, but how
• 1:30:12
  could I be? I didn't take anything that
• 1:30:13
  would alter my consciousness in any way.
• 1:30:15
  I didn't have anything to drink tonight.
• 1:30:16
  I haven't taken so much as a baby aspirin.
• 1:30:18
  But he doesn't put two and two together that Debbie drugged him
• 1:30:21
  so she could sneak out because he's stupid.
• 1:30:24
  This, this is the thing with Friedra in this book.
• 1:30:26
  She wants to write Debbie as this genius, but instead of
• 1:30:29
  actually writing Debbie as being super smart, she just makes
• 1:30:32
  everyone else in the book really, really dumb.
• 1:30:36
  Cooper says. I bring up the Findly app.
• 1:30:37
  There are flashing dots on the map, indicating where each
• 1:30:39
  member of the family is. Both the kids are home, thank
• 1:30:42
  God. I don't know what I would think
• 1:30:44
  if both of them were missing as well, but Debbie's dot is not
• 1:30:46
  positioned over our home. As far as I can see, she's still
• 1:30:49
  sharing her location. Why would she do this?
• 1:30:52
  I squint down at the screen. It looks like she's at an
• 1:30:54
  address in Weymouth. It doesn't sound familiar to me.
• 1:30:57
  In fact, as far as I can remember, I don't know anyone
• 1:30:59
  who lives in Weymouth. Although it's just the next town
• 1:31:01
  over. I stare at the address, trying
• 1:31:03
  to figure out where Debbie would be at this hour.
• 1:31:05
  And a there with another man. Christ, that would be awful.
• 1:31:09
  Says the man with secrets of his own.
• 1:31:12
  Hmm. So yeah, apparently she's such a
• 1:31:14
  genius that not only does she use the GPS in her car to type
• 1:31:17
  the address in, but she hasn't turned her location sharing off
• 1:31:21
  on her on her own app. Like even your idiot of a
• 1:31:24
  husband knew to turn his location off when he was doing
• 1:31:27
  something dodgy. And yet Debbie doesn't.
• 1:31:30
  I can't with this book. Everyone is so completely stupid
• 1:31:33
  all the time. And then Cooper's like, well,
• 1:31:35
  I've got a choice to make. This is an unusual situation.
• 1:31:38
  I could call her and find out where she is, or I could sit
• 1:31:42
  here and wallow and do nothing. So of course, he decides to sit
• 1:31:45
  there and wallow. Also, if Debbie's such a genius,
• 1:31:48
  you'd think she'd bother to get the dosage of the opium she's
• 1:31:51
  spiking her husband with, right? Wouldn't you?
• 1:31:53
  So we actually sleep through the night.
• 1:31:55
  Anyway, Debbie's on her way back, but Connor passes out
• 1:31:58
  again. Anyway, back to Debbie's chapter
• 1:32:00
  again in her narration. And she wakes up early again the
• 1:32:02
  next morning. She showers, she heads out again
• 1:32:04
  in her car before the rest of the family's up.
• 1:32:07
  There's this woman just like not sleep.
• 1:32:09
  She's had like what, 2 hours sleep this night?
• 1:32:11
  Let's be real crazy. She goes to Kenneth Bryant's
• 1:32:14
  house and I was like, who the hell is Kenneth Bryant?
• 1:32:17
  Have we heard of Kenneth Bryant? Because there were so many names
• 1:32:19
  and I was so out of it and I was like, she's mad at so many
• 1:32:22
  people. This could be any of them, it
• 1:32:23
  turns out. So I ended up because I was
• 1:32:27
  reading the e-book, I was like, oh, I'll just search up Kenneth.
• 1:32:29
  And there's only one Kenneth in the whole book.
• 1:32:30
  So I was like, what? And then I realised he goes by
• 1:32:33
  Ken the rest of the time, which is why I didn't recognise him.
• 1:32:35
  But I don't know why, for some reason he's Kenneth here just
• 1:32:38
  once when he's Ken the rest of the time.
• 1:32:39
  It doesn't matter, it's Coopers boss.
• 1:32:42
  She goes to see Coopers boss, the old boss, the one who
• 1:32:45
  wouldn't give him a promotion so he quit, and the one that she's
• 1:32:48
  apparently never met before. She decides to confront him
• 1:32:50
  about Coopers promotion or lack of, and she says my husband has
• 1:32:54
  been with your company for a long time and he's a hard
• 1:32:56
  worker. He's also extremely replaceable.
• 1:32:58
  He cinches his tie a little tighter around his neck and I
• 1:33:01
  imagine grabbing it and cinching it as tight as it can go.
• 1:33:04
  He does his job and nothing more.
• 1:33:05
  He brings nothing special to the table.
• 1:33:08
  He's the most ordinary employee I've ever had and when he goes
• 1:33:11
  there'll be 5 more candidates just like him who will work for
• 1:33:14
  less money. Not to sound horrible, but like
• 1:33:17
  if Cooper is such a bad worker and he's just like nothing
• 1:33:21
  special like this and he's not ambitious, he's not actually
• 1:33:23
  like doing anything helpful, then I'm kind of on the boss's
• 1:33:26
  side with this. You don't just promote someone
• 1:33:29
  because they're there and they ask for it.
• 1:33:31
  You know, they've got to win it. I don't know.
• 1:33:33
  Anyway. And also, we all know that Freda
• 1:33:36
  has confessed many times in her blogs to write in self inserts
• 1:33:40
  in massive chunks of her book and like writing these
• 1:33:42
  characters to be people she knows in real life.
• 1:33:45
  So if I was Freda's husband, I saw she was writing someone
• 1:33:50
  saying this about this fictional husband who may or may not be an
• 1:33:53
  insert of him. I'd be sad.
• 1:33:56
  I don't know if what I said made any sense.
• 1:33:57
  So basically if I read this knowing Freda writes inserts of
• 1:34:01
  people she knows and I was Freda's husband, I would be very
• 1:34:04
  sad. I really hope she doesn't think
• 1:34:06
  of her own husband this way because that's that's very
• 1:34:09
  nasty. Anyway, things take an absolute
• 1:34:11
  wild turn as Debbie then pulls a gun on Ken.
• 1:34:15
  Literally just oh, I feel like this book sending me crazy.
• 1:34:21
  Oh God's sake. Freda also has to write the boss
• 1:34:25
  as comically stupid too. Oh God, I love this and I hate
• 1:34:29
  this it's so bad. I reach into my purse, sifting
• 1:34:32
  through what feels like an endless supply of punched up
• 1:34:34
  napkins. I pull out a pair of leather
• 1:34:36
  gloves and Ken Franz as I slide them onto my hands.
• 1:34:39
  What are you doing? He asks me.
• 1:34:40
  Are you cold? Oh my God, this is what I mean.
• 1:34:44
  She wants to think Debbie's a genius, but instead of writing
• 1:34:47
  hair is smart, she just makes everyone else stupid.
• 1:34:51
  Oh my God. I stare down at the older man
• 1:34:54
  who is trembling on the living room sofa.
• 1:34:56
  Then I look down at the gun gripped in my right hand.
• 1:34:59
  Am I really going to do this? It's one thing to cut some wires
• 1:35:02
  in a fuse box or poison sandwiches, but it's an entirely
• 1:35:05
  different thing to I'm about to cross a line and once I do, I
• 1:35:08
  won't be able to go back. Then again, this has been a long
• 1:35:10
  time coming. I'm glad I wore black to hide
• 1:35:13
  the blood stains. A long time coming.
• 1:35:15
  Are you sure? Because this book so far has all
• 1:35:19
  taken place over 24 hours. He only denied the husband
• 1:35:23
  yesterday. She's never met him before and
• 1:35:26
  now she's like over a long time coming.
• 1:35:28
  She's she's known about the lack of promotion for like what, 8
• 1:35:33
  hours? I can't.
• 1:35:36
  Also no mention of GPS or location tracking in this
• 1:35:40
  chapter. So I was like, maybe she's left
• 1:35:43
  him on, maybe she hasn't, I don't know.
• 1:35:45
  Maybe she has left him on. This is how she gets caught and
• 1:35:48
  put in prison. We can hope.
• 1:35:49
  I don't know. Sadly not back to Cooper's
• 1:35:52
  chapter because it just cuts to black again and he wakes up to
• 1:35:56
  Debbie's phone ringing and he says he feels hungover.
• 1:35:59
  Debbie is in the shower again because she just killed a man.
• 1:36:02
  Yeah, Cooper answers her phone and it's Debbie.
• 1:36:05
  Oh my God, this is so funny. It's Debbie, old boss from the
• 1:36:08
  new newspaper, who says this is my favourite bit because it is
• 1:36:14
  the stupidest thing in the whole book.
• 1:36:17
  This is like the one thing that absolutely she would not get
• 1:36:20
  away with. It would not happen like it,
• 1:36:23
  right? There's so many plot holes here.
• 1:36:25
  Whatever is wrong, he bursts out.
• 1:36:27
  There's pornography on the newspaper's website.
• 1:36:30
  Pornography and italics. Of course.
• 1:36:32
  That's what's wrong. And it's not just pornography.
• 1:36:35
  It's. Look, I know Debbie has the
• 1:36:37
  password for our website. Just because I fired her, You
• 1:36:41
  fired Debbie, I repeat, unable to keep the astonishment out of
• 1:36:43
  my voice. That throws Garrett for a loop.
• 1:36:46
  Oh, I thought she would have. Well anyway, yes, there was an
• 1:36:49
  issue with the lawsuit and sorry, but I didn't have a
• 1:36:51
  choice. But what the hell, she needs to
• 1:36:54
  get it down this minute. His voice is getting louder with
• 1:36:56
  each word. Do you understand what I'm
• 1:36:58
  saying? She's going to ruin me.
• 1:37:01
  Why can't you take it down yourself?
• 1:37:02
  I ask impatiently. She changed the password and
• 1:37:05
  locked out. This is so damn unbelievable,
• 1:37:08
  right? But those of you who don't know,
• 1:37:11
  I used to work in digital marketing and I worked for a lot
• 1:37:14
  of like quite small businesses where you had to a lot of
• 1:37:16
  things. And I did a lot of like website
• 1:37:18
  design as well. And I also did some freelance
• 1:37:21
  stuff doing web design for musicians, artists, bunch for
• 1:37:25
  the people. And I been designing websites
• 1:37:27
  since I was like 14, something like that.
• 1:37:30
  So I've worked in it a lot for a lot of different companies and
• 1:37:32
  people and things like that. The idea that she could just
• 1:37:35
  like change a password, like as as an advice columnist, she
• 1:37:39
  could just change a password and lock him out.
• 1:37:41
  Like this wouldn't happen. Generally when you have a
• 1:37:44
  website like this will be like a newspapers website, It's going
• 1:37:47
  to be run by like a content management system.
• 1:37:49
  So common ones that people like the average person might know
• 1:37:53
  are things like, you know, WordPress was a content
• 1:37:56
  management system and stuff like that.
• 1:37:57
  It might be something bespoke or it might be something like that
• 1:37:59
  or whatever. And basically with a content
• 1:38:00
  management system like this, there'll be different layers of
• 1:38:04
  access. So you'll have the admin who can
• 1:38:06
  do all the big changes and change the design elements and
• 1:38:09
  who has access to what and who owns the website and stuff like
• 1:38:12
  that. And then you'll probably have
• 1:38:14
  other logins for other people who can just add, you know, like
• 1:38:18
  a new post to this area of the site or a new post to this area
• 1:38:21
  of the site. Or this person can make
• 1:38:22
  aesthetic changes, but they can't add content, they can't
• 1:38:25
  delete content. And you'll have different people
• 1:38:27
  with different levels of access, and each one of them will have a
• 1:38:29
  different login, right? Someone like Debbie who just
• 1:38:33
  does like one tiny advice column, If she had access at
• 1:38:38
  all, she would just be someone who could add and create posts
• 1:38:42
  in her one little category on the website.
• 1:38:44
  She couldn't make changes to anyone else's content.
• 1:38:48
  She couldn't make changes to the aesthetics of the website.
• 1:38:52
  She couldn't make changes to like, say, what goes on the
• 1:38:55
  front page. She wouldn't have access access
• 1:38:57
  to anyone else's passwords or admin stuff.
• 1:39:00
  So she physically wouldn't have the login to be able to do this.
• 1:39:04
  She wouldn't have the access to be able to change his password.
• 1:39:08
  There wouldn't just be 1 password for the entire website.
• 1:39:12
  And we already know that all Debbie would actually do when
• 1:39:16
  writing her column is write it at home, send it to her boss who
• 1:39:19
  was, I don't even know what her name was.
• 1:39:21
  It was something she was, she was already fired by the time we
• 1:39:24
  heard her. So she would send it to her boss
• 1:39:26
  who was like an editor and then she would be like, cool, I'll
• 1:39:29
  edit this and put it online and put it in the newspaper.
• 1:39:32
  So we've never actually seen Debbie having any access to the
• 1:39:36
  website. We've never actually seen that
• 1:39:37
  she has a login. But now all of a sudden she's
• 1:39:39
  apparently got like the big admin login details.
• 1:39:42
  It's like, where did you get that from?
• 1:39:43
  Because you wouldn't have been given it.
• 1:39:45
  None of this is believable. I none of this is believable.
• 1:39:49
  None. Not a single bit annoying is
• 1:39:52
  annoying. Anyway, Cooper goes to the
• 1:39:54
  website and to have a look at what she's done and what he sees
• 1:39:57
  is it's a video of two people having sex.
• 1:40:01
  And one of those people is Garrett Mears.
• 1:40:03
  That's the editor of the newspaper.
• 1:40:05
  I don't know who the other person is, but I met his wife
• 1:40:07
  and it's not her. The whole thing looks like it's
• 1:40:09
  taking place in an office on top of the desk.
• 1:40:12
  I'm guessing it's the office at the newspaper.
• 1:40:14
  Wow, he's right. He really is screwed.
• 1:40:17
  So this is revenge porn and it's very, very, very illegal and
• 1:40:23
  also very immoral. Like I don't know how anyone can
• 1:40:25
  root for Debbie after she's done this.
• 1:40:28
  Like this is properly up there as like a Violet.
• 1:40:31
  Like it doesn't obviously matters.
• 1:40:32
  He was cheating on his wife. That's not a nice thing to do.
• 1:40:35
  But filming someone having sex without their consent and
• 1:40:38
  posting it online is, in my mind, one of like, the most
• 1:40:43
  immoral, cruel, disgusting things you can do to a person.
• 1:40:47
  Like, it's, it's up there for me as one of the worst.
• 1:40:50
  It's vile. So just knowing she's done this,
• 1:40:54
  this is not something that I cheer for.
• 1:40:57
  This is like, oh, God, she's an irredeemable character.
• 1:41:01
  But yeah, it's like I say, this is revenge porn.
• 1:41:03
  Why has the boss not called the police immediately?
• 1:41:06
  He's been filmed without his consent and it's been put online
• 1:41:08
  without his consent and shared the police should.
• 1:41:11
  And if he thinks Debbie done this, the police should be
• 1:41:13
  literally confronting her right now.
• 1:41:16
  She has a motive. She apparently has the technical
• 1:41:18
  know how because she's always bragging about her apps and her
• 1:41:20
  this and this and this and background and computer stuff,
• 1:41:23
  right? Plus they'll be able to tell who
• 1:41:25
  posted it, from which IP address and from which login.
• 1:41:29
  So they'll know exactly who did it and be able to track it back
• 1:41:32
  to Debbie. Like anyway, Cooper doesn't
• 1:41:35
  believe Debbie would have done this because he's dumb.
• 1:41:37
  She certainly has the technical skills to do this.
• 1:41:39
  And if she got fired yesterday, that's a motive right there.
• 1:41:41
  She would have needed to obtain the footage of Garrett with that
• 1:41:44
  other woman. But she's the one who installed
• 1:41:45
  the cameras outside our front door.
• 1:41:47
  She certainly knows how to plant a hidden camera, and yet I still
• 1:41:51
  don't believe it. I always told Debbie to advocate
• 1:41:53
  for herself more because she's constantly letting herself get
• 1:41:56
  pushed around. She's great at giving advice,
• 1:41:58
  but she never takes mine. I can't envision her doing
• 1:42:01
  something this diabolical. It's not her style.
• 1:42:04
  Again, this would be more believable if we'd seen her be a
• 1:42:08
  nice person at any point in this book instead of just cruel and
• 1:42:11
  nasty for the whole thing. Look, I say Debbie didn't do
• 1:42:14
  this. She did it.
• 1:42:16
  He insists. And I swear to God, she's going
• 1:42:17
  to pay for this. I'm going to make sure she pays.
• 1:42:20
  OK, That's enough. I understand he's upset, but
• 1:42:22
  nobody threatens Debbie. Watch what you say about my
• 1:42:25
  wife. I'd say, Oh, yeah.
• 1:42:28
  Garrett seems unimpressed. Or else, what if you so much as
• 1:42:31
  breathe on her? I growl into the phone and a
• 1:42:33
  voice actually sounds fairly scary.
• 1:42:35
  I'm going to drive over to your house and break your face.
• 1:42:39
  Break your face. I love it.
• 1:42:40
  Like so now he decides to grow a backbone, even though your whole
• 1:42:43
  character so far has been you have no backbone and don't do
• 1:42:46
  anything, but, you know, now he does.
• 1:42:49
  OK, great. We love that.
• 1:42:50
  Debbie, of course, denies to Cooper that she did this and
• 1:42:53
  acts like a complete psychopath. She says, does he?
• 1:42:57
  She laughs. What does he think, that I hid a
• 1:43:00
  camera in his office months ago to get something I could use
• 1:43:03
  someday to embarrass him? Yes.
• 1:43:04
  And that's exactly what she did. She's insane.
• 1:43:07
  And again, this is what's like bothering me about this book.
• 1:43:10
  This isn't some breakdown that's come on through stress.
• 1:43:13
  She's always been this way. Like, she's been plotting this
• 1:43:16
  stuff for months. She's manipulative, she's
• 1:43:18
  conniving. She's a monster.
• 1:43:20
  She hurts people because she plans out how to get, like, dirt
• 1:43:25
  on them and then uses it against them.
• 1:43:27
  She's been planning this and heading her time for months,
• 1:43:30
  maybe years. Like like, I don't, I don't
• 1:43:33
  sympathise with someone like this.
• 1:43:35
  This isn't someone pushed to the edge who's doing what she can to
• 1:43:37
  survive. This is someone cruel to her
• 1:43:40
  core who has been planning this for months.
• 1:43:43
  You know, it's a lot less impactful as well, I think, to
• 1:43:46
  just have this character who's outright evil than like a good
• 1:43:49
  woman who snaps. The next chapter, we're back to
• 1:43:51
  Debbie again, and I just don't like her.
• 1:43:54
  I don't like her at all. Right now, I need to focus all
• 1:43:56
  my attention on making pancakes. Oh, this is weird as well.
• 1:44:00
  I don't make them from scratch. I'm not freaking Betty Crocker.
• 1:44:04
  I have a box, a pound of pancake mix, although I do have some
• 1:44:06
  tweaks that make them taste better.
• 1:44:08
  I use mix to no, I use milk to mix the batter rather than
• 1:44:12
  water. And I also add a dash of
• 1:44:13
  cinnamon. And once you put it in the pan,
• 1:44:15
  you have to cook it just the right amount of time flipping
• 1:44:19
  the pancakes halfway through. It's not foolproof, but it's
• 1:44:22
  considerably easier than programming a phone app to track
• 1:44:24
  your family members. Is it me or a pancakes like the
• 1:44:29
  easiest thing you can make. It doesn't make you Betty
• 1:44:33
  Crocker or some some genius to make them from scratch.
• 1:44:36
  Like it's not super complex pancakes, a flour, egg, milk.
• 1:44:41
  I feel like my brain's malfunctioned.
• 1:44:44
  It's just so simple. So the fact that you're like,
• 1:44:46
  OK, well, I have to use this like powdered mix, which I
• 1:44:49
  assume is flour, powdered egg, powdered milk.
• 1:44:53
  And then she's already adding extra milk.
• 1:44:55
  So I'd say, and then and then she makes this big deal out of,
• 1:45:02
  you know, having to flip the pancake just right.
• 1:45:05
  And sorry, put my phone and do not step like and cook the
• 1:45:08
  pancake just right. That's that's just cooking.
• 1:45:21
  I get it. The thing that's a little bit
• 1:45:23
  extra is the cinnamon Lovely great.
• 1:45:27
  I again, I think this is meant to make her look smart, but this
• 1:45:35
  makes you look less skilled than the average 11 year old on
• 1:45:38
  pancake day. So I I I feel like my brain has
• 1:45:43
  short circuited I'm so confused Oh my God I don't even like
• 1:45:49
  pancakes myself and I can still make the perfect pancake in like
• 1:45:52
  30 seconds. It's just like do do do cook it
• 1:45:56
  Oh my God sorry. Anyway, her kids come
• 1:46:00
  downstairs. The eldest, Lexi doesn't want
• 1:46:03
  her boyfriend to drive her to school today so Debbie goes
• 1:46:05
  outside and sends him away. Love that great end of chapter.
• 1:46:09
  Nothing really happened except my brain stopped working because
• 1:46:13
  of pancakes. Next chapter is another Dear
• 1:46:15
  Debbie draft. This time the letter is Dear
• 1:46:18
  Debbie. I can't stand my daughter's
• 1:46:20
  so-called boyfriends. She thinks the sun rises and
• 1:46:22
  sets on that boy but I see right through him.
• 1:46:24
  Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
• 1:46:26
  Please tell me how to open my daughter's eyes before it's too
• 1:46:28
  late blah blah blah blah blah. At this point I was like oh Oh
• 1:46:33
  my God. Wait, is the twist going to be
• 1:46:34
  that like Debbie is writing these letters to herself?
• 1:46:37
  No, no that's not it. Apparently they're real people
• 1:46:40
  because, you know, the whole man trying to sue the newspaper
• 1:46:42
  nonsense. And these are other people.
• 1:46:44
  And I, Yeah, I don't know. I thought it was going to be
• 1:46:47
  some sort of like, at least vaguely clever twist where she's
• 1:46:51
  been writing these letters to herself and then giving herself
• 1:46:53
  this unhinged advice and then carrying out the advice.
• 1:46:55
  And I, I guess the ones were shown are meant to, like,
• 1:46:59
  parallel Debbie's life and story, but I don't know.
• 1:47:03
  I just, I don't care. I don't care.
• 1:47:05
  Anyway, Debbie's suggestion to deal with the daughter's
• 1:47:09
  boyfriend that she doesn't like is to cut the brakes on his car.
• 1:47:13
  Lovely that I just, I feel like this book is sending me like a
• 1:47:21
  little bit insane. I Oh my God, I don't know.
• 1:47:25
  I don't know anymore. What am I doing with my life?
• 1:47:29
  Freda McFadden has sufficiently efficiently Fiona McFadden has
• 1:47:34
  officially broken me. Next chapter, Debbie drives the
• 1:47:39
  kids to school and she says, I wish I had a time machine.
• 1:47:43
  I wish I could talk to 17 year old Debbie and warn her about
• 1:47:46
  everything that was going to happen to her.
• 1:47:47
  The first thing I would have told her would be to stay home
• 1:47:49
  that night during the second semester of her sophomore year.
• 1:47:52
  If I had, everything would be different.
• 1:47:54
  So I was like, Oh my God, OK, this book is doing exactly what
• 1:47:57
  I hate and it's definitely going for The woman got raped and
• 1:48:01
  turned into a psychopath thing, right?
• 1:48:03
  It's one of my least favourite cliches in all of fiction.
• 1:48:06
  I find it so damn offensive, but we'll get to that later when
• 1:48:10
  they do get to school. There's a police car there,
• 1:48:13
  clearly because of whatever Debbie did to the coach.
• 1:48:15
  Right? And I was thinking like, I don't
• 1:48:17
  know, they probably found like CSA material on his computer or
• 1:48:19
  something like that. She planted it there.
• 1:48:21
  I don't know. Apparently someone has called in
• 1:48:23
  a tip that there's a camera recording in the girls changing
• 1:48:26
  room and the coach is arrested. I didn't do it.
• 1:48:29
  Coach Pike is yelling the camera wasn't mine.
• 1:48:31
  I don't know how that stuff got on my phone.
• 1:48:33
  Such a creep. I agree.
• 1:48:35
  And then just add more fuel to the fire I had.
• 1:48:37
  I used to see him staring at the girls butts during soccer
• 1:48:39
  practise. I'm not at all surprised.
• 1:48:41
  Oh my gosh, another mother exclaims.
• 1:48:44
  I always knew there was something off about him.
• 1:48:46
  The dam has burst and now all the women are excitedly
• 1:48:48
  exchanging stories about what a jerk Coach Pike was.
• 1:48:51
  We're still sharing anecdotes when the police car drives away
• 1:48:54
  with the coach in the back seat. It seems like this that make me
• 1:48:59
  worry about Freda McFadden and like what she thinks is
• 1:49:02
  acceptable in the real world because like in her mind, funny
• 1:49:05
  revenge is filming people having sex without their consent and
• 1:49:08
  posting revenge porn online. Like and she she thinks that's
• 1:49:11
  funny and this man deserved it, right?
• 1:49:13
  Because I don't know. And now she's like, Oh yeah,
• 1:49:18
  these women, in response to hearing there was a predator
• 1:49:21
  praying on their kids, are excitedly sharing stories.
• 1:49:25
  Sorry, what do you mean excitedly?
• 1:49:27
  Not not with disgust or fear. This isn't juicy gossip.
• 1:49:30
  This is you just finding out a grown man has been praying on
• 1:49:33
  your children. And if you say you saw him
• 1:49:36
  staring at your kids in a sexual way, why didn't you do something
• 1:49:39
  then? Why did you just let it carry
• 1:49:41
  on? None of this makes sense.
• 1:49:43
  So I said at this point it's unclear if Debbie planted the
• 1:49:45
  camera and stuff on his computer, in which case she's a
• 1:49:47
  creep to stop it, or if she just found it and tipped off the
• 1:49:50
  police, in which case I wouldn't blame her.
• 1:49:52
  That's fine. But spoiler I'll tell you now.
• 1:49:55
  It turns out she went and planted that camera in the girls
• 1:49:58
  changing room and then planted like the software and footage of
• 1:50:02
  the girls on his computer. So she's been complicit in this.
• 1:50:07
  Like she already had like enough like knowledge about him to go
• 1:50:12
  make a complaint him like body shaming your child, him creeping
• 1:50:17
  on your child, the stories from the girls about like him walking
• 1:50:20
  into changing. Yeah, go put in a complaint.
• 1:50:23
  Absolutely do use that what you already have and go put in a
• 1:50:25
  complaint. But instead she decided to go
• 1:50:28
  and put cameras in a children's changing room and then put
• 1:50:32
  footage from that on his computer.
• 1:50:34
  She's victimised children to get revenge on him.
• 1:50:37
  Again, I'm sorry, but this is unforgivable, right?
• 1:50:40
  Yeah. Anyway, it's all handled so
• 1:50:42
  poorly. We go back to Cooper and he
• 1:50:45
  complaints that Debbie burnt his pancakes that morning.
• 1:50:47
  Boo. Make your own breakfast.
• 1:50:49
  You're a grown adult. I don't like Cooper, though.
• 1:50:51
  He's awful. When he gets to work, he's told
• 1:50:53
  Mr Bryant has decided to take a spare of the moment fishing
• 1:50:56
  trip. And the assistant, his assistant
• 1:50:58
  says he informed me via e-mail this morning that he would be
• 1:51:01
  absent for the rest of the week. Clearly an evil.
• 1:51:03
  Clearly an e-mail sent by Debbie Wright because she killed him,
• 1:51:06
  or at least like left him tied up in his house or whatever.
• 1:51:09
  She killed him. Of course, the assistant woman
• 1:51:11
  adds, this doesn't give you a licence to spend the next two
• 1:51:14
  days having a vacation of your own.
• 1:51:16
  I promised him I would keep an eye on you and the rest of the
• 1:51:17
  staff. I doubt.
• 1:51:18
  I don't doubt that she will. However, Mrs McCauley always
• 1:51:21
  leaves at 4:30 on the dot, which means I'll be cutting out at
• 1:51:24
  4:35. I'll head to the gym and blow
• 1:51:27
  some nervous energy. Cooper, have you considered that
• 1:51:31
  your unwillingness to work your basic contracted hours is
• 1:51:35
  perhaps why you didn't get that promotion?
• 1:51:38
  Maybe, just maybe, your boss was right.
• 1:51:42
  Just a thought. I mean, like, don't get me
• 1:51:44
  wrong, I'm not pro capitalism. I think that often workers are
• 1:51:48
  exploited by the system as a whole, by their bosses and so
• 1:51:53
  on. Often people aren't paid enough
• 1:51:55
  money. I'll, you know, I stand by all
• 1:51:56
  that, but in this situation, I don't think you can complain
• 1:52:00
  about not getting a promotion where you when you don't even do
• 1:52:03
  the bare minimum of your work. You know what I mean, sorry.
• 1:52:07
  Anyway, at work Jesse complaints about how he thinks Debbie.
• 1:52:12
  So remember Jesse is Cooper's work friend.
• 1:52:16
  Jesse complaints about how Debbie has serious jealousy
• 1:52:18
  issues and he's surprised Cooper hasn't noticed.
• 1:52:21
  Apparently one time Jesse says they all went out for food and
• 1:52:25
  Debbie purposely spilled a drink for a waitress to clean up and
• 1:52:28
  refused to leave her a tip because she was flirting with
• 1:52:30
  Cooper and Cooper's like hmm, let's ignore that.
• 1:52:33
  Mister Boss Man's fishing trip is odd because I can't seem to
• 1:52:37
  shake a sensation in the back of my head that something isn't
• 1:52:39
  entirely right here. Ken goes fishing all the time,
• 1:52:42
  but he usually gives us a few weeks notice and there's
• 1:52:44
  something strange about the fact that the people he told were
• 1:52:47
  contacted electronically rather than with a phone call.
• 1:52:49
  Impulsively, I grabbed my phone and find Ken's number and my
• 1:52:51
  favourite contacts. The last thing I want to do is
• 1:52:54
  chit chat with my boss after our conversation yesterday, but my
• 1:52:56
  Spidey sense won't stop Ting something is wrong.
• 1:52:59
  Ken doesn't answer his phone, so Cooper thinks I could
• 1:53:03
  investigate or I could do nothing.
• 1:53:05
  So of course he does nothing. He's seeing a pattern here with
• 1:53:09
  him. Debbie's chapter, blah blah
• 1:53:11
  blah. She does some gardening.
• 1:53:13
  She goes for lunch with Holly at Holly's house.
• 1:53:17
  On the way, she sees Joe upset because of her insect
• 1:53:20
  infestation that she's caused. And she's like, yeah, I love
• 1:53:24
  seeing people miserable because she's awful.
• 1:53:27
  At Holly's house, Debbie gets suspicious because she sees a
• 1:53:29
  man's T-shirt there and she smells it and she's like, hmm,
• 1:53:33
  this is familiar. And then we cut to Harley's
• 1:53:36
  narration and she worries. She says, I can't decide if I
• 1:53:39
  should tell Cooper that his wife discovered his shirt in my
• 1:53:42
  bedroom. I couldn't believe it When she
• 1:53:43
  zeroed in on it, she couldn't quite recognise it.
• 1:53:46
  She wasn't certain, but she was suspicious.
• 1:53:49
  How do you know you're not in a head?
• 1:53:50
  Stop it? Like you can't have first person
• 1:53:52
  narration and still try and be omniscient in this way.
• 1:53:55
  It doesn't work for me. Then she brought it to her nose
• 1:53:58
  and sniffed it. I thought for sure I was busted
• 1:54:00
  when she did that. After all, a woman knows what
• 1:54:02
  her husband smells like, yet she didn't say a word.
• 1:54:05
  So maybe we're safe. Or she's insane and she's
• 1:54:08
  bidding her time to punish you both.
• 1:54:10
  Just a thought. Freda has to make Harley all the
• 1:54:12
  more comically evil by having her enjoy seeing Debbie finding
• 1:54:16
  the T-shirt. And also because Holly is child
• 1:54:19
  free. She doesn't have any friends
• 1:54:21
  because she doesn't like babies. If you see my video on Freda's
• 1:54:24
  blogs, you'll know she hates people who are child free by
• 1:54:27
  choice. So of course she has to write
• 1:54:29
  the home wrecking villain like this, right?
• 1:54:31
  And so since I started filming this, I've published that video
• 1:54:36
  and put it out and everything and finished the editing and oh,
• 1:54:39
  actually, yeah, because you guys have seen this quite late, so
• 1:54:40
  it's going to be out a while. And what are the comments that I
• 1:54:43
  did get on that was it was just one person, but he said
• 1:54:45
  something like, well, if she deleted these blogs and clearly
• 1:54:48
  she doesn't stand by any of it and therefore we can't judge her
• 1:54:51
  for any of it. And I don't understand like, why
• 1:54:53
  any of this is relevant. And I was like, that would be a
• 1:54:56
  really good point if well, actually a couple of things.
• 1:55:00
  And because I, I think it's a fairpoint to bring up, but one,
• 1:55:03
  not all her blogs are deleted. All her posts on mothers on
• 1:55:07
  yeah, mothers in medicine, all of those are still there,
• 1:55:10
  published and online. They're still available for
• 1:55:12
  anyone to access. They're all there.
• 1:55:14
  The only thing she deleted was her cartoon Guide to being a
• 1:55:17
  doctor blog. That's the one she deleted.
• 1:55:20
  And it's unclear why she didn't like say, oh, I don't stand by
• 1:55:23
  any of this. I'm deleting it.
• 1:55:25
  I think it was just she got popular and she realised I saw
• 1:55:27
  some stuff on there that didn't make her look good, so she
• 1:55:30
  deleted it or I don't know, or she privated it or something
• 1:55:33
  like that. So there is that.
• 1:55:34
  And I completely understand people who don't stand by their
• 1:55:38
  old content and like want to move on.
• 1:55:40
  Like absolutely fine. Because I've made videos in the
• 1:55:42
  past where I was like, now I look back and I'm like, oh,
• 1:55:44
  actually my take on that was completely wrong.
• 1:55:46
  Yeah, that's that's wrong. I don't agree with that.
• 1:55:48
  Let's remove that video. And then like I've talked in
• 1:55:51
  other videos about like what changed and stuff.
• 1:55:53
  So like, I remember at the time, like I when it all like first
• 1:55:57
  started happening and coming out, I was on with the Amber
• 1:56:00
  Heard, Johnny Depp thing. I was on Johnny Depp's side of
• 1:56:02
  things. I was like, Yep, his point seems
• 1:56:03
  right. And she's doing this and this.
• 1:56:05
  And then like as time went on and I saw more and more
• 1:56:07
  evidence, I was like, Oh, no crap.
• 1:56:08
  Actually, I'm, I'm completely on her side.
• 1:56:10
  I was wrong. And so I ended up taking that
• 1:56:12
  video down and I spoken numerous times about how I came to change
• 1:56:15
  my mind and why I changed my mind and what my new opinion is.
• 1:56:18
  And so it wasn't just like I wasn't deleting it to hide
• 1:56:21
  something that people don't like.
• 1:56:22
  I was like, well, I don't stand by that anymore.
• 1:56:23
  And I've spoken multiple times about how and why I changed.
• 1:56:27
  I feel like if we'd seen evidence of Frida changing and
• 1:56:31
  growing since those posts that she privated, then I wouldn't be
• 1:56:35
  as critical. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:56:38
  Like, so someone's saying like, well, you know, there were
• 1:56:39
  certain posts on there that she wrote about her dislike for
• 1:56:41
  child free people and her judgement of child free people,
• 1:56:44
  but she privated it. So why are we talking about it?
• 1:56:46
  I'm like, well, I think it's really interesting that we can
• 1:56:48
  see that like, you know, 10 years ago she had these views on
• 1:56:50
  child free people. And then today, like literally 2
• 1:56:53
  months ago, she published a book where she makes the child free
• 1:56:58
  woman like this comically evil villain where she's awful and
• 1:57:02
  lonely because she doesn't have kids and she hates kids so much.
• 1:57:06
  So for me, it's interesting to look back at this pattern and
• 1:57:09
  see that like, no, she hasn't changed and grown.
• 1:57:12
  She still has these views. She's just presenting them in a
• 1:57:15
  different way, you know, So it's not a matter of like, she
• 1:57:18
  doesn't stand by this. She's changed, she's grown.
• 1:57:21
  We've seen that. It's like, oh, she had these
• 1:57:23
  views then and now she still has these views.
• 1:57:25
  Isn't it interesting to see the progression of how she presents
• 1:57:29
  it to the world? Yeah, sorry, that was completely
• 1:57:31
  off script. I just thought I'd gone a lot of
• 1:57:32
  rant there. What was I going to read?
• 1:57:34
  Right. Yeah, OK.
• 1:57:37
  Frida. Right In an over the top home
• 1:57:38
  wrecking villain who hates babies.
• 1:57:40
  Harley narrates. It makes me sad to think that I
• 1:57:42
  don't have any close friends anymore.
• 1:57:44
  My last one was my college roommate Mariah.
• 1:57:46
  But Mariah got married and had a baby.
• 1:57:47
  And after that, every text message exchange we had included
• 1:57:50
  a photo of her baby doing something she thought was so
• 1:57:53
  adorable. I couldn't even talk about the
• 1:57:54
  weather without her sending me a photo of her baby holding us or
• 1:57:57
  something. I finally snapped and told Maria
• 1:58:00
  I had absolutely no interest in the constant photos of her ugly
• 1:58:03
  daughter. After that, our friendship sort
• 1:58:05
  of result. So I think this is what Freda
• 1:58:08
  thinks is unforgivable in a woman.
• 1:58:10
  Not liking kids, calling babies ugly and stealing people's
• 1:58:14
  husbands. What is not unforgivable and
• 1:58:16
  should be applauded is filming people having sex without their
• 1:58:20
  consent, posting revenge porn online, capturing videos of
• 1:58:23
  children in the changing rooms, putting that material on someone
• 1:58:26
  else's, this computer, killing people, and so on.
• 1:58:29
  Don't get me wrong, Harley is an unpleasant woman, she's not nice
• 1:58:32
  at all. But Freda presents her at least
• 1:58:35
  as the villain and Debbie not. And in my opinion, what Debbie
• 1:58:38
  does is a lot lot worse. Right.
• 1:58:40
  We have 19 pages of script left. We can do this.
• 1:58:42
  This is originally a 62 page script if you want some
• 1:58:46
  background information. Little behind the scenes secrets
• 1:58:48
  there. Honestly I think a lot of my
• 1:58:50
  scripts come across as longer on the page because I screenshot
• 1:58:54
  the books that I'm reviewing. So like, rather than copy out
• 1:58:57
  the text and put it in line, I just screenshot them and they
• 1:58:59
  take a lot more space on the page.
• 1:59:01
  So I think that's why my scripts seem longer, although they are
• 1:59:04
  long. I do talk for too long, don't I?
• 1:59:06
  I don't some people are like, you could be more concise with
• 1:59:09
  this. I'm like, yeah, I could, I could
• 1:59:11
  make a 62nd video about this. I could be like Freda McFadden
• 1:59:14
  wrote a new book called Dear Debbie.
• 1:59:15
  In it. Debbie is unhinged and she hates
• 1:59:17
  everyone and everyone's a bad person in the end.
• 1:59:19
  But I feel like if you want to watch that kind of content,
• 1:59:22
  you'll probably go to like TikTok or Instagram reels or
• 1:59:24
  something like that where, you know, you do get this bite sized
• 1:59:26
  information. Where is on my channel here, I
• 1:59:28
  make the kind of videos that I like to watch other people make
• 1:59:32
  that I make the kind of videos I consume, which is like, I want
• 1:59:34
  the index, I want the personal opinions.
• 1:59:37
  I want the like line by line analysis.
• 1:59:39
  Like I want all of that. It's why I love channels like
• 1:59:43
  weirdo book club and stuff like that, because like she does that
• 1:59:46
  style as well. And I, I say, I only found her a
• 1:59:49
  couple months back, but like I binge watch, binge watch so many
• 1:59:52
  of her videos. She's great.
• 1:59:53
  And yeah, I sorry, I'm going off topic again.
• 1:59:56
  I why can I? I haven't been out the house
• 1:59:59
  since Saturday and it's currently Thursday so this is my
• 2:00:02
  first time. No actually that's a lie.
• 2:00:04
  My friend Joe came over on Monday to help me move some
• 2:00:07
  boxes. I'm moving out in like 2 weeks
• 2:00:09
  and I still don't know where I wanna go.
• 2:00:11
  And sorry if you want an update on my life, here you go.
• 2:00:14
  Feel free to skip this now. Skip that.
• 2:00:17
  Yeah, sorry, I'm moving out of here in like 2 weeks.
• 2:00:19
  So my friend Joe has been helping me move boxes and he's
• 2:00:21
  storing some stuff at his house to me, which is lovely.
• 2:00:23
  And so I saw him briefly on Monday for like half an hour
• 2:00:26
  while we're moving stuff. But other than that I haven't
• 2:00:28
  spoken to anyone since Saturday. I haven't really left the house.
• 2:00:30
  So yeah, I think now that I'm like talking, I'm just imagining
• 2:00:33
  I'm trying to a friend. I mean that's how I film all my
• 2:00:35
  videos anyway. But like, yeah, I think I just,
• 2:00:38
  I just can't show up. I'm so sorry.
• 2:00:40
  God. Anyway, right, Where was I up
• 2:00:42
  to? Right?
• 2:00:43
  Harley's complaining again. Let's let's get through this.
• 2:00:46
  We got this team. Debbie is talking about her
• 2:00:48
  garden right now, which is obviously her favourite topic,
• 2:00:50
  but I don't care about her stupid flowers.
• 2:00:52
  There's only one reason why I've become friends with Debbie,
• 2:00:54
  Debbie Mullen. That's to pump her for
• 2:00:56
  information about Cooper. Although as always, I try to be
• 2:00:59
  casual about it. Like I barely even remember who
• 2:01:01
  he is. This is so stupid, she says of
• 2:01:03
  Cooper's aversion to tech. I already know that's true.
• 2:01:05
  It's made stalking Cooper Cooper online and exercise in
• 2:01:08
  frustration. I prefer men who post everything
• 2:01:10
  they do and everywhere they go on social media so I can gauge
• 2:01:13
  exactly what they're thinking. But Cooper is older than me, old
• 2:01:16
  enough that posting minute by minute updates online is not a
• 2:01:18
  priority for him like it is for a lot of men my age or younger.
• 2:01:21
  You're like 35 ish, right? I don't know any 35 year old who
• 2:01:27
  is actually happy and content in their life who is constantly
• 2:01:30
  posting updates online. Like it feels like Friedra is
• 2:01:32
  very out of touch with reality. You know, I even have friends
• 2:01:35
  who are in like their mid to late 20s and even they aren't
• 2:01:37
  posting stuff online constantly. I feel like the only person who
• 2:01:39
  do that, who are like I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing
• 2:01:41
  this and you know, they post like several, I don't know, like
• 2:01:44
  posts or videos or like stuff like every single day are the
• 2:01:48
  ones who are kind of like a bit unhappy with their lives and
• 2:01:50
  they're just kind of, I don't know, I don't know.
• 2:01:52
  Anyway, basically it feels unrealistic.
• 2:01:55
  She starts asking more questions about Cooper, like good father.
• 2:01:58
  I press her. I like the idea of Cooper being
• 2:02:00
  a good father. Mine was crap.
• 2:02:02
  I don't want to blame everything bad I've done on daddy issues,
• 2:02:04
  but it would have been nice if he ever said 2 words to me.
• 2:02:07
  That's all I'm saying. Of course she has daddy issues.
• 2:02:09
  Of course, I actually have a whole video on why I hate the
• 2:02:15
  concept of daddy issues. It's an old one.
• 2:02:17
  You can't remember what I said in it, but I'm pretty sure it's,
• 2:02:20
  I'm pretty sure I stand by a lot of it still.
• 2:02:21
  I think I don't know, back to Debbie.
• 2:02:23
  And she can't stop thinking about the T-shirt because she's
• 2:02:25
  a super deeper genius and she can't just say she recognises
• 2:02:28
  the smell. She has to say studies have
• 2:02:30
  shown that smell triggers greater brain activity than
• 2:02:33
  visual stimuli due to the direct connection at the olfactory bulb
• 2:02:36
  to the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions, and
• 2:02:38
  the hippocampus, which is responsible for memories.
• 2:02:41
  Cooper calls and it's a nothing phone call, which just ends with
• 2:02:44
  Debbie saying it doesn't matter. Cooper won't be talking to Ken
• 2:02:46
  Bryant on Monday. Nobody will be talking to Ken on
• 2:02:48
  Monday or ever again. So yeah, she killed him.
• 2:02:51
  She also narrates, although like him, I have my secrets.
• 2:02:54
  There are things I never told him because I never told anyone.
• 2:02:56
  And maybe that's part of the problem.
• 2:02:58
  I never gave myself to him 100%. So this is clearly the trauma
• 2:03:02
  that she's hiding that made her turn evil, I'm guessing.
• 2:03:05
  But government, right? We're 54% of the way through
• 2:03:08
  this book and I'm so bored by it.
• 2:03:10
  I'm so bored. Back to Harley, she flirts with
• 2:03:12
  Cooper at the gym. Him another woman.
• 2:03:14
  The receptionist tells her to stop because he's married.
• 2:03:16
  So Harley decides that means that I have to be the one to
• 2:03:19
  tell Debbie that her husband is cheating on her.
• 2:03:21
  I have to figure out how to break the news.
• 2:03:23
  I'm so bored of this book. Also, I'm really confused like
• 2:03:26
  what this what genre of this book is supposed to be?
• 2:03:28
  Because it's not exactly a thriller because there's no
• 2:03:30
  mystery or intrigued. There's crime, but there's no
• 2:03:33
  suspense, there's no excitement. There's no like puzzles or clues
• 2:03:37
  or questions. There's no real stakes and
• 2:03:40
  there's no like, oh, they have to do this or this will happen.
• 2:03:43
  There's no like, ohh, if they don't find this in time, this
• 2:03:46
  will have that. There's none of that and
• 2:03:48
  everyone's just awful and I don't care if they suffer
• 2:03:51
  because they're all bad people. There's no character
• 2:03:54
  development. There's, there's just nothing.
• 2:03:58
  It's simply he is a bad person. Bad things happen to them.
• 2:04:01
  So she does bad, so she does bad things.
• 2:04:04
  Here's another bad person, bad things happen to them.
• 2:04:07
  Here's another bad person, bad things happen to them.
• 2:04:09
  Like if you if you have a study like kind of the theory behind
• 2:04:14
  storytelling and you look at like there are different story
• 2:04:16
  structures, you can have right there many, many different
• 2:04:18
  kinds. So you've got like, you know,
• 2:04:20
  some of the typical ones are like the pyramid.
• 2:04:23
  We kind of have like the introduction, the rising drama,
• 2:04:25
  the climax, the resolution and so on.
• 2:04:28
  Like a pyramid. You've got your three act
• 2:04:29
  structure, you've got all sorts of things.
• 2:04:31
  And then you have all those that are like far more complex and
• 2:04:33
  stuff. And you can have seven point
• 2:04:35
  plot structures and you can have there's all these different
• 2:04:38
  models and stuff. Like that's not what this video
• 2:04:40
  is about. So I'm going to it.
• 2:04:41
  But like, I don't understand where this story falls within
• 2:04:44
  like typical plot structures and story structures.
• 2:04:48
  There's no, there's no standard structure that it fits, but not
• 2:04:51
  in the sense that like it's subverting an expectation or
• 2:04:54
  it's doing something different or creative.
• 2:04:56
  It's that there's no plot structure.
• 2:04:58
  It's just this thing happens, then this thing happens, then
• 2:05:02
  this thing happens, then this thing happens and then it ends.
• 2:05:06
  I'm not invested in any of this. This is, and I think I've said
• 2:05:10
  this, my least favourite Freedom McFadden book that I've read
• 2:05:12
  because it's everything bad about Freedom McFadden but
• 2:05:15
  somehow more boring than usual. In our next chapter Holly gets
• 2:05:18
  back home and is confronted by a woman that Oh my God I
• 2:05:21
  completely forgot this was even in here you know?
• 2:05:24
  Oh God this is such a non point it's like nothing ever comes
• 2:05:29
  with it. The woman who's there is a
• 2:05:30
  sister of some guy she had an affair with and Harley says oh
• 2:05:33
  crap how how's he doing? You mean after you wrecked his
• 2:05:36
  family? Lissette raises her eyebrows
• 2:05:38
  which were in dire need of grooming.
• 2:05:40
  Can we stop shaming people for their appearances yet please?
• 2:05:43
  Just saying after you got him to leave his wife then decided you
• 2:05:45
  didn't want him. That's not an entirely fair
• 2:05:47
  assessment of the situation. Edgar and I had an affair about
• 2:05:49
  a year ago, and yes, I did convince him to leave his wife
• 2:05:52
  of 30 years. But unlike Cooper, who has a lot
• 2:05:54
  of compelling physical attributes, Edgar was 3 decades
• 2:05:58
  older than me, seriously balding, with a weak chin and
• 2:06:00
  beady eyes. His most attractive feature was
• 2:06:02
  the fact that he was quite wealthy.
• 2:06:03
  He failed to mention that the wealth belonged in telly to his
• 2:06:06
  wife. He also failed to mention that
• 2:06:07
  he had signed an ironclad prenup agreement and would be left
• 2:06:10
  penniless in the divorce. So he really completely
• 2:06:12
  misrepresented himself to me. I was the victim here.
• 2:06:15
  I mean, did he still think I was going to live in a basement
• 2:06:17
  apartment working for a second rate gym as a trainer when I'm
• 2:06:20
  40? He was delusional if you thought
• 2:06:22
  that. So all this like the, the only
• 2:06:25
  point of this bit is to make Harlechley so cartoonishly evil
• 2:06:30
  with no redeeming qualities that we don't mind what happens to
• 2:06:34
  her. That's the only point of this.
• 2:06:36
  At this point. It's kind of boring.
• 2:06:37
  Like if she was a regular person who'd done something bad and was
• 2:06:41
  struggling with it and had this like internal oh God I want this
• 2:06:45
  but I feel bad for this and I should do this and like that
• 2:06:48
  would make far more interesting in common compelling story than
• 2:06:50
  just ha ha ha, I'm so evil and I keep ruining marriages.
• 2:06:56
  I don't care anyway if this guy, Edgar, he hung himself.
• 2:06:59
  Lissette blurts out. What?
• 2:07:01
  You heard me. Her furious eyes filled with
• 2:07:02
  tears. He lost everything because of
• 2:07:04
  you and you couldn't take it anymore.
• 2:07:06
  Again, this is not fair. His wife is at least 50% at
• 2:07:09
  fault. Is he dead?
• 2:07:11
  I calculate in my head how much flowers sent to a Funeral Home
• 2:07:14
  will set me back. He's still alive, she croaks.
• 2:07:16
  But he has an anoxic brain injury.
• 2:07:18
  He can't walk, can't speak, can't feed himself.
• 2:07:20
  He's in a nursing home now and he's 24/7 care.
• 2:07:23
  Well, I'm sorry to hear that. This is all just so over the
• 2:07:26
  top. But like, not in an entertaining
• 2:07:28
  way. You know, I have a massive soft
• 2:07:30
  spot for soaps like EastEnders in the UK that can be so silly
• 2:07:34
  and over the top. And everyone's had an affair
• 2:07:36
  with everyone and then he killed him and this happened.
• 2:07:38
  This. And I love that.
• 2:07:40
  I love the camp over dramatic energy of telenovelas that like
• 2:07:44
  really lean into the absurdity and own it.
• 2:07:46
  But this book is neither soap nor telenovela level of owning
• 2:07:51
  the absurdity. Instead, it's over the top
• 2:07:55
  without being entertaining. It's over the top but not quite
• 2:07:58
  self aware enough to be funny or smart or or just enjoyable.
• 2:08:04
  You know, It just ends up being unbelievable yet boring.
• 2:08:08
  It bothers me, Holly says. What do you want me to say?
• 2:08:12
  Edgar was an adult and he made his own bed.
• 2:08:14
  I didn't force him to leave his wife, and I didn't force him to
• 2:08:16
  hang himself. Wow.
• 2:08:18
  She shakes her head as if she's never met anyone quite as
• 2:08:20
  horrible as me. What a drama queen.
• 2:08:22
  Just like Edgar. You're heartless.
• 2:08:24
  These characters are unbearable to read.
• 2:08:26
  And Harley, Oh my God, I forgot. Harley pepper sprays the woman.
• 2:08:30
  And then the chapter ends and this whole plot point is never
• 2:08:34
  brought up again. Another dear Debbie letter.
• 2:08:37
  This time she suggests putting antifreeze in a husband's food.
• 2:08:40
  OK, let's move on back to Cooper.
• 2:08:42
  Coach Pike was arrested. Izzy says he had a camera in the
• 2:08:45
  girls locker room in the shower. I let out a gasp.
• 2:08:48
  Here's recording teenage girls taking showers.
• 2:08:51
  I heard the camera was just put in and hadn't started recording
• 2:08:53
  yet. Izzy says, OK, I'll wind back
• 2:08:56
  some of my earlier criticism in a second.
• 2:08:57
  Thank God. The thought of what could have
• 2:08:59
  been on that footage is dramatising.
• 2:09:01
  My friend Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian. My friend Ian told me he's
• 2:09:05
  saying he didn't do it. But like I heard they found a
• 2:09:07
  programme on his phone that connected to the camera.
• 2:09:09
  So he definitely did it. Programme on his phone that
• 2:09:11
  connected to the camera just like what we have on the front
• 2:09:14
  door. Yeah.
• 2:09:14
  So Debbie set it up, obviously, and Cooper should be realising
• 2:09:17
  this, but instead he's just dumb.
• 2:09:19
  So OK, I wind back my earlier criticism when I said like, she
• 2:09:22
  was victimising these children by recording them.
• 2:09:24
  Thankfully she didn't do that, thank God.
• 2:09:27
  But like, it's still icky that she did it.
• 2:09:30
  And she did still film the adults without their consent,
• 2:09:33
  like her boss and the receptionist woman and all that
• 2:09:36
  stuff. So it's like the fact that she
• 2:09:38
  didn't quite go as far as to actually record kids and just
• 2:09:41
  set it up so she could record kids isn't that redeeming, is
• 2:09:45
  it? It's still gross.
• 2:09:46
  I don't like it. Cooper's come using as well here
• 2:09:49
  because, like, for a man who's just been told that his child
• 2:09:52
  daughters could have been the victims of a predator, he's very
• 2:09:56
  relaxed about it. I find his reaction just a
• 2:09:58
  little unbelievable. You know, like, if I was a
• 2:10:00
  parent and I heard this, I'd not be like, oh God, that's
• 2:10:03
  terrible, isn't it? Yeah, I feel like, what the
• 2:10:06
  hell, You know what I mean. Anyway, Cooper finally stops
• 2:10:09
  being stupid and he excuses himself from the dinner table.
• 2:10:12
  I scroll away from the news article, and the next thing I
• 2:10:14
  search for in my phone is Robert Pike.
• 2:10:16
  Home address. Instantly, the address of the
• 2:10:19
  home he owns in Weymouth pops up on the screen.
• 2:10:21
  How? What?
• 2:10:23
  What? Since when can you just Google a
• 2:10:25
  person's address? No, my scribble from last night
• 2:10:27
  is how to read, but there's no doubt the street name is the
• 2:10:29
  same. Debbie was at Coach Pike's house
• 2:10:31
  in the middle of the night. Then the next morning, he was
• 2:10:33
  arrested for having incriminating software.
• 2:10:35
  His phone. There's no way that could be a
• 2:10:37
  coincidence. Wild.
• 2:10:39
  I stare at the piece of paper with Pike's address on it,
• 2:10:40
  trying to figure out what to do with this information.
• 2:10:43
  If my wife did all those things, she's an incredibly disturbed
• 2:10:45
  individual. She would be somebody in need, a
• 2:10:47
  serious psychiatric help. If she could do all that, who
• 2:10:50
  knows what else she's capable of.
• 2:10:52
  She could be dangerous. Mate, if you're not worried,
• 2:10:54
  call the police. Because she is crazy, she is
• 2:10:56
  dangerous. Call the police.
• 2:10:58
  Debbie's chapter again. Debbie narrates so that Coop
• 2:11:01
  gets a call from a woman and he rushes away from the table, his
• 2:11:04
  phone pressed to his ear as he's leaving in the room, I can just
• 2:11:06
  barely make out the sound for voice on the other end of the
• 2:11:08
  line, a female voice. A few seconds later, the door to
• 2:11:11
  our bedroom slams shut. I rose to my own chair to clear
• 2:11:15
  the table. Not one person in my family
• 2:11:17
  thought to take their dishes to the sink.
• 2:11:18
  Cooper will occasionally load or unload the dishwasher, but the
• 2:11:21
  kids never do. Do they think there's poison
• 2:11:23
  fumes trapped inside and if they open it to put a dish inside,
• 2:11:26
  the fumes will be released, killing us all.
• 2:11:28
  Based on their behaviour, I have to assume that yes, they do
• 2:11:31
  think this. Sorry, but you're the parent.
• 2:11:32
  If you want them to do dishes, ask them to do the issues.
• 2:11:36
  They don't just automatically learn this stuff as kids, you
• 2:11:39
  have to teach them what their responsibilities are.
• 2:11:41
  You can't just be like well why do they never do this when
• 2:11:44
  you've never asked them to do it, you've never taught them to
• 2:11:46
  do it, you've never told them to do Anyway.
• 2:11:48
  She goes to speak to Lexi who's crying in her room and she says
• 2:11:51
  that Zayn, the ex-boyfriend is blackmailing her and he will
• 2:11:55
  show the world naked photos he has of her unless she has sex
• 2:11:58
  with him. Lexi is 17.
• 2:12:00
  This means that this 18 year old man is in possession of child
• 2:12:04
  pornography or child sex assault images if we're labelling them
• 2:12:07
  correctly, indecent illegal images of a child.
• 2:12:10
  If he distributes them or shows them to anyone, this is even
• 2:12:13
  more illegal. This is distribution of child
• 2:12:16
  sexual assault material. Plus if he took the photos
• 2:12:18
  himself, he created child sexual assault material, which is
• 2:12:21
  illegal. You know all of this.
• 2:12:23
  You know he has it on his phone. Call the police, they will
• 2:12:27
  arrest him. They will do something about
• 2:12:29
  this. There's like text messages of
• 2:12:31
  him blackmailing her, like with intent to distribute like they
• 2:12:35
  we will do something about this, call the police.
• 2:12:38
  Debbie doesn't do anything though, and she just says I wish
• 2:12:41
  she knew that I used to be just like her.
• 2:12:43
  I was carefree and intelligent and yes, beautiful even though I
• 2:12:46
  didn't know it at the time. And then something happened that
• 2:12:48
  ruined my life. That's why I refuse to let
• 2:12:50
  anything like that happen to her because I love her more than
• 2:12:52
  anything and I want her life to be as good as mine promised to
• 2:12:55
  be before I was raped in my second year of college.
• 2:12:58
  And Oh my God, there we have it. I'm so sick of this woman was
• 2:13:03
  raped so she turns crazy for the rest of her life.
• 2:13:06
  I am. I'm sick of this trope as well
• 2:13:08
  as the more general rapist back story trope and the harm that
• 2:13:11
  they 'cause. I'm tired of it.
• 2:13:12
  I'm so tired. It misresent.
• 2:13:14
  It completely misrepresents how trauma can really affect some
• 2:13:17
  people. It makes recovery and survival
• 2:13:19
  seem impossible. It stigmatises mental health
• 2:13:22
  issues in general by making it seem like anyone who has faced
• 2:13:25
  trauma and has PTSD is mentally unstable and will in any way
• 2:13:30
  actively harm others. Like it also reinforces victim
• 2:13:34
  blaming by shifting the focus away from the problem being with
• 2:13:37
  the rapist to the person who was raped.
• 2:13:40
  And it completely ignores the fact that like if anyone there
• 2:13:43
  is evil, it's the person who raped them, and instead focuses
• 2:13:46
  on the idea that like, victims become evil.
• 2:13:50
  It's so damn harmful. Like I don't know if I'm
• 2:13:52
  expressing myself right because this annoys me but like I'm sick
• 2:13:55
  of it and absolutely sick of it and can we please stop using
• 2:13:58
  rape as a plot twist? Like again, bothers me, we get
• 2:14:02
  the story of what happened to Debbie and it's the cliched good
• 2:14:06
  girl virgin with perfect grades gets bullied by her nasty party
• 2:14:10
  girl roommate into going to a party she doesn't want to go to
• 2:14:13
  a frat party. Which a large percentage of the
• 2:14:16
  guys at MIT were in fraternities.
• 2:14:18
  So those parties were supposed to be a lot more interesting.
• 2:14:20
  To be clear, they weren't interesting to me, just more
• 2:14:23
  interesting in an objective sort of way.
• 2:14:25
  Don't get me wrong, I understand there's a lot of issues around
• 2:14:28
  fraternities and the culture around them and hazing and peer
• 2:14:32
  pressure and there's a lot of issues there that I've heard of
• 2:14:35
  and read about, but this all just feels a little cliched to
• 2:14:38
  me. I don't know.
• 2:14:39
  But anyway, she goes to the party, she has a single rum and
• 2:14:41
  coke, which was only the second time I had had alcohol during
• 2:14:44
  college, and only the third time in my whole life.
• 2:14:46
  At the time I assumed that everything after that was
• 2:14:48
  because I had 0 alcohol tolerance, but later when I
• 2:14:51
  really thought about it, I was pretty sure that one drink could
• 2:14:54
  not have done that to me. Hutch, the man she met, dropped
• 2:14:57
  something into my drink. Maybe not a roofie, but he put
• 2:14:59
  something in there to make sure I wouldn't be able to fight him
• 2:15:01
  off of. Again, this is horrible.
• 2:15:03
  And these are things which do happen and they do need writing
• 2:15:06
  about and speaking about and they need representing in in
• 2:15:11
  media and books, in fiction and nonfiction and everything.
• 2:15:14
  Like, it's an important one to talk about.
• 2:15:16
  I just don't think Freda handles it sensitively or honestly
• 2:15:20
  accurately enough. Like, I've had my drinks spiked
• 2:15:23
  before and it was a horrible, horrible, horrible experience.
• 2:15:27
  I just again, yeah, I don't know.
• 2:15:29
  I just, I feel like Freda isn't handling it sensitive enough.
• 2:15:32
  I don't, I don't know. I don't feel like it should be
• 2:15:34
  done as a shocking plot twist. Do you know what I mean?
• 2:15:37
  I have been reading the book at the minute, although I'm having
• 2:15:39
  to take it really slow actually, because it's a little.
• 2:15:41
  Yeah, it's a hard read. I've been reading True Story by
• 2:15:45
  Kate Reed Petty recently and I feel like from what I've read so
• 2:15:49
  far, I'm only about 60% of the way through the book.
• 2:15:51
  Like I say, I keep stopping and starting because it's a lot.
• 2:15:53
  I feel like that handles the subject matter a lot better than
• 2:15:56
  Freda did, a lot more realistically, a lot more
• 2:15:58
  sensitively with a lot more new ones.
• 2:16:01
  But don't quote me on like, I'll not finish the book.
• 2:16:03
  But yeah, I just, I don't, I don't like how Freda has
• 2:16:06
  depicted any of this. She really.
• 2:16:09
  She also includes a really graphic description of the rape,
• 2:16:11
  which I wish I hadn't read. And frankly, I think it was
• 2:16:14
  unnecessary in this book. We didn't need that level of
• 2:16:17
  detail. But we find out after it
• 2:16:19
  happened, Debbie dropped out of school and never told anyone
• 2:16:21
  about it. And.
• 2:16:22
  And now, as a direct result of that trauma, she's doing crazy
• 2:16:25
  and saying stuff, getting revenge on anyone and everyone
• 2:16:28
  that she perceives to have slighted her.
• 2:16:30
  And. Yeah, it bothers me.
• 2:16:32
  It really bothers me. I think what I'm trying to
• 2:16:34
  ramble about here in general is just saying I'm sick of books
• 2:16:38
  which make the rape victim A villain because of her trauma,
• 2:16:41
  rather than presenting the actual rapists as villains.
• 2:16:45
  And, and Frieda does, and Frieda does to some extent represent
• 2:16:49
  the rapist as a villain, but not as much as Debbie.
• 2:16:52
  You know, like this idea that like, if you have trauma, you're
• 2:16:55
  going to start killing people, posting revenge porn online,
• 2:17:00
  filming people without their and like all this other nasty like
• 2:17:03
  it. Can we not?
• 2:17:04
  Can we not? In the next chapter, we're back
• 2:17:06
  to present day, and Debbie steals her daughter's phone in
• 2:17:09
  the night, pretends to be her, and arranges to meet up with
• 2:17:12
  Zane. Oh my.
• 2:17:13
  Actually, this might be the stupidest part of the book.
• 2:17:16
  It's so it's between the website and this for stupidest, most
• 2:17:20
  unrealistic parts of the book. Last night before bed, I went
• 2:17:22
  out and bought a six pack of beer.
• 2:17:24
  It's not the sort of thing we ever keep in the house because
• 2:17:26
  Cooper and I don't care for beer, but I need it tonight.
• 2:17:29
  As soon as I get to the playground I crack open a can.
• 2:17:31
  Then I add the opium enough to knock him out.
• 2:17:34
  I certainly would never drink from a mystery can left on a
• 2:17:36
  playground, but I'm not Zayn who's 18 years old with a punch
• 2:17:40
  on for getting in trouble. Then I position myself behind a
• 2:17:43
  set of bushes and I wait. Sorry, but what?
• 2:17:46
  Even an idiot who is 18 would not drink from a random beer can
• 2:17:51
  left in public. It could very easily be pee.
• 2:17:54
  Like no, I'm sorry, no. Zane turns up and then he does.
• 2:17:59
  He's drinking it. He downs the entire can of opium
• 2:18:02
  laced beer in what looks like 5 gulps.
• 2:18:04
  Shut up, this would not happen. This.
• 2:18:07
  No, no, I refuse to believe it, it's stupid.
• 2:18:10
  No, he passes out because of course he does.
• 2:18:13
  And Debbie grabs his phone, deletes the photos of her
• 2:18:16
  daughter, and then says I'm here to do something else.
• 2:18:18
  Lexi told me that he'd done this before.
• 2:18:20
  During his sophomore year, he dated a girl whose picture he
• 2:18:23
  sent around the school. Considering he was a sophomore
• 2:18:25
  and that girl was likely around 15, which means that league he
• 2:18:28
  was distributing child pornography.
• 2:18:29
  Now, I must find the digital fingerprint of what he did.
• 2:18:32
  Yeah. And you're Lexie's also 17, so
• 2:18:34
  that's also illegal and the exact same crime.
• 2:18:36
  You know, he's done this. You know he's done it before.
• 2:18:38
  You know, he's planning to do it again.
• 2:18:40
  Call the police so they can deal with this.
• 2:18:42
  You can't just take the law into your own hands and violate
• 2:18:44
  another child by you looking at her stuff, she's literally hunt
• 2:18:48
  like, she's a random woman and she's going hunting for child
• 2:18:51
  sexual assault material. The fact that like she's
• 2:18:53
  choosing to look for this and it it gets worse.
• 2:18:56
  I screenshot everything. Then I create an anonymous
• 2:18:59
  e-mail account. I send everything to both the
• 2:19:01
  high school administration and the local Police Department,
• 2:19:04
  noting the approximate age of the girl.
• 2:19:05
  I allow myself to smile. Tomorrow will be interesting.
• 2:19:08
  So now you are just be distributing child porn?
• 2:19:12
  You are disputing child sexual assault material.
• 2:19:14
  I know you're emailing it to the police in there too, but still,
• 2:19:17
  this is not the way you handle this stuff and screenshots
• 2:19:20
  emailed aren't enough to get a prosecution.
• 2:19:23
  If you told the police in the 1st place they'd have
• 2:19:25
  confiscated his first phone and computers and would have found
• 2:19:27
  the records of him taking and sending the photos and that
• 2:19:30
  would have been enough to convict him.
• 2:19:31
  Even if she'd like knocked him out, stolen his phone and taken
• 2:19:34
  that directly to the police, that would have been better than
• 2:19:37
  what she's actually done. Like I can't with this attempt
• 2:19:40
  at being a vigilante done so poorly I can't cope.
• 2:19:44
  And she did not need to go looking for this child's images
• 2:19:48
  herself. Like she's just victimised this
• 2:19:50
  child all over again. She had no right looking for
• 2:19:52
  that stuff. No, sorry, no.
• 2:19:57
  This book really annoys me, if you can't tell.
• 2:19:59
  Debbie gets home and Cooper's waiting up for her.
• 2:20:01
  He confronts her and asks where she's been as he's been tracking
• 2:20:04
  her location on his phone because as always, she is too
• 2:20:07
  stupid to turn it off. And instead of replying, she
• 2:20:10
  deflects again. And it's like, well, where were
• 2:20:11
  you the other night for two hours?
• 2:20:13
  And then she just goes to bed. These two have no communication
• 2:20:16
  skills. Why and how are they married?
• 2:20:18
  Then there's a whole bunch of nothing.
• 2:20:19
  Cooper gets the chapter again. He goes to work, and apparently
• 2:20:23
  Jesse raises his eyes from the. Screen it looks like there's
• 2:20:25
  money missing from the company account.
• 2:20:27
  What's money missing? I repeat, normally Miss McCauley
• 2:20:29
  peers up at me through her spectacles.
• 2:20:31
  I know it's a great discrepancy this morning quite a bit has
• 2:20:34
  gone missing and it looks like it's been going on for several
• 2:20:36
  months now. I have a terrible sinking
• 2:20:37
  feeling in my stomach. It doesn't feel like any of this
• 2:20:39
  is a coincidence. Ken Bryant randomly disappears
• 2:20:42
  on some fishing trip in the middle of the week and nobody
• 2:20:44
  can locate him. And then a bunch of money
• 2:20:46
  disappears from the company account and it looks like an
• 2:20:48
  inside job. And where does Debbie keep going
• 2:20:50
  in the middle of the night? So while he was thinking at this
• 2:20:52
  point, my theory was Debbie's known about this affair the
• 2:20:54
  whole time and she's setting her husband up for a bunch of
• 2:20:56
  crimes, right? Likely.
• 2:20:57
  I think so. And she's definitely killed a
• 2:20:59
  boss. And I'm thinking she used his
• 2:21:00
  gun and now this. Right that.
• 2:21:02
  That was my theory. Debbie's chapter.
• 2:21:04
  I've come up with a new idea for a phone app.
• 2:21:06
  It hit me while I was driving back from the shipyard last
• 2:21:08
  night. It's called Punish your husband.
• 2:21:10
  I spend the whole morning working on it, although it's a
• 2:21:12
  little more involved than I initially intended.
• 2:21:14
  I've coded half dozen apps in the last decade, but this one
• 2:21:16
  seems like the sort of app that could really take off.
• 2:21:18
  And now that I'm no longer working, I've got plenty of time
• 2:21:21
  to develop Punish Your Husband. I can't spend every moment of my
• 2:21:23
  day working in my my garden tending to my opium puppies.
• 2:21:26
  If I build the app and sell it, I bet I can make a good chunk of
• 2:21:28
  change. We could certainly use the money
• 2:21:30
  right now. Does anyone else think this is a
• 2:21:31
  stupid idea? No one would buy that.
• 2:21:33
  What does it even do? But hey, at least she's not just
• 2:21:36
  remaking apps that already exist anymore, right?
• 2:21:38
  I guess that's something we do. Find out what this app is later
• 2:21:41
  and what it does specifically, and I have issues with it.
• 2:21:43
  We'll just say that anyway. She gets an emergency call from
• 2:21:45
  her youngest daughter saying that a drunk senior crashed his
• 2:21:48
  car into the school and they need someone to come pick them
• 2:21:50
  up. Debbie automatically assumes
• 2:21:51
  that it was Zayn. It was.
• 2:21:53
  Zayn has a apparently broken his neck and is in hospital.
• 2:21:56
  Lexi cries. Obviously.
• 2:21:58
  I mean, yeah, it was horrible to her, but like, she still loved
• 2:22:00
  him. And no one wants to see someone
• 2:22:02
  they once loved be injured like that, right?
• 2:22:05
  Not seriously. Debbie doesn't understand humans
• 2:22:07
  having compassion or empathy. So she's like, what?
• 2:22:10
  Well, I don't get it. She had a problem and I fixed
• 2:22:12
  it. I wish somebody had done that
• 2:22:13
  for me when I was in trouble. Maybe my whole life would have
• 2:22:16
  been different again. Can we please not?
• 2:22:17
  Can we stop writing rape victims as cold, emotionless and
• 2:22:21
  calculating? Please?
• 2:22:22
  I'm so. I'm sick of it.
• 2:22:23
  I'm so over it. Debbie decides that now is the
• 2:22:25
  right time to go back to the old MIT campus and visit the
• 2:22:27
  fraternity house where she was raped.
• 2:22:29
  I'll remind you at this point, this whole book has taken place
• 2:22:32
  over 52 hours. That's two and a bit days.
• 2:22:35
  The pacing is terrible, absolutely terrible.
• 2:22:37
  It's all happening so fast. When she gets to the house, she
• 2:22:39
  poses as a journalist with a fake name, and she's just let
• 2:22:42
  inside. Chapter ends.
• 2:22:43
  Cooper's chapter. He's at work.
• 2:22:45
  It's 3:00 PM. He gets a call from his
• 2:22:47
  daughters who say, I think there's something wrong with
• 2:22:49
  mom. It's just a bunch of things that
• 2:22:51
  have happened, she says. And it's all it's making this
• 2:22:53
  thing mom has gone like all vigilante.
• 2:22:56
  See what I mean? Everyone can like see her doing
• 2:22:58
  all this because she's not that smart.
• 2:23:00
  She's done it all so quickly and she's not covered her tracks at
• 2:23:03
  all. If she was really this genius,
• 2:23:05
  right, she'd abide at her time, she'd have been clever about it.
• 2:23:07
  She'd have covered her tracks. She'd have done it over a longer
• 2:23:10
  period of time instead of just like doing it all in two days.
• 2:23:14
  Like she's not smart. She's just a dumb toddler
• 2:23:17
  throwing a tantrum and committing a lot of heinous
• 2:23:19
  crimes. The kids also say they found a
• 2:23:21
  really weird document on their mom's computer and just left
• 2:23:25
  open because again, see, she's stupid.
• 2:23:27
  Cooper cheques Debbie's location, but for once, for the
• 2:23:30
  first time in this entire book, she's turned it off.
• 2:23:32
  So he heads home to be with his kids.
• 2:23:36
  We're 75% of the way through the book now.
• 2:23:39
  It's dragging, but we can do this.
• 2:23:40
  Come on, let's finish this together.
• 2:23:42
  Go, team. Go, team.
• 2:23:43
  You know, at least with Freda's book, Ward D, at least with
• 2:23:48
  Geneva Roses, the perfect marriage.
• 2:23:50
  And at least with Colleen Hoover's woman down, we had fun
• 2:23:52
  theorising as the book went on so we could make up these crazy
• 2:23:56
  theories. And I thought that was fun and I
• 2:23:58
  enjoyed it. But with this, there was just
• 2:23:59
  nothing keeping me reading. If I hadn't been making a video
• 2:24:02
  on this, I would not have kept going.
• 2:24:04
  It was so dull. In the next chapter, Cooper gets
• 2:24:07
  home and they find the thing On the computer are the stupid,
• 2:24:10
  murderous Dear Debbie letters. I read most the files, Lexi
• 2:24:13
  tells me. Like 80% of them are
• 2:24:15
  instructions on how to kill your husband.
• 2:24:17
  She pauses. Did you do something to pee Mum
• 2:24:20
  off? Crap.
• 2:24:21
  I click on the files one by one. It doesn't get better, it gets
• 2:24:23
  worse. In fact, Debbie has come up with
• 2:24:25
  a lot of creative ways to advise women to kill their husbands.
• 2:24:29
  This book is laughably stupid. Also, call me crazy, but if I
• 2:24:32
  found out my partner was writing like a whole bunch of stuff on
• 2:24:36
  their computer about like creative ways to kill their
• 2:24:40
  girlfriend, partner, wife, whatever, I would be out of
• 2:24:43
  there. I would be like, woof, not
• 2:24:45
  staying with you. I'm.
• 2:24:47
  I'm gone. You know, there would be no
• 2:24:49
  coming back from that. His daughters open up the Findly
• 2:24:52
  app or something like that and they look back to the addresses
• 2:24:55
  that Debbie's visited recently and he sees 2 that concern him.
• 2:24:58
  He doesn't say what they are and I would assume one is Harley's
• 2:25:01
  address and the other is going to be his bosses.
• 2:25:03
  I guess Back to Debbie, she's not the fraternity.
• 2:25:06
  There's this guy who seems really nice, just like a regular
• 2:25:09
  student. He gives her a tour around, then
• 2:25:11
  she reveals her plan. I take one more look around the
• 2:25:13
  room. It looks like any other college
• 2:25:15
  frat house room, but one thing catches my attention.
• 2:25:17
  The lights are on one of the two desks.
• 2:25:19
  I hadn't necessarily expected to see one, but now that I have, I
• 2:25:22
  know that this will be the room I must return to.
• 2:25:24
  Lennox leads me back out the room, but before I leave, I
• 2:25:26
  casually drop my purse on the desk closest to the door.
• 2:25:28
  He doesn't see me do it, but when the tour ends, I'll explain
• 2:25:31
  to him that I accidentally left it behind and he'll let me come
• 2:25:33
  back up here to retrieve it. That's when I that's when I'll
• 2:25:36
  burn down. Zeta Π Today, I will end this.
• 2:25:39
  So your plan is to punish a bunch of completely innocent
• 2:25:43
  young students for something that happened to you 25 years
• 2:25:46
  ago that they had nothing to do with because they weren't even
• 2:25:51
  born yet? This is stupid as hell.
• 2:25:52
  It is selfish as hell. Do you want to ruin all their
• 2:25:55
  possessions, their education, their futures, potentially
• 2:25:59
  endanger their lives because of something they had nothing to do
• 2:26:02
  with before they were even born? Selfish.
• 2:26:05
  Back to Cooper, Back to Cooper. And his first concern is Debbie
• 2:26:10
  at his boss's house. So he immediately drives over
• 2:26:13
  there and he finds the hidden key in the garden and wets
• 2:26:15
  himself in and he finds Ken's phone ringing inside and picks
• 2:26:19
  it up. So now his fingerprints are
• 2:26:20
  going to be all over it, right? And he's like, oh, better go
• 2:26:22
  check upstairs. So now he's leaving his DNA all
• 2:26:24
  of the crime scene, which was probably Debbie's plan all along
• 2:26:26
  to frame him. I was thinking at this point,
• 2:26:29
  but it doesn't make sense because police will be able to
• 2:26:31
  figure out the time of death and track Debbie's phone with or
• 2:26:34
  without her app, right? So they'd place her there at
• 2:26:36
  time of death. So even if he does get framed
• 2:26:39
  for this, the police aren't stupid.
• 2:26:41
  They'll know that OK, he was there at this time, but he died
• 2:26:44
  this time. Who was there at this time?
• 2:26:46
  Debbie. Also, Cooper's stupider because
• 2:26:48
  like, if you have these suspicions and you think your
• 2:26:50
  wife might have killed your boss and is framing you for it, don't
• 2:26:52
  go running over there yourself. Just call.
• 2:26:54
  Call the police. Why does no one call the police
• 2:26:56
  in this book? Stupid chapter ends and cool.
• 2:27:00
  Back to Debbie, she says, I don't want anyone to get hurt.
• 2:27:03
  That's why I came here in the middle of the afternoon when
• 2:27:05
  most the students are likely to be in class.
• 2:27:07
  Part of me feels like the boys at this fraternity deserve
• 2:27:09
  whatever is coming to them, but I don't know that for sure.
• 2:27:11
  Hutch graduated a long time ago, and so did any of his brothers
• 2:27:14
  who were protecting him. I don't want to kill anyone
• 2:27:16
  innocent. No, you just want to destroy
• 2:27:18
  their home, their possessions, everything they study for, all
• 2:27:20
  their coursework and notes. Stop them having a future or
• 2:27:23
  education. Yeah, that's fair.
• 2:27:25
  But finally she has a realisation that not everyone is
• 2:27:28
  evil. So this student who's shown it
• 2:27:30
  around Linux tells her how seriously they take preventing
• 2:27:32
  sexual assaults and how they protect young women.
• 2:27:35
  But she doesn't believe him at first because it's hard to
• 2:27:37
  imagine that much has changed since I was a student here.
• 2:27:40
  Boys are still boys, which is annoying as how to read.
• 2:27:43
  She has upstairs to get a bag. Is she going to set the fire?
• 2:27:46
  Is she not? Woo ends on a cliffhanger that I
• 2:27:50
  don't give a damn about. I'll be honest.
• 2:27:52
  Spoiler, she didn't set the fire.
• 2:27:53
  I'll tell you now. So I guess this is one point in
• 2:27:56
  her favour, you know, yay for not committing arson.
• 2:28:00
  Cooper heads upstairs, finds his boss dead.
• 2:28:02
  He's in bed, having been shot in the head by Debbie, no doubt, he
• 2:28:05
  narrates. Ken is dead.
• 2:28:06
  Somebody shot him, somebody murdered him.
• 2:28:08
  And I can't forget the reason I'm here in the 1st place,
• 2:28:10
  because my phone told me that Debbie had been here.
• 2:28:12
  But that doesn't mean Debbie was responsible for this.
• 2:28:14
  It seems like Ken might have been going through a divorce
• 2:28:16
  based on the complete absence of his spouse and some comments I
• 2:28:19
  heard from Mrs McCauley. She could be the one
• 2:28:21
  responsible. Or a burglar.
• 2:28:23
  A burglar could have shot him. Anything would make more sense.
• 2:28:26
  And Debbie murdering Ken because he wouldn't promote me.
• 2:28:28
  She doesn't even own a gun. You're an idiot, and you own a
• 2:28:31
  gun. She knows where the gun is.
• 2:28:32
  She has access to the gun. OK, I've got to calm down.
• 2:28:35
  I've got to pull myself together and call the police to tell them
• 2:28:38
  what happened. And then just as I'm reaching
• 2:28:40
  for my phone, another thought occurs to me, One that stops
• 2:28:43
  seeing my tracks. It's true that Debbie doesn't
• 2:28:45
  own a gun. But I've got one.
• 2:28:47
  It's registered in my name, and my fingerprints are all over it.
• 2:28:50
  I've got to get out of here. I've got to check my garage.
• 2:28:53
  We all saw this coming, right? Crazy.
• 2:28:55
  Back to Debbie, she's driving away saying she completed her
• 2:28:58
  task and I was like who knows if this means she set the fire or
• 2:29:01
  not and honestly who cares? She didn't set the fire.
• 2:29:03
  Again, spoilers I'm telling you now, she didn't set the fire.
• 2:29:06
  I turned my phone off and I got close to the frat house because
• 2:29:08
  I didn't want there to be a chance anyone could prove I was
• 2:29:10
  there at the time of the fire. When I turned it back on after
• 2:29:12
  leaving, there were dozens of phone and text messages from
• 2:29:14
  Cooper. He's frantic to reach me.
• 2:29:16
  The last one was all caps. Debbie, please call me.
• 2:29:18
  I'm so sorry for everything. A little late for that, isn't
• 2:29:22
  it? But fine, he's so, so sorry.
• 2:29:25
  I'll deal with him him soon enough.
• 2:29:26
  In my original script, I was like, hey, look, she did
• 2:29:29
  something sensible for once. That's new.
• 2:29:31
  I knowing what I know about the end of the book now.
• 2:29:34
  I don't know what this means. What the heck?
• 2:29:39
  He's so, so sorry. I'll deal with him soon enough.
• 2:29:42
  A little late for sorry, right? We'll come back to this because
• 2:29:46
  this doesn't make any sense with the ending of the book.
• 2:29:49
  I don't know what she means here.
• 2:29:51
  Come back to it, right? She gets a phone call from
• 2:29:53
  Harley inviting her to dinner, and she says yes.
• 2:29:56
  And then she says that girl has some nerve.
• 2:29:58
  She really thinks I don't have any idea what she's doing.
• 2:30:01
  When I first met her, I thought she was cool, and I was stupidly
• 2:30:03
  excited to make a new friend. I thought maybe after all these
• 2:30:06
  years I'd found something I could come fighting.
• 2:30:08
  How could I have been so wrong? Harley isn't my friend.
• 2:30:10
  She's a terrible person. I glanced at the glove
• 2:30:12
  compartment of the car, which contains the gun I've been
• 2:30:15
  carrying around for the past couple of days since I took it
• 2:30:17
  from its hiding place. Whenever I touch it, I put on a
• 2:30:19
  pair of leather gloves, careful to keep my fingerprints from
• 2:30:21
  rubbing off on it and careful to preserve the prints that are
• 2:30:24
  already on it. Tonight will be the last time I
• 2:30:26
  use the gun. The next time someone picks it
• 2:30:28
  up, it will be evidence. So I was like, OK, now she's
• 2:30:31
  just laying out the whole plan of knowing and framing her
• 2:30:34
  husband. Right.
• 2:30:35
  We all saw this coming. I will.
• 2:30:38
  Yeah. Well, nearly that.
• 2:30:39
  I'll tell you now. Actually, that's not what
• 2:30:41
  happens. It's a surprise to me.
• 2:30:42
  That's not what happened. She's not actually framing her
• 2:30:45
  husband. Crazy.
• 2:30:47
  She is framing someone else, though.
• 2:30:49
  I'm still, I'm still confused though, about like when she
• 2:30:53
  turned on Harley because just two days ago you were going on
• 2:30:56
  about how cool she is and you're glad to have a friend like her.
• 2:30:59
  And then you see a T-shirt in her flat and that's when it all
• 2:31:02
  turns and you're like, she's a terrible person.
• 2:31:04
  She's this she's this, except like, how does she know?
• 2:31:08
  Yes, she sees AT shirt and she knows who it belongs to and she
• 2:31:11
  puts it together that they're having an affair, right.
• 2:31:13
  However, that doesn't make her, I don't get it because Debbie
• 2:31:18
  doesn't know about all the terrible things she's done.
• 2:31:20
  She doesn't know about like the other affair she's had.
• 2:31:24
  She don't. I don't.
• 2:31:26
  No, no, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
• 2:31:28
  Oh I'm so tired. Also, wait, you got the gun a
• 2:31:33
  couple of days ago but you only found out about the affair?
• 2:31:36
  Yes, the timelines completely. I'm so confused.
• 2:31:39
  Either Debbie's narration has been lying straight up to the
• 2:31:42
  reader, or Freda hasn't thought this timeline through and
• 2:31:44
  there's some big plot holes and all, and Debbie like magically
• 2:31:48
  knows information she shouldn't. I don't, I don't know why am I
• 2:31:52
  trying to make sense of this nonsense?
• 2:31:54
  Back to Cooper, who's doing a terrible job of trying to wipe
• 2:31:57
  fingerprints off stuff. He's useless at everything.
• 2:31:59
  He's like, oh, I'll wipe my fingerprints off the boss's
• 2:32:02
  phone and this and then I don't care.
• 2:32:05
  And then he realises there's a door Cam.
• 2:32:08
  A camera is mounted over the door which captured me entering
• 2:32:10
  the house and now leaving. I worry, I was worried about the
• 2:32:13
  neighbours, but this camera will tell the police everything they
• 2:32:15
  need to know. I'm beginning to realise how
• 2:32:17
  screwed I am. But wait, Ken must have been
• 2:32:19
  shot at least a day ago. The police will match up the
• 2:32:21
  camera feed with the time I'm here.
• 2:32:23
  They will recognise that it does not coincide with the time of
• 2:32:25
  death. Maybe this will be fine.
• 2:32:27
  I can pretend that I came in here to water his plants and I
• 2:32:30
  never went upstairs again. A voice in the back of my head
• 2:32:32
  is telling me that I should just call the police and let them
• 2:32:34
  deal with it and I will, but first I have to get home and
• 2:32:37
  check my garage. Or you can call the police now
• 2:32:40
  because you've just found a dead body and leaving will make you
• 2:32:42
  look more and more suspicious. Also when Ken sent the e-mail he
• 2:32:48
  was like Jesse can you go water my plants please so the police
• 2:32:52
  would know that. What's his name?
• 2:32:55
  Cooper had no reason to be there, but Jesse did have a
• 2:32:57
  legitimate reason to be there. So it none of this makes any
• 2:33:01
  sense. Holly's chapter, she's making
• 2:33:03
  spaghetti and planning to tell Debbie everything.
• 2:33:06
  Oh my God. Her plan is to tell Debbie and
• 2:33:09
  then have Cooper show up at the same time.
• 2:33:11
  So that's like a confrontation and no one can deny it.
• 2:33:13
  Back to Cooper's chapter. He goes home, he finds his gun
• 2:33:16
  safe, empty. Oh my God.
• 2:33:19
  And then he finally, finally, finally realises, holy crap,
• 2:33:23
  Debbie is framing me for the murder of my boss.
• 2:33:25
  It took you this long to figure it out?
• 2:33:28
  I mean, she's not though. That's the twist.
• 2:33:29
  She's not. The kids cry and Cooper thinks
• 2:33:32
  about his daughter. She's so worried about Debbie.
• 2:33:34
  I feel like I'd been a good father, or at least done the
• 2:33:36
  best I could, but she's been their whole world.
• 2:33:39
  I don't want to lose her. If it comes down to me or
• 2:33:41
  Debbie, well, they should have her, even if she's a little off
• 2:33:44
  right now. Their lives would be destroyed
• 2:33:46
  without her. Sorry.
• 2:33:47
  What? You think it's better that your
• 2:33:49
  two children stay with a woman who has murdered people and has
• 2:33:53
  been plotting for months in your mind to frame you for murder?
• 2:33:57
  You think that makes they're a better parent than you?
• 2:33:59
  You would rather your kids stay with a murderer who framed their
• 2:34:02
  dad? Shut up.
• 2:34:04
  Shut up. Back to Harley.
• 2:34:05
  These chapters are so short and they're like this.
• 2:34:07
  Like one thing happens, cliffhanger, one thing happens
• 2:34:10
  cliffhanger. And that we know Freda loves
• 2:34:12
  this kind of book. She's writing the kind of book
• 2:34:14
  she likes to read. That's fair enough.
• 2:34:15
  I personally don't like this kind of book.
• 2:34:17
  It annoys me a little bit when they're too fast and nothings
• 2:34:20
  really happening. Anyway, back to Harley and she's
• 2:34:22
  like, oh, Debbie, I'm seeing someone, he's older, an
• 2:34:25
  accountant from the gym, he's married.
• 2:34:27
  And then Debbie placed them for a while.
• 2:34:29
  And then she says, but it's barely your marriage.
• 2:34:32
  I still have my eyes on her face, watching for the signs of
• 2:34:34
  recognition. They don't even sleep together
• 2:34:35
  anymore. They barely talk.
• 2:34:37
  Sound familiar, Debbie? He says he would have left her
• 2:34:39
  years ago, but she's, you know, emotionally fragile.
• 2:34:43
  If Debbie recognises I'm talking about her marriage, she doesn't
• 2:34:45
  show it. He could be lying, she says
• 2:34:47
  diplomatically. I don't think he is.
• 2:34:49
  Men lie. She drums the fingernails on the
• 2:34:51
  kitchen counter. Men do terrible things.
• 2:34:54
  There's an ominous look in her eyes.
• 2:34:55
  And for a moment I think maybe she does know.
• 2:34:57
  Maybe she knows everything. And maybe she's known for a long
• 2:34:59
  time. So painful to read in.
• 2:35:03
  Now we get the stupidest twist ever.
• 2:35:06
  And right, I'll admit I did not see this coming.
• 2:35:09
  But also it makes so little sense.
• 2:35:13
  Ollie's man shows up at her door and she goes to answer it and
• 2:35:16
  she's like, hi, Cooper, come on in.
• 2:35:19
  And he's in shock and he's like, Oh my God, what the hell,
• 2:35:22
  Debbie? And then Debbie's like, hi,
• 2:35:24
  Jesse. That's the twist.
• 2:35:26
  It turns out that the person Harley has been having an affair
• 2:35:29
  with is Jesse Cooper's colleague, who he also goes to
• 2:35:33
  the gym with and goes to the firing range with.
• 2:35:35
  But he didn't want his wife to find out.
• 2:35:38
  So he told Harley that his name was Cooper, not Jesse.
• 2:35:42
  And because neither of them have, like, online social media
• 2:35:45
  profiles, What's her name? Harley didn't know the
• 2:35:48
  difference. And so she just assumed he
• 2:35:50
  really was Cooper and he was married to Debbie and blah,
• 2:35:53
  blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.
• 2:35:55
  OK, cut back to Cooper and he's like, I know I'll go to the
• 2:35:58
  other unusual address in Debbie's, like, location history
• 2:36:03
  on a phone. I don't know what it is, though.
• 2:36:05
  Clearly Holly's house. So he's driving up to Holly's
• 2:36:08
  house. Takes him a long time to get
• 2:36:10
  there, though. I'll say that I think about what
• 2:36:12
  I'm going to say to Debbie if and when I find her.
• 2:36:14
  First, I'm going to tell her how much I love her, because I do.
• 2:36:17
  Even after all this, I still love her.
• 2:36:19
  She's the only woman I've ever loved or ever will love.
• 2:36:22
  Mate. You think she's framing you for
• 2:36:23
  murder? And you're saying this like,
• 2:36:24
  throw a back button? So at this point, I was like,
• 2:36:27
  OK, what's actually happening? We haven't been told it yet, but
• 2:36:29
  it's pretty obvious she's framing Jessie for the murder.
• 2:36:33
  The money was apparently only moved internally.
• 2:36:35
  So she can be framing Jessie for stealing the money from the
• 2:36:38
  company so that Cooper's going to end up getting either like
• 2:36:40
  Jessie's job or the boss's job or something like that if
• 2:36:43
  everything comes out or when everything comes out.
• 2:36:46
  And when she sent the e-mail posting as Ken, she asked that
• 2:36:49
  Jessie what was plants. So she's clearly trying to frame
• 2:36:52
  Jessie for the murder. And she set up that camera above
• 2:36:54
  the door, which wasn't there when she went over.
• 2:36:57
  So she was clearly setting Jesse up to be caught on camera again.
• 2:37:00
  I still don't think the time of death would line up.
• 2:37:02
  But that's never addressed, so. OK.
• 2:37:04
  And I was like, well, why would she be doing this?
• 2:37:06
  I don't know. He's probably the guy who raped
• 2:37:08
  for all those years ago, and she's playing this long game to
• 2:37:10
  get revenge on him or something. I don't know.
• 2:37:12
  OK. But yeah, Cooper doesn't know
• 2:37:14
  any of this. So why?
• 2:37:15
  He's like, oh, I still love her. I'll forgive her.
• 2:37:18
  I I don't know. It makes no sense.
• 2:37:20
  He gets a phone call from the mystery woman who I like.
• 2:37:24
  Up to this point I think we've been assuming it's Harley, but
• 2:37:26
  no, not Harley. It's a woman called Cherise who
• 2:37:29
  is Cooper's sponsor because he's secretly an alcoholic.
• 2:37:33
  Again, I feel like a lot of this book is stigmatising substance
• 2:37:38
  abuse problems and I don't like that.
• 2:37:41
  I don't necessarily like the substance abuse problem as a
• 2:37:43
  plot twist thing either, but it's better than rape as a plot
• 2:37:47
  twist. I'll give you that.
• 2:37:49
  Back to Debbie, who's laughing as Jesse squirms, telling Harley
• 2:37:52
  who he really is. And Harley's like you need to
• 2:37:54
  get out. But Jesse isn't listening to
• 2:37:56
  her. He pushes past her in the
• 2:37:58
  direction of the sofa and he collapses onto it.
• 2:38:00
  He doesn't look like he can get up.
• 2:38:01
  He must have been chugging water from his bottle the whole way
• 2:38:04
  home from the gym. The opium that I mixed into the
• 2:38:06
  water is working nicely. Change my mind.
• 2:38:09
  This is the stupidest part of the book.
• 2:38:12
  Are we really supposed to believe the opium in the form
• 2:38:15
  she has it dark, sticky, smelly, has been and has this bitter
• 2:38:20
  taste? Are we really supposed to
• 2:38:22
  believe that it could be mixed in with water and he wouldn't
• 2:38:26
  notice and he'd just keep drinking and he'd drink it at
• 2:38:29
  the pace where he could drive safely, but he would collapse at
• 2:38:33
  exactly the right moment in the head.
• 2:38:35
  No, Shut up. And I was also like, and when
• 2:38:39
  did she even have time to do this?
• 2:38:40
  When did she get it in the bottle?
• 2:38:42
  That's answered at the end. Don't worry.
• 2:38:43
  Oh, Frida is just writing opium. Is this, like, ridiculous
• 2:38:47
  miracle drug? And it makes no sense.
• 2:38:50
  Like, it can't just be hidden anywhere at any time and used to
• 2:38:53
  make people pass out at will. This is stupid.
• 2:38:56
  This is so stupid. Jessie's now unconscious.
• 2:39:00
  Harley is shrieking. Debbie pulls out the gun.
• 2:39:02
  In a way, Harley is innocent. She never did anything to me
• 2:39:06
  directly. She did think she was sleeping
• 2:39:08
  with my husband, but she wasn't. I have no beef with her.
• 2:39:11
  She's a but she's a terrible person.
• 2:39:13
  She used me and she's destroyed countless marriages without any
• 2:39:16
  remorse. How do you know that?
• 2:39:18
  How do you know that? I hate to use her as a pawn, but
• 2:39:22
  she would do the same to me. It's no big loss.
• 2:39:25
  Sorry Harley. I say that I point the gun at
• 2:39:27
  her forehead and pull the trigger.
• 2:39:29
  The gunshot kills her instantly. Her body drops to the floor,
• 2:39:32
  unhinged. Unforgivable.
• 2:39:34
  What the hell? Ah, and it's now she realises
• 2:39:38
  that she's actually using Jessie's gun for all of this and
• 2:39:40
  not Cooper's gun. Which again, is confusing
• 2:39:42
  because how did she get the gun? How did Jessie not notice it was
• 2:39:46
  gone? She's literally gone, broken
• 2:39:47
  into his house, broken into the safe, taken a gun, had it for
• 2:39:50
  days, and I was like, where's Cooper's gun in all of this?
• 2:39:53
  But stupid and Debbie just explains the whole plot and how
• 2:39:57
  she set him up. Massive info dump of everything
• 2:40:00
  we've already juiced. It's fine.
• 2:40:02
  Uh, you deserve this. I whispered to the sleeping man
• 2:40:04
  on the sofa. Hutch told you.
• 2:40:07
  So Jessie is Hutch, the man who raped her like 25 years ago?
• 2:40:10
  I'm generally fine with the good old woman getting revenge on her
• 2:40:14
  rapist storyline. I love that, I'm here for it.
• 2:40:17
  I don't mind that kind of rape revenge story where she's
• 2:40:20
  getting back at the rapist, and that's great, but not when it
• 2:40:23
  means killing a bunch of other people in the process,
• 2:40:26
  distributing revenge porn online, filming people without
• 2:40:29
  their consent, and portraying the rape victim as some sort of
• 2:40:33
  permanently damaged psychopath. I'm not okay with that.
• 2:40:36
  Yeah, here's where she revealed she didn't actually burn down
• 2:40:38
  the student housing. So yay, no arson.
• 2:40:41
  Good for her, I guess. Next chapter, Cooper shows up at
• 2:40:44
  Halley's address and finds Debbie car.
• 2:40:46
  So he goes up to the nearest door and starts banging on it,
• 2:40:48
  going Debbie, I'm shouting now. Stabber, please, please come
• 2:40:54
  out. I need to talk to you.
• 2:40:55
  There's still no sound from behind the door, but she's here.
• 2:40:58
  She must be. Debbie, I'm shouting long
• 2:41:00
  enough, my voice growing raspy. Debbie, I love you again.
• 2:41:04
  Please picture the scene with Vex from Yonder Landers Cooper.
• 2:41:07
  It makes it so much better. Hello.
• 2:41:11
  Back to step back as she tries to put the gun in Jesse's
• 2:41:15
  unconscious hand to make it look like he did the shooting
• 2:41:18
  himself. And she goes on about coroner's
• 2:41:20
  reports looking for gunshot residue and blah, blah, blah.
• 2:41:23
  But you know, like, because she wants to like, I think she's
• 2:41:26
  trying to kill him or something. Or is she not?
• 2:41:28
  I well, I don't know. Even if they just arrest him or
• 2:41:30
  kill him or, you know, they'll do drugs testing on him, right?
• 2:41:34
  Like especially if he says like he was passed out, they'll check
• 2:41:38
  his blood, They'll do drugs testing.
• 2:41:40
  They'll find opium in his system.
• 2:41:42
  Like, she's not as smart as she thinks she is.
• 2:41:45
  Anyway. She's doing this.
• 2:41:46
  Connor interrupts with a dapper and she thinks about stopping.
• 2:41:50
  But now she still shoots him. Does she shoot him?
• 2:41:54
  No, she didn't shoot him. OK.
• 2:41:55
  I think it's meant to be a cliffhanger of did she shoot
• 2:41:57
  more? Did she not?
• 2:41:58
  But basically she put the gun in Cooper's hand and just shot up
• 2:42:00
  at the ceiling. And so he'd get the gunshot
• 2:42:03
  residue on him. But he's still alive and passed
• 2:42:05
  out. She leaves the house.
• 2:42:08
  And Boo to all this. I was so worried, he says.
• 2:42:12
  I thought I heard a gunshot. He absolutely did.
• 2:42:15
  But the bullet in question is lodged in the ceiling of Holly's
• 2:42:17
  apartment. Jesse is still alive.
• 2:42:19
  What was that sound? He presses me.
• 2:42:21
  I didn't hear anything. I say.
• 2:42:22
  Maybe it was a car backfiring. She really thinks everyone is
• 2:42:25
  dumb, and in this book, they are.
• 2:42:27
  They have big heart to heart. In the middle of the street,
• 2:42:29
  next to the murder scene where Cooper reveals that he's an
• 2:42:32
  alcoholic, Debbie reveals she's a rape victim.
• 2:42:35
  They hug and cry and agree to go to couples therapy.
• 2:42:38
  Also, she's just shot a woman in the head.
• 2:42:40
  Would she not have blood on her? Finally, he asks her.
• 2:42:43
  Did you shoot Ken Bryant with my gun?
• 2:42:45
  I flinch. He must have gone over to Ken's
• 2:42:47
  house. He must have seen him lying dead
• 2:42:49
  with a bullet wound in his head. He thinks I might have killed
• 2:42:51
  him, but instead of calling the police, he ran to find me.
• 2:42:53
  I swear on our children's lives. I place a hand on my chest.
• 2:42:57
  I did not shoot Ken Bryant with your gun.
• 2:43:00
  And it's true. I used Jesse's gun.
• 2:43:02
  I hate stupid technicalities like this.
• 2:43:05
  She's still lying to him. Show up.
• 2:43:07
  This is not a good relationship. She reveals that she simply got
• 2:43:11
  rid of Cooper's gun because she doesn't like guns.
• 2:43:14
  And they're like, ha, ha, ha. Let's go home and call the
• 2:43:17
  police. And that's where the main book
• 2:43:19
  ends. We do get an epilogue one year
• 2:43:21
  later from a couple of perspectives, Cooper's first.
• 2:43:24
  He finally grew A backbone and found some ambition and founded
• 2:43:27
  his own accounting firm. He totally believes Jesse was
• 2:43:30
  the evil murderer stealing money from the old company.
• 2:43:33
  Jesse was arrested and found guilty and got 2 consecutive
• 2:43:37
  life sentences in prison. He says.
• 2:43:39
  Jesse was my friend, but there was no doubt in my mind that he
• 2:43:41
  killed our boss and his mistress.
• 2:43:43
  The jury agreed. Yeah, he's still an idiot, isn't
• 2:43:46
  he? Everyone in the family got
• 2:43:47
  happily ever after, including Debbie, who is now a rich app
• 2:43:50
  developer. And it's called and this is
• 2:43:53
  Cooper. It's called Punish Your Husband,
• 2:43:55
  where a wife can assign some potential punishments, the most
• 2:43:58
  popular being cleaning the bathroom to her husband for
• 2:44:01
  misdeeds like forgetting a birthday or anniversary.
• 2:44:04
  Wives apparently find it hilarious to come up with more
• 2:44:06
  and more creative punishments. So this app is is making wives
• 2:44:10
  do more emotional labour to punish men.
• 2:44:14
  Men who are already refusing to do their fair sharing the home.
• 2:44:18
  This sounds like a terrible idea.
• 2:44:20
  This is awful. Stop, this isn't funny.
• 2:44:22
  Go watch my video on weaponized incompetence and then come back
• 2:44:25
  here and you will understand why this is the stupidest idea.
• 2:44:29
  You're like, he's incompetent and I already have to do too
• 2:44:31
  much emotional labour, so now I need an app to get me to do more
• 2:44:35
  emotional labour so I can tell my husband to do something that
• 2:44:38
  they'll probably also doing correctly because he's a man
• 2:44:40
  child who doesn't act like an adult.
• 2:44:47
  I hate this book. I hate everything about this
• 2:44:49
  book. We get a little bit of the
• 2:44:51
  epilogue in Jesse's perspective. He's in prison and he's sad and
• 2:44:54
  blah blah blah. He just repeats all the stuff we
• 2:44:57
  heard. But some pity me.
• 2:44:59
  I don't care. I don't pity a rapist.
• 2:45:01
  And his chapter ends with him getting beaten up in prison by
• 2:45:04
  the brother of another woman he apparently raped.
• 2:45:07
  OK, that's fine, whatever. And then finally we get a bit
• 2:45:10
  from Debbie. She's obviously still lying to
• 2:45:12
  Cooper about everything she did, but we get the final reveal that
• 2:45:15
  the woman Debbie told to leave her husband was the receptionist
• 2:45:18
  from the gym and her abuser, her husband was Ken, which is
• 2:45:23
  another reason why Debbie killed Ken.
• 2:45:26
  So it's like, Oh my God, look, it all ties together.
• 2:45:30
  Also, the receptionist at the gym is the one who put the opium
• 2:45:34
  in Jesse's water. So that's that.
• 2:45:37
  Her name was Cindy. I think this is meant to be some
• 2:45:40
  sort of empowering ending, but I hate it.
• 2:45:43
  I don't. Can we not have all these
• 2:45:45
  victims of abuse turning into manipulative murderers
• 2:45:48
  committing crime? Please?
• 2:45:49
  Like, that's not empowering. Sorry.
• 2:45:52
  Then the book just ends. Oh oh I hate this as well.
• 2:45:55
  OK normally I don't read like the acknowledgements and reviews
• 2:45:58
  like this but. But right at the very end Freda
• 2:46:03
  says that she got the idea for this book and Debbie's character
• 2:46:06
  from being at Gary for Irony and Melanie Martinez concert with
• 2:46:10
  her daughter. Debbie writes.
• 2:46:12
  Melanie is an incredible performer.
• 2:46:14
  My daughter and her friend got out of their seats and were
• 2:46:16
  hanging out of the railing to get the best view, recording
• 2:46:19
  every moment on their iPhones instead of watching it with
• 2:46:21
  their eyeballs. I knew all the songs and loved
• 2:46:23
  the performance but I well in a different universe from the
• 2:46:25
  young people in the audience. When I looked around me I saw
• 2:46:27
  the same pattern, the excited energetic teens and tweens
• 2:46:30
  standing with their phones in the air and the tired looking
• 2:46:32
  mothers sitting patiently in their seats.
• 2:46:34
  When I looked at those mothers I could see my own reflected wish
• 2:46:37
  that I could be watching this performance from the comfort of
• 2:46:39
  my own home rather than in a sticky seat with lines for the
• 2:46:43
  ladies room that stretched around the crowded stadium.
• 2:46:45
  That was the moment when I first came up with Debbie, the
• 2:46:47
  middle-aged housewife struggling through life who who would do
• 2:46:51
  anything for her family. That's not a full stop, that's a
• 2:46:54
  comma that hey there, sorry. On that note, I want to thank
• 2:46:57
  Melanie Martinez for inspiring both my daughter and myself in
• 2:47:00
  completely different ways. I only hope her subsequent
• 2:47:02
  concerts will be equally fruitful since I see many more
• 2:47:05
  in my future. Now, don't get me wrong, I if
• 2:47:08
  you take it on its own, completely out of context, I
• 2:47:12
  like Melanie's music. I think it's very good.
• 2:47:14
  However, I would never want to financially support her because
• 2:47:18
  Melanie Martinez, because Melanie Martinez has some pretty
• 2:47:22
  damn serious sexual assault and rape allegations against her.
• 2:47:26
  And I just think thanking her specifically and citing her as
• 2:47:30
  the inspiration for this book about a rape survivor feels so
• 2:47:35
  disrespectful and out of touch and it disgusts me of it.
• 2:47:40
  Do not like, do not like. I hate that.
• 2:47:43
  And that's where the book ends. Oh, right, OK.
• 2:47:46
  There was so much to unpack. There wasn't.
• 2:47:47
  This video went on way longer than I expected to.
• 2:47:49
  I just, I just kept finding things to talk about and say and
• 2:47:52
  rant about. There's a lot there.
• 2:47:53
  I'm so sorry if you've made it through to the end.
• 2:47:55
  Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for spending this much
• 2:47:58
  time with me and powering through and being on this
• 2:48:01
  journey with me. I really do appreciate it.
• 2:48:03
  And thank you all for your kindness recently.
• 2:48:05
  You've all been so wonderful if you'd like to help support me on
• 2:48:09
  my channel because quite a few my videos do get demonetised
• 2:48:11
  because of the subject matter and the fact that I refuse to
• 2:48:14
  like censor myself when speaking about important topics like rape
• 2:48:17
  and sexual assault, for example. So if you'd like to help support
• 2:48:20
  me and my channel, I do have a Patreon where you can get some
• 2:48:23
  of the higher tiers, some exclusive like stickers and
• 2:48:25
  prints sent out to you every couple of months, which is
• 2:48:27
  really fun. I also have a print store over
• 2:48:30
  on my website where you can buy photography and art prints from
• 2:48:33
  me. They can get some really cute
• 2:48:34
  posters like my little my little wings poster here with one of my
• 2:48:37
  poems on. And this is one of my photos I
• 2:48:40
  took down in Brighton of a beautiful, beautiful seagull.
• 2:48:42
  And I've got some of the little bits like that.
• 2:48:44
  I've also got two books available.
• 2:48:45
  I've got Reflections on Healing which is a small poetry pamphlet
• 2:48:48
  with a couple of photos in, and I've got my bigger chunky book
• 2:48:51
  outside which is a beautiful 300 plus which is a beautiful 300
• 2:48:56
  plus page. Big chunky hardback book filled
• 2:48:59
  with poetry, essays, lots and lots and lots of photography and
• 2:49:03
  some paintings too. And it's kind of like a nice big
• 2:49:07
  beautiful art piece in its own right.
• 2:49:10
  They're both available as ebooks.
• 2:49:12
  Reflections on Healing is also a paperback, and Outside is
• 2:49:16
  available as a hardback. And because the hardback is a
• 2:49:18
  little expensive, and not because I'm getting money from
• 2:49:21
  it, just because printing costs, I make barely anything from it.
• 2:49:26
  But I want you to enjoy it as an art piece.
• 2:49:27
  So if you get it as a hardback, there is a link in the back
• 2:49:30
  there where you can download a free audiobook version from my
• 2:49:32
  website as well. But yeah, other than that, if
• 2:49:35
  you want to keep up to date on me and my life and the fun stuff
• 2:49:37
  I'm doing, you follow me over on Instagram at Rachel Oates, but
• 2:49:40
  with a 0 instead of an O. And yeah, that's pretty much me
• 2:49:45
  done for today. So thank you so much for
• 2:49:47
  watching. Thank you so much to June's
• 2:49:49
  journey for sponsoring this video.
• 2:49:51
  And please, please go check them out via the link in my video
• 2:49:53
  description and as a pinned comment.
• 2:49:55
  And for now, thank you for watching and I'll see you again
• 2:49:57
  really soon. I hope you all have a wonderful,
• 2:49:59
  wonderful rest of your day. Oh, and if you have any other
• 2:50:01
  recommendations for books you would like me to review or other
• 2:50:04
  topics you want me to cover on my channel, then just let me
• 2:50:06
  know down in the comments because I love hearing from you
• 2:50:07
  guys. Thanks so much.