Ep 726 - I Know What You Did Last Summer, by Lois Duncan

Summary

Podcast Summary: Overdue Ep 726 – I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

Podcast: Overdue
Hosts: Andrew and Craig
Episode Date: October 27, 2025
Book Discussed: I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan (1973, revised 2010)

---

Episode Overview

This episode, closing out the annual “Spooktober” series, focuses on Lois Duncan’s I Know What You Did Last Summer—its literary origins, Duncan’s life and impact on YA fiction, and how the novel compares to its much more famous film adaptation and subsequent updates. The hosts, Andrew and Craig, dissect the book’s plot, discuss revisions for 2010, and consider the book’s place in the evolution of YA thrillers, all with their trademark blend of humor, introspection, and cultural context.

---

Key Discussion Points

1. Confusion and Banter Over “Who Read What”

• The episode opens with playful banter about which host read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for the podcast, tying into the episode’s title theme (“I Know What You Did Last Summer”).
  • “No, you definitely read the Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It is in Slack with your name next to it.” (05:21, Andrew)
  • “Well, then that’s incorrect is what I would say.” (07:12, Craig)
• This recurring bit sets the tone for the episode’s blend of book talk and lightheartedness.

2. Lois Duncan: YA Pioneer and Personal Tragedy

• Duncan’s background is discussed with admiration for her role as a trailblazer in young adult fiction.
  • “She’s an American novelist, poet and journalist and a pioneer in the then new field of young adult fiction.” (07:41, Andrew)
• The hosts examine Duncan’s unusual upbringing (her parents were circus photographers) and her prolific, varied career—including the tragic loss of her daughter, which shaped her later work:
  • “It was as if these things I’d written about as fiction became hideous reality and just couldn’t...face putting characters similar to her late daughter in those similar situations.” (18:08, Craig)
• After her daughter’s unsolved murder, Duncan shifted away from thrillers involving endangered young women.

3. Book Versus Movie Adaptation

• The differences between Duncan’s psychological YA thriller and the 1997 slasher film adaptation are explored in detail.
  • “It is not about a killer fisherman with a hook...it is more of a thriller, a bit of a psychological thriller.” (20:42–31:01, Andrew & Craig)
• The hosts note Duncan’s disapproval of the film’s sensationalized violence, especially after her own experience with tragedy.
  • “I was appalled when my book...was made into a slasher film. As the mother of a murdered child, I don't find violent death something to squeal and giggle about.” (20:11, Andrew quoting Duncan)

Notable Film Facts

• The “What are you waiting for?” scene in the movie was the idea of a contest-winning child; Jennifer Love Hewitt found it “the stupidest thing ever” at the time, but it became iconic. (23:52–24:14)
• The movie led to significant book sales, including a 1997 movie tie-in edition.

4. Detailed Plot Breakdown of the Book

The Setup

• Four teens (Julie, Ray, Helen, Barry) collide in a tragic hit-and-run; a year later, they each receive ominous messages—someone knows what they did.

Character Rundown (33:35–44:47)

• Julie: Daughter of a widowed mother; guilt-ridden, bookish, accepted to Smith College; dating Bud.
• Ray: Julie’s ex; left town post-accident, works odd jobs.
• Helen: Ambitious, from a working-class family; seeks social mobility; local beauty queen/aspiring TV star.
• Barry: Football player, affluent family, dating Helen; struggling for independence.

The Crime and Aftermath

• The hit-and-run victim was a boy on a bike; the teens opt to cover it up, setting up the story’s tension (44:36–49:55).
• A mysterious figure begins to terrorize them, culminating in Barry being shot during a Memorial Day celebration (56:12–57:57).
• The hosts praise Duncan’s ability to write believable teens and give emotional depth to the parents—even contrasting the book’s grounded, sorrowful tone with the film’s slasher energy.

The Mystery’s Twist

• The hosts discuss how the book gradually reveals that Bud (Julie’s new boyfriend) and Collie (Helen’s suspicious admirer) are the same person—seeking revenge as the half-brother of the hit-and-run victim.
  • “It was not until this very moment that I realized that Collie and Bud were the same guy.” (68:04, Craig)
• Helen escapes an attack; Ray saves Julie from Bud/Collie’s final confrontation in a tense climax (70:40–72:07).

5. The 2010 Revision: Technology, Tone, and Anachronism

• The 2010 update adds smartphones, GPS, and Iraq War references, but mostly feels tacked-on and out of step with true 2010 culture (72:19–77:43).
  • “My plots…are based on the heroine not being able to call for help.” (77:47, Andrew quoting Duncan)
• The hosts note the jarring effect (and irony) of trying to modernize a book so rooted in its original era.
  • “References to modern technology will just kind of get appended to the end of a paragraph, and then no one will comment on it.” (73:21, Craig)

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “Her parents were professional circus photographers. Which is wild. Like…there was a circus to photograph. That could be like two people’s full, like whole job.” (08:38, Andrew)
• “I love that this, like a kid came and did this and Jennifer Love Hewitt looks at the little kid’s idea and is like, this is stupid. Yeah, this is the stupidest thing ever.” (24:17, Andrew)
• “I think you just kind of roll with a Bud…You take Bud as he comes, you know.” (35:44, Andrew)
• “Bud is 24 going on 50.” (35:51, Craig)
• “The book is moving so fast that it’s like, well, of course, of course. Unlike our episode about it.” (65:24, Craig)
• “I do think it is, like, a very telling moment between the ubiquity of cell phones and the ubiquity of social media. Like that. If you did these updates even five years later, you’d have to account for a very different set of teen behavior.” (77:15, Craig)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Author Background & Lois Duncan’s Legacy: 07:36–18:27
• Movie Adaptation vs. Book: 18:41–32:35
• Book Plot & Character Deep Dive: 33:35–44:47
• Accident & Moral Fallout: 44:36–51:36
• The Mystery and Its Solution: 56:12–72:07
• Discussion of the 2010 Revision: 72:19–77:47

---

Episode Tone and Style

The conversation is highly conversational, friendly, and self-aware, punctuated with running bits, cultural references, and asides (e.g., about GPS devices, contestant-directed movie scenes, and the oddness of character names). Both hosts balance critical insight into the book’s structure and cultural context with personal anecdotes and light roasts of both the book’s and the film’s quirks.

---

Final Thoughts

The hosts endorse I Know What You Did Last Summer as a brisk, character-driven thriller that’s more complex and emotionally grounded than its “slasher” legacy suggests, especially in Duncan’s focus on guilt, growing up, and the liminal space between adolescence and adulthood. The 2010 update, while well-intentioned, is described as awkward—highlighting how “timeless” stories are nonetheless bound to the cultures in which they were created.

---

For Listeners Who Haven’t Read (or Seen) It

• The book is a psychological thriller about guilt, consequences, and growing up, with a twisty mystery at its heart—very distinct from the movie’s slasher tone.
• Lois Duncan’s work helped define modern YA fiction with her blend of suspense and genuine emotional insight.
• The Overdue hosts find the book’s subtlety and attention to familial and social dynamics worth reading for both longtime fans and those only familiar with its famous adaptation.

---

Want to share your memories of Spooktober or thoughts on the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise? Contact the show at overdupodmail.com or on social media @overduepod.

Transcript

[A]

This is a headgum podcast. Craig, I know you love audiobooks.

[B]

I do love audiobooks.

[A]

So the good news for you and for anybody else who likes audiobooks is that this episode of Overdue is brought to you by Audible and the Audible original Pride and Prejudice. You want to know more about this thing?

[B]

Please tell me more.

[A]

The Audible original Pride and Prejudice is an intimate performance that will have you falling in love with the Jane Austen classic all over again. Pride and Prejudice stars a full cast including Marisa Abila from Industry and Black Bag as Elizabeth Bennett and Harris Dickinson from Baby Girl and Where the crawdads sing as Mr. Darcy. Plus Marianne Jean Baptiste, Will Poulter, Bill Nighy, and Glenn Close as Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Marisa Abella brings you inside the stubborn and complicated mind of Elizabeth Bennet as she navigates family expectations, societal pressures and her own misconceptions when she meets the enigmatic Mr. Darcy.

[B]

This new adaptation, Andrew, is vibrant. It sounds like to me you're just telling me about it. It's vibrant and it's modern. With an original new score by Grammy nominated composer. Whether you're fresh to Pride and Prejudice or you want to revisit a cherished favorite, you're in for a new and delightful listening experience. Before Enemies to lovers, there was Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Pride and Prejudice is globally recognized as one of the greatest romance novels and ever written. So listen to the new Pride and [e-mail] janeaustin that's audible.com j-a n e a u S T E N this episode of Overdue is brought to you by Mint Mobile. If you, the listener, are still overpaying for wireless, it's time to say yes to saying no. At Mint Mobile, their favorite word is no. No contracts, no monthly bills, no overages, no hidden fees, no bs. Here's why you should say yes to making the switch and getting Premium Wireless for $15 a month.

[A]

All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. I use Mint Mobile. I've used Mint Mobile for many years and yeah, I am saving like I'm paying like half what I was for my previous wireless plan and the service. I don't notice the difference. It's like it's, it's, it's good coverage. I get it everywhere.

[B]

This all sounds good. Andrew, could you call me to action please?

[A]

I could Call you to action using my phone on Mint Mobile. Are you ready to say yes to saying no? Make the [e-mail] overdue that's mintmobile.com overdue.

[B]

Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month limited time. New customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on an unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy.

[A]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[B]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[A]

My name is Andrew Craig.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The Heart. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Therese Rak Garfield. His Nine Lives. What? Norwegian Wood.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The Last Olympian.

[B]

What are these?

[A]

These are books that you read last summer.

[B]

That really got me.

[A]

These are books that you read in between June and August of 2024. Because I know what you did last summer and you read those books for the podcast.

[B]

I don't. Did I read the Heart as a Lonely Hunter, though? I thought you did because I read.

[A]

The other ones that are around it. What about the Heaven and Earth grocery store? Was that you?

[B]

That was me.

[A]

Well, we talked about the Heart of the Lonely Hunter.

[B]

I think you read the. Did I read the Heart as a Lonely Hunter?

[A]

Well, I mean, one of us has got to know what you did last summer. If it's not me, it's gotta be you.

[B]

I think it might have been you.

[A]

We'll see. We'll see. Somebody tell them about the. I'm talking about what Craig did last summer because of a book that we read for our book podcast where each week one of us reads a book that we've never read before and tells the other person about it. We do a little bit of research, we have some laughs. No, you definitely read the Heart is a Lonely Hunter. It is in Slack with your name next to it.

[B]

Okay, great. Then I read it.

[A]

If you didn't read it and we did a whole episode on it where you tricked me into thinking that you read it.

[B]

I don't think that happened. Good on you.

[A]

Good on you. I guess to my knowledge, that's never happened in the history of the podcast. But if it did happen, how would I know about it? Is the question interesting?

[B]

No, see, I think you read it because I definitely read the House of Bernardo Alba, but I don't remember if I read Portrait of the Artist as a young man. Oh boy.

[A]

I read Portrait of the Artist as a young man. I'm looking at the June schedule in the Slack and Artist of Lonely Hunter has your name next to it.

[B]

Huh? Okay, then I must have read it.

[A]

I know what you did last summer.

[B]

Okay. And I do not. So here we are.

[A]

So what did you read though, for the book podcast that we do together?

[B]

I read I Know what yout Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

I'm looking through my notes right now.

[A]

The hardest part. This is the last. It's the last week of Spooktober. I know there's Spooktober in the books.

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

Uh huh. In the books. About the books related to books in a lot of ways. If you need to do some sleuthing about this or we need to be yelled at in the discord about it. Patreon.com overduepod we need to do that on non like off mic.

[B]

I will just say that my notes are not the notes of somebody who read the book. I'm looking through my notes app right now.

[A]

I'm just looking at the June schedule.

[B]

It's possible that you read it though. That's all I'm saying.

[A]

Possible that I read it. It's possible. It's not correct, but it does say correct next to you.

[B]

Well, then that's incorrect is what I would say.

[A]

Anywho, it's cool that whichever of us read this book does not like it did not leave enough of an impact that either of us have a clear memory that is. Of having.

[B]

That's. That is a bit of a shame, I think.

[A]

Which is just how that. Which is just how the podcast goes sometimes. Some of them stick with you and some of them don't.

[B]

Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah, I don't know why that's content, baby.

[A]

Lois Duncan was born in the city of Philadelphia in 1934. Go Birds.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

She died in 2016. She's an American novelist, poet and journalist and a pioneer in the then new field of young adult fiction. I think we've talked about young adult as a, as a term before. It emerges its own like distinct category of fiction kind of starting in the 60s. So it's was and remains kind of amorphous. But it's. Yeah, it's kind of in the eye of the beholder. It's partly like a genuine effort to recognize types of stories and types of audiences that weren't being. That were not being told. We're not being catered to and it's partly a publisher driven category that's used for marketing. So. So, you know, choose your own adventure on that. Duncan won the ALA Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1992. She's awarded the Grandmaster Award from the Mystery Writers of Americ in 2014. Her parents were professional circus photographers. Which is wild. Like it's. It's wild on a couple layers. One is that they were circus photographers and one is that there was a circus to photograph. That could be like two people's full, like whole job.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

But they worked for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Do you remember in 2017 when there were a bunch of news articles about the. That circus, like closing down?

[B]

Yeah, that was like a whole thing.

[A]

Like over a century. Yeah, the whole thing. They were beleaguered by lots of animal rights protests, which they swore in the newspaper that was not the reason they were shutting down the circus. But when they brought it back in 2023, it did not have animals anymore and also didn't have clowns and it didn't have a ringmaster. It's just like a show where people sing and flip around now, which doesn't seem super circusy, but I guess it is good that they are not making elephants do tricks for people.

[B]

No. I have ever been at a zoo where I was looking at elephants and a graduate student came up to me and made me take a survey about whether or not I felt one with the universe.

[A]

What did you answer?

[B]

Some version of yes, because elephants have culture and it's palpable when you watch them.

[A]

Somebody asking me if I felt one with the universe would really take me out of it though. Even if I was feeling one with the universe. It's like, well, I don't now.

[B]

I just lost.

[A]

The game I can't be in is like the game.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Lois Duncan begins writing as a 10 year old. She had sold her first story to a magazine at age 13. She's on that grind set. She drops out of College at age 19, but continue to marry somebody who she divorced like a couple years after that. She continues writing hundreds of magazine articles in this period and publishes her first novel, the semi autobiographical Love Song for Joyce, in 1958 as Lois Carey. She does eventually earn a bachelor's in English in 1977 from the University of New Mexico. She does that because she is taking classes for free. And you stay in classes for free because she was hired as a journalism professor there in 1970. I saw that without a degree. Which kind of. Which kind of rules. Actually, she had published all these magazine articles. She's kind of hired on that basis by somebody who knew her already. So it's like, yeah, go to somebody who actually has knowledge and experience in the field and they can worry about the credentials later.

[B]

Yep, yep, yep.

[A]

This book is published in 1973. It's. She got the idea for it based on a conversation between one of her daughters and one of her daughter's friends. They were both going on a date, and after talking with. With each other, they realized that they were both going out on a date with the same boy.

[B]

That is something.

[A]

He was having a real. That boy was having a real threes. Company of a. Of a. Of a time, I will say. And then he got found out that.

[B]

That is something that. If I had known reading the book would change my experience of the book, because there is a moment late in the book where it is explicit that that is what's going on. And it had not once entered my mind until that moment. And it's pretty. I found it pretty effective. So that's a. I guess that's a spoiler for this novel if you've never read it. And it is not part of the movie at all. So I think it's a cool part of the book and it's. It's probably fun on reread, I would imagine, actually. And it's not a long book, so, you know, have fun with it. But she.

[A]

Other. Other note. Okay. Duncan helped with a 2010 update to this book, which I think we will.

[B]

Talk a lot about.

[A]

Yeah, you. Some notes about it. We always love when a book gets kind of a stealth update. This is a. This is one where the author was actually involved in. In doing it. I think there are a few others of her book.

[B]

I was very concerned that she was not involved because there was a scholastic type that there was. Well, she passed away in 2016, and there was a 2020 copyright at one point in my edition. And I was con. I had not done my background research yet, and I was conf. I was worried that they'd gone in and put references to webcasts and text.

[A]

Messages, cell phones and stuff. Yeah. But it.

[B]

But what is interesting is it's 2010, so there are references to cell phones and to the Internet, but it is pretty scant on any understanding of social media. So there's like a couple. As I've been thinking about this over the last few days, there's a couple things in this book that you would have to account for if you were in a 20, even 2015 kind of smartphone era versus like it's 2010 and people carry, carry cell phones.

[A]

So nobody in this book is like talking about the Arab Spring or the murderers. Like the murderers. Like MySpace page.

[B]

You just alluded to the fact that like you mentioned the thing like the inspiration for the novel is this camera care. This conversation about a guy who's, you know, has two girls interested in him and they realize it's the same person. Like that is a thing that you would have to like, I think you'd have to address somehow if you were setting it today.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

In the fact that like young women dating someone would probably look them up online. You'd have to at least, maybe you'd have to at least say why they weren't looking them up online.

[A]

Or they both have a conversation. They get on the computer and guess what? That both of the, both the instant messages have come from the same IP address.

[B]

See, that would be pretty cool.

[A]

And you hack into the trunk line and you got. And you trace it back to where he is. Other notable, A couple other notable books that like hopped out at me from her list. There's one, I mean there's hotel for dogs, 1971.

[B]

I didn't know that was her. That's pretty cool.

[A]

Yeah. A children's novel was adapted to film by Nickelodeon in 2009. She did follow it up with a couple of sequels. And then killing Mr. Griffin is the other big one. This comes out in 1978. It's about three high schoolers. I kind of want to read this one now. It's about three high schoolers who decide to murder their strict English teacher.

[B]

Kind of a reverse dead poet society, I guess.

[A]

Yeah. And she, she ran into a couple like issues with, with books getting banned for various reasons. Like this, this was one because, you know, it's kids murdering an English teacher. There's one where like an underage person drinks a beer. And that, that got. Because she's working in like the 60s and 70s, people are still like, yeah, yeah, keep themselves in a tizzy over that. But one of, one of the other biggest things in her, in her bibliography is that.

[B]

Yeah, that's the word you're looking for.

[A]

So she writes this book called who Killed my daughter in 1992. This is a nonfiction book. She had. Lois Duncan had an 18 year old daughter named Caitlyn. She usually refers to her as Kate in interviews who was murdered in 1989. And Lois Duncan really thought that the police did a bad job investigating this murder.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And so she. She goes and writes this like it's not a pioneering work of true crime. Like true crime is well and truly established at this point, but it's basically a true crime book where she is doing her own investigation. She is talking about how the police are like stonewalling things. That isn't it suspicious. She talks about going to a psychic to get clues. And yet. So this, this book and then a 2013 sequel called One with the Wolves, that's kind of about. It's kind of partly about the, like, the reader response to this and like all the extra clues and stuff that it generated. They both end up suggesting. And Duncan herself like mentions this in interviews when asked about it. Just basically saying straight up that Caitlyn had an ex boyfriend who was involved with some like, Vietnamese gang and they had something to do with it. And that just ends up being kind of flatly untrue. There was a. There was a killer. I mean, yeah, the cops catch this guy the way that the cops catch a lot of guys, which is that the guy walks into the police station and says that he did it. A person confesses to the murder in 2021.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Turns out had also killed two other young women in the same stretch of time. All kind of like he didn't really have a relation to. To any of them, but he, he knew stuff that he only could have known if he. He had been involved. So he confesses to these murders in 2021, a few years after Duncan had. Had passed away, and then is convicted in 2024. But after this, you know, after her daughter is. Is killed, after she writes this book, she kind of moves away from the horror and thriller genre for obvious reasons. She just says she's no longer interested in writing stories where young women are in. In like, perilous situations.

[B]

The quote I saw was, it was as if these things I'd written about as fiction became hideous reality and just couldn't. Could not face putting characters in those characters similar to her daughter, her late daughter in those similar situations. Which is totally understandable.

[A]

So she, she shifts to publishing more children's books after this. Obviously. And this is, this is so this, this whole saga is one reason why she does not care for the movie adaptation that comes out in 1997.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellert, Freddie Prinze Jr. And some others.

[B]

Ryan Phillippe. So I had a hard time trying to remember who was in this movie. I did not have time to rewatch was a seminal moviegoing experience for me. I probably had rented Scream. And then the same screenwriter.

[A]

Yeah, this is written by Kevin Williamson who wrote Scream in 1996 and this was rushed into production after Scream.

[B]

You're like, wow, Scream. So good.

[A]

Yeah, do it again. So. And he transformed it from, you know, whatever you're about to tell me about into kind of a textbook slasher film in a small fishing town where a guy kills a bunch of people with a hook. Like Scream is more of a send up of this movie. And with this he was like, what if I just did this, this kind of movie? And he talks in interviews about like, I wanted to do a movie where everybody, everybody knew all the beats and everybody knew kind of the type of story it was going to be. But I still get them kind of jumping in their seats anyway.

[B]

Yeah, I mean that's fine. It's a, it's a fun movie. As I recall, this is not a slasher like novel. It is, it is more of a thriller, a bit of a psychological thriller. I could totally understand why she was. Why she would be disappointed even if she had not undergone the tragedy that her family went through. Because it is. Yeah, I have a bloody book in that way.

[A]

I have a quote from her, from it, from an interview, what she says. What I personally have a problem with are the stories usually on television where action takes the place of introspection. Obviously this is before peak tv. She didn't, she didn't know she was talking about where violence is sensationalized and made to seem thrilling rather than terrible. I was appalled when my book I Know what yout Did Last Summer was made into a slasher film. As the mother of a murdered child, I don't find violent death something to squeal and giggle about.

[B]

Yeah, that's fair.

[A]

Other, other like bits and pieces about this movie because I think that that's, that's probably why we picked certainly the book just like the, the big name.

[B]

On it, I would say. I came across Lois Duncan a few months ago. It. As I was researching things for our newsletter, Dusty Bookshelves, which you can get if you subscribe to patreon.com overduepod I think I was doing like a scary movie rundown, talking about Scream maybe and talking about the. Kevin, Kevin Williamson.

[A]

Williamson. Williamson.

[B]

And I was like, wow, I honestly didn't know it was a novel and then looking it up and was like, oh, I would like to read that this year. But yeah, it's only because I remember going and seeing the film and like being taken by it in the way that I was when I was 11 or 12 years old. You know, whatever.

[A]

This movie in this movie is a success. It grosses $125 million on a budget of 17 million.

[B]

Not bad. Not bad.

[A]

It's followed in 1998 by I still know what you did last Summer, another theatrically great release movie with several returning cast members. Then always Know what yout did last Summer comes out in 2006. Direct a video film without any of the returning cast members. And then from the ashes of a like 2021Amazon TV series that runs for one season and gets canceled comes this 2025 sequel that is in the continuity of the first two movies. It's a series of first two movies.

[B]

I thought it was a cold reboot.

[A]

No, it has Freddie Prinze Jr. And Jennifer Love Hewitt prizing their roles from the first couple.

[B]

You love it.

[A]

Yeah. It's called I know what you did last Summer. It came out this year.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

The movie, when it comes out originally in. In 97, prompts a movie tie in re release of the book, which I don't know if it's still as much of a thing as it is. It is now. I just always think of that late 90s, early 2000s period as like, I liked Lord of the Rings before those movies came out. And then as my paperbacks of the books were falling apart, like, all I could find was like, Viggo Mortensen.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Huh.

[B]

With the person's face on it. Yeah.

[A]

But this sells a half a million copies in a year.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It was the top selling, quote, children's fiction book.

[B]

It is wild that this book is considered ya, but also like, like, the Hunger Games is ya. So. Yeah, this is not the Hunger Games.

[A]

Yeah. This is a top selling children's fiction book in October, November, and December of 1997.

[B]

Wild.

[A]

And yeah. So there's a scene people who have seen the movie may remember. There's a scene where Jennifer Love Hewitt stands in the street, turns around and yells, what are you waiting for? Daring the killer to come get her and her friends.

[B]

A scene that works way better in the trailer than it does in the film itself, I think.

[A]

Yeah. Speaking to Us Weekly, Jennifer Love Hewitt says that scene was actually directed by a kid who won a contest to come on and create a moment for the movie. And it became the biggest part of the movie. He's like, I want her to stand in the street and turn around and just scream, what are you waiting for? Huh? I was literally like, are you kidding me right now? This is what I'm gonna do.

[B]

I'm hooting and hollering right now. I love this so much.

[A]

I love that this, like a kid came and did this and Jennifer Love Hewitt looks at the little kid's idea and is like, this is stupid. Yeah, this is the stupidest thing ever.

[B]

It's pretty stupid, actually.

[A]

It is dumb, but it's also. It's also very memorable, though.

[B]

It really is.

[A]

Sticks with you. So.

[B]

It does.

[A]

Anyway, Some unnamed kid who won a contest. I don't even know what contest this would have been.

[B]

It's unclear. No, I. I couldn't corroborate any of that. I have no idea. The fact that they use contest makes it clear that it's not a make a wish thing. It is some sort of weird. I don't. Wes Craven filmmaking society.

[A]

All we have is Jennifer Love Hewitt's memory of. Of a thing that happened to her like 20 years before. And memory is. You know, memory is fallible. So who. Who knows? But anyway, a kid. A kid came on and said, I want to do this. And they shot it and they kept it.

[B]

They did.

[A]

Jennifer Love Hewitt didn't like it at the time, though. I think she's. She's come around on the. Just how memorable it is and how iconic it is. Whether, you know, something could be iconic for a good or a bad reason.

[B]

Yep, yep, yep.

[A]

We'll let you decide why you remember this scene from this movie.

[B]

The last.

[A]

That's what I've got.

[B]

The last thing I wanted to share is a quote from the obituary in the Washington Post from 2016 that just places Duncan in this, like, Ya. Early Ya tradition that says, along with S.E. hinton, Judy Blume and Robert Cormier, Ms. Duncan was credited with helping establish the genre of young adult fiction literature carefully tailored for readers who are neither children nor grownups, who know more than it may seem, but not enough to make their way in the world. And I think that is like, actually a really insightful estimation of what she's even doing in this book because contrasting the film where everybody is like, back from a year at college, the book, only one of the characters is currently enrolled in, like, freshman year of college. One of them is still in high school. One of them graduated early, but is. Has been like, away fishing and one of them dropped out. So, like, it is not quite the we're all back in town situation. And it is more this kind of like, liminal space between childhood and adulthood.

[A]

Sure. Yeah.

[B]

So I think I had a good read. I'm excited to tell everybody about it. I am definitely Excited to Talk about the 2010 update for a couple of different reasons. Folks who have listened to our Goosebumps series will know how much we love that kind of stuff. And I there's a lot of similar things going on here.

[A]

Everybody's just being like, I can't wait to see Avatar.

[B]

Well, it's not quite that, but it is. There's a few things. So we'll take a quick break and then you will find out what this book did last summer. Mr. Monopoly here monopoly is back at McDonald's. Register in the McDonald's app so you're.

[A]

Ready to get your bag.

[B]

Two ways to peel for a chance to get your bag physical peels with select items and digital peels with others. To get your bag, play Monopoly at McDonald's.

[A]

No purchase necessary. Sea rules at [e-mail] for full details and amoe.playmcd.com to play without purchase ends November 23rd. But bonus play ends November 2nd. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro. Copyright McDonald's.

[B]

Andrew Craig On June 1st, 2024, you sent me a message that said started the Joyce last night. Woof. So I know what you did last summer, which was make me read James Joyce so you didn't have to. That's. That's why you read Carson McCullers hard as the Lonely Hunter.

[A]

I did see that schedule and I was listed as reading the Joyce and I was like, doesn't sound like me. Doesn't sound like something I would agree to.

[B]

Yep. Yep. If you are excited to rejoice, then I am up for discussing it. You told me.

[A]

Okay. What did you say? What? How did you respond to this?

[B]

You sent me an image of why of what made you mad about that book. And I said I've never read Joyce, but I'm happy, curious to dive in. It doesn't make my skin crawl, even if it seems wax. Smiley face emoticon.

[A]

Was it just like a while like the longest run on sentence that has ever existed in the history People go.

[B]

Back and look at it once upon a time in a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road men a nice and little boy named Baby Tuko.

[A]

Okay yes. I remember bouncing off of this. Now I remember not. I remember reading this and being like nope, I can't do this.

[B]

Threw up your hands and said I'm gonna throw up. No thank you.

[A]

Shut up. So I know what you did last summer.

[B]

I know what you did last summer.

[A]

1973 by Lois Duncan. Revised in 2010. Everybody, Blackberries.

[B]

You okay? But you have seen this film ever?

[A]

I haven't. No, I haven't seen. I haven't seen.

[B]

Never, ever. Okay.

[A]

No, not. Not all the way through for one of those movies. It's one of those movies I've experienced through some combination of osmosis and like.

[B]

Cable television of it.

[A]

Yeah. Which is also how I've seen, like, the Sixth Sense and some other things.

[B]

That I cannot believe that you've not seen Sixth Sense all the way through. We're going to rectify.

[A]

We're going to. We're going to deal with that on our. On our friend's movie night that we've been doing.

[B]

The main thing to know for folks who have seen the movie never read the book before. They're like, oh, I wonder what this book's about. It is not about a killer fisherman with a hook. The. The movie. The movie has the killer kind of as a riff on the urban legend about, like a hitchhiker with a hook hand.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

There's a lot of that imagery going around in the slasher film. And there is a quartet of teens who have run someone over with their car, which did happen last summer, and that does cause them problems here today. Right. But they did not run over a man who is, I think, later revealed to maybe be still alive or something.

[A]

Maybe. And we have not watched the two canonical films or the discarded direct to video film or the. I learned the term legacy sequel.

[B]

Legacy? Yeah.

[A]

Oh, God, yeah.

[B]

Legacy.

[A]

I learned that as I was researching that which is apparent apparently, how we refer to a movie that is a direct, like, in universe sequel to an old movie. But it's like a. Like it's been a while.

[B]

The one that crystallized the term for me were all of these weird, not. Not the all girls Ghostbusters, but the Ghostbusters movies that have happened since that are dealing with the war of Ghostbusters in a way that nobody cares about. Those are. That's when I was like, oh, a legacy. Cool. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. Some of the newer Jurassic park movies.

[B]

Deal in that Matrix resurrections. A good legacy. Cool. I would say.

[A]

Yeah, I like that. I like that.

[B]

That's a good movie.

[A]

I feel like it's one of those that I can't watch again, though, because I had a really good watch of it the first time. I don't want to have another one.

[B]

I'm very worried. I like thinking about that movie, but I. I don't know if I want to see it again. Okay, so I know what you did last summer, 1973. It's not like the movie, the opening of the book. A young woman named Julie, who is finishing her senior year of high school, gets a letter. It's from Smith. She's going to Smith. Hooray. Her dad had recently passed away. She'd had a traumatic experience the prior summer that we'll learn more about. But she and her mom are excited to get her acceptance letter to Smith. Also in the mail is a creepy letter that says, I know what you did last summer. That's all it says. She does not show her mom this letter, right? Yes. And she is concerned. Who are our teens? Let me tell you about our four teens.

[A]

Tell me about these teens.

[B]

Julie is our protagonist. Her dad died a little bit ago. As I said, she and her mom have a pretty good relationship. There's a later chapter that seems to imply that her mom has the sight of some. Her mom gets bad feelings sometimes.

[A]

I mean, I get. We all. Listen. We all. It's 20, 25. Like, we all get that feeling sometimes.

[B]

In her mom's memory, they all line up with something tragic happening. One of them being when her husband passed away unexpectedly. She had a weird feeling last summer, but nothing happened. Nothing came of it. So that's, you know, she'll have another bad feeling later in the book. But that. That's kind of the, like. Well, whatever happened is unresolved. So Julie used to date one of the other four teens, Ray. After the accident, he went away. Her mom has noticed a big change in her last year. She doesn't really spend any time with her friends. She's just put her head in her books. She's desperate to get out of town. She is good friends, or was good friends with this young woman, Helen, who we'll talk about sort of against the odds. And she has been seeing a guy named Bud for a bit. Bud. He's a little bit older.

[A]

Is Bud his government name or is Bud? I. I've got an uncle named Bud who, to this day, I don't know if that's his real name or not.

[B]

It is sort of one of those.

[A]

This. This branch of the family had a lot. Like, there was one named Bud. There's one named Speed. Like, whoa. I think he raced cars.

[B]

Okay, sure.

[A]

I think he raced cars.

[B]

Yeah. This guy's name is Bud. And Julie has not apparently asked a lot of questions. She.

[A]

I don't think. Apologies to any buds who might be listening. And, I mean, we're all buds. Here in a way, in a sense. But I don't think a guy named Bud is usually somebody who you want to ask a bunch of follow up questions of.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

I think you just kind of roll with a Bud.

[B]

He seems to be a very.

[A]

You take, you take Bud as he comes, you know.

[B]

Yeah. No, you do. He is 24 going on 50. Like I don't know his exact age noise. But he, he gives off. Are you dating your dad? Energy. Like he's just like. He gives off older guy energy to her.

[A]

Okay. Okay.

[B]

He met her at the library. He is not. She doesn't seem super into him. But also Rey left town and her mom was on her case for not like getting out more. So she's just trying to do stuff. Okay. Then we have Helen. Over the course of novel we find out that Helen is a very. She's a very attractive young woman. She comes from a lower class family. She's got an older sister who kind of hates her guts named Elsa. Elsa. I don't like how fat phobic. The book is about Elsa.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or the characters are about Elsa. I. I don't need. I can separate the fact that maybe Lois Duncan is. Is putting this on the characters, but it's pretty relentless.

[A]

I, I mean I feel like.

[B]

And it's not balanced out by anything else. So you.

[A]

At any point in history you're going to run into fatphobia. But I feel like if we're talking 1973, I don't know what may or may ya fiction but in 1973 nobody even would have blinked. I don't think nobody even would have stopped to say is this a bad thing to do? I think that to even pause for a second before you equate to being fat with like a whole host of other like negative qualities is fairly modern.

[B]

Glad.

[A]

Not. Not even as well established now as it should be. So yeah.

[B]

Glad to meet you, Elsa. Ray said politely, privately deciding just the opposite. He had seldom been introduced to anyone whose appearance made her less pleasing to meet. It seemed incredible on looking at her that this dumpy, sullen faced girl could be closely related to someone as attractive as Helen. Not great. Elsa is the. Is the. Not even a red herring. Is the. But is the only other person aside from the two characters that I'll talk about. Who are the prime suspects? Who any character is like maybe this person is causing all the trouble because she's.

[A]

Because she's. Because she's fat.

[B]

Because she's fat and bitter about it. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

She's not a Big player in the novel just stood out to me. Helen, her whole deal is she comes from this lower class family. She's trying to escape her circumstances, rise above them. Her parents do seem decent. They're just kind of limited by their economic means, though Helen decides at the age of like 12 or 13, she's like, I'm realizing that I'm a. An attractive person. I'm going to lean into it. I'm going to, you know, like, learn how to apply makeup in a way that, like, really accentuates what I've got going on. I'm gonna, like, be a fashionista or whatever. And she, you know, wins some. She's like, I don't. I'm not book smart. Like, here's what I have. I'm gonna use it however I can. Which shows a certain savvy. If anything else, she wins a beauty contest that makes her the Channel 5 Future Star. Andrew.

[A]

Ooh.

[B]

Which, when you update a book to 2010, seems very silly. Like, I don't. It does seem like a 1970s thing when girl wins beauty contest, gets put on local news. Like, that's the contest. That seems like. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah, that's that kind of thing. Still.

[B]

It does happen, though.

[A]

But not. Maybe not maybe not necessarily in like, a TV context, but like local, like pageants and like, our community recognizes you for being hot.

[B]

That is true. No, that does still happen. That does still happen. But they do let her fill in on the news and they. And this is very 2010. They let her, quote, DJ a webcast. That rules it. I love it.

[A]

So she's out here making. She's out here making webisodes.

[B]

Yeah. I don't know what she's doing. She lives in the fancy apartments in town where there's a pool. And she is off and on with this guy named Barry, who's one of the four teens. And then later on in the novel, she will meet a guy named Collie, short for Collingsworth Wilson. That's important. We'll come back to him.

[A]

Okay, you got a guy named Bud and a guy named Collingsworth. These are the two. If you're looking at the spectrum of kinds of names that you can have, I think these are the two outer bounds of what they are.

[B]

Also in the crew, we've got Barry. He's a football guy.

[A]

Is this the same Barry that you just mentioned?

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

He's making sure there's not multiple berries.

[B]

Just one Barry, he kind of goes with Helen. He go. He's in his first year of university, now he lives at the frat house. His mom is kind of controlling his life a little bit. The early example of that is he spent he. On the weekends. He will come back and visit his family and they keep a room for him. And he's like, hey, a bunch of the guys, you know, want to go backpacking in Europe, you know, this summer, because this is taking place over Memorial Day weekend. And his mom was like, well, I was gonna take you to Europe as a graduation present. Why would you want to go live in hostels for a summer? He's like, because of the guys. Like, the guys want to go.

[A]

Yeah, you wouldn't get it, Mom.

[B]

And they're like a well to do family. They don't like. They think Helen's from the wrong side of the tracks, even though she's attractive. And so he's trying to get out from under the thumb of his mom a little bit. He is actually trying to, like, study and, like, get good at school. Even as he's a football boy and a frat boy and trying to get good. He is trying to get good. And there is a thing too, where, like, what if instead.

[A]

What if you had a cool gamer professor who, instead of giving you an F on paper, just handed it back to you with, like, reading all over it and just said, get good. See me after class.

[B]

A, A, B, a C, a D and F. Or a G.G. at the bottom. Yeah.

[A]

Or an S. An S. The best papers get S. Yeah.

[B]

He is a bit of a player, Barry is. But he does really love Helen. Seems. And that was fueled by the fact that when he first started dating Helen, his mom said that she didn't like Helen. And then like, the insight is that if he's told he can't have something that makes him want it more.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, okay. The last of our four teens, Ray, he is. He was. He skipped a grade at one point. He's a smart little boy. And after the incident last summer, he graduated and then left town and has been doing fishing and odd jobs, like boat fishing and odd jobs on the west Coast. Right. No slappers. You're right. His dad was a football player. Herb Bronson, AKA the Booter.

[A]

Bronson rules her a lot of. We're getting a lot of different, like a whole. A whole basket full of names.

[B]

Herb Bronson. And his nickname is the Booter, who runs a sporting goods shop and sometimes refers to himself in the third person as the Booter. I'm obsessed with this man. I love him.

[A]

The Booter does sound like the name that you would get in college if you were known for throwing up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is the only thing.

[B]

Ray's whole thing with his dad is that he likes his dad has accepted that Ray will never be an athlete like he, you know, the booter.

[A]

My dad, my dad had to do that too at one point.

[B]

The booter had a professional sports career, though it was not long. And he always wanted even more for his son and he kind of had to give up that dream a little bit. Ray does love Julie, but he did need to get out of town after the incident and now he is back in town. So that's. That's kind of where we find ourselves at the beginning of the novel. What do they do? Andrew, let's talk about this.

[A]

Why would you. Why would I know you read the book.

[B]

I know this is talked about.

[A]

This isn't a hardest lonely hundred situation where we don't remember who read the book. Like, you just read it. You told me that you read it.

[B]

This is talked about in a few different scenes throughout the book. But I'll give us the kind of top level summary. A year ago, they all had a picnic. Four teens having an innocent little picnic. No, they were drinking beers, smoking a little pot.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Yes.

[B]

You know, obviously it's the early 70s or the 20 or 2010, depending on when you're like that. That is a weird. I had trouble shaking the experience of knowing I was reading a book published in the 70s despite 2010 revisions, where I'm like, this is just the 70s.

[A]

They're like, yes. And it's universal. Like especially smoking pot or whatever. Even. Even in 20. Like maybe it's different now because it's. Because it's been like even more. You put in so many ways. But there are a lot of things that are like universal to the teen experience where the teens are doing the same thing the teens have done forever. But they believe that they're the first and only people who ever have done it because. Because they're teenagers.

[B]

You're right.

[A]

Anything. So, yeah, that actually is kind of a commentary on, you know, the more, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[B]

You're right about that. Yeah.

[A]

I typed. I typed that out to send it to my. My MySpace on my T now my T9 word little LG chocolate phone.

[B]

Remember when they were making all the phones sound like food? That was weird. They. So the kids are at their picnic. They're hooting and hollering and they're coming home and they kind of they have whatever. I don't know if they draw straws or what they do, but like, there is a. Which. Which of the two couples gets to ride in the back of the car and make out Nice. Right?

[A]

Well, because they got bucket seats in the front. Or like, what's keeping.

[B]

I don't know what's going on in the front. But even though it's raised car Rey wins the toss and gets to be in the back with Julie making out. Barry is driving the car with Helen in the front seat. And Barry is always speeding. We know this about Barry.

[A]

Yeah. Teens.

[B]

And while he's driving, it's only like.

[A]

This most recent couple crops of teens where it's been like, we don't care about having sex. We don't care about doing drugs. We don't care about anything. Cool.

[B]

No. Just.

[A]

We're just going to get on the Internet and yell at every.

[B]

Just Roblox and tick tock. That's all we do. Which, honestly, I don't know what's worse. I don't. I have no idea. But it's dark out and the Barry bears down on and hits a kid on a bicycle. Hits a young boy on a bicycle. It's tragic. It's very sad.

[A]

Yeah. They have better bike infrastructure.

[B]

They truly, they.

[A]

If he'd had a protected bike lane, this would not have happened.

[B]

I honestly believe that is the case.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So they drive off for a few minutes. 13s. They're scared. They were drinking and smoking pot. They get away from the accident. Ray calls an ambulance about 10 minutes after the accident.

[A]

On what? And what kind of phone does he use?

[B]

The book does not specify. So I think. I think in the original maybe it would have made a reference. I tried to hunt down a, like a full scan of the original and the archive. Archive.org didn't have one available to me.

[A]

Yeah. They lost a court case with respect to keeping archival copies of books in it.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Made it. It made it less useful as a resource for our purposes when we're trying to look up stuff like this. The old PDFs of an original edition.

[B]

Yeah. But I. I read that like two or three times and I couldn't find an explicit cell phone reference. But he calls an ambulance 10 minutes afterwards. And then there's like a vote among the crew of whether or not they're gonna go back to the scene and admit what has happened or be with the kid they hit until the ambulance arrives. It's kind of unclear. Barry and Helen don't want to go back. Barry is the only one who's 18 at the time of the accident. And he was driving, so he's like, well, they're gonna throw me in jail forever. The rest of you are juveniles, so they will, like, let you off. Ray, Julie needs. Julie's moral compass is like, we need to go back. We did something wrong. This kid is hurt, dying. We need to go back.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

They hold a vote. Ray votes with Barry and Helen being like, I can't let my friend, my best friend go to prison. And they form a pact that none of this will. None of them will ever talk about it again. And they get rid of the car. And Julie is so upset by it that, of course, her and Ray break up. She sends a bouquet of yellow roses anonymously to the funeral.

[A]

Oh, boy.

[B]

This will come back.

[A]

No, obviously, that's going to be how whoever knows what they did last summer knows what they did last summer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I don't know in the movie how it happened. My memory of, like, trailers and stuff for the movie is there's just, like, somebody who knows for some reason. And how that. How that person knows is, like, part of the. Like, the mystery of the.

[B]

That I don't really remember how that person knows, but it is. There's a whole other second, like, historical murder that is wrapped up in the dude that gets murdered in the movie.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

This is a. A bunch of teens run over a little boy. And it's very sad. And they know. They don't want to talk about it, but somebody found out, right? So the beginning of this book is that these four people have kind of lost their way from each other. And now someone has shown up in the world who knows what they've done and is, you know, kind of terrorizing them about it. Julie's dating Bud. Helen's living in her fancy apartment complex, keeping Barry at arm's length. Barry is just trying to, like, get free from his parents. And Ray is back from the west coast trying to get with Julie again. They all gather together, and Barry is like, it's a prank. Whoever sent you that letter, it's a prank. I don't think it's real. Helen gets a picture taped to her door. Ray gets a newspaper clipping. There's a very brief moment before Rey shows up where Barry is like, is Ray punking us? I remember this being a bigger part of the movie where they were like, why is Rey back in town now? And that would cause some, like, distrust. That's not a big part of the book.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

All of this builds towards a Pivotal scene. Andrew. Helen, of course, has met Kali Wilson Collingsworth Wilson, at her apartment complex. Oh, he moved to town. He's a new guy. He's like kind of interested in her, clearly, but you don't know why and you don't know what his deal is.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And obviously Julie and Ray and Bud have this love triangle thing where, like, Julie is very excited to see Ray back in town, but she's been dating this guy Bud, and she doesn't know what to do about it. On Memorial Day, there are some student protests about the war.

[A]

I did read that the, the war was updated from Vietnam in the 70s version to Iraq in this one.

[B]

And I, I don't want to diminish the work of the people who were protesting the war in Iraq in the, in the aughts in the 2000s. But as I read this novel, which was clearly written in 1972 or whatever, and like Kent State had just happened like two years prior. When she talks about there being anti Memorial Day protests protesting the war without any more specifics.

[A]

Yeah, no, like, even.

[B]

Doesn't even feel the same in 2010.

[A]

We're well after, like everybody.

[B]

Obama is president at this. Right.

[A]

Like, everybody is agreed that the Iraq war is a disaster. The Democratic presidential primary, it in large part, like hinges on whether people voted to authorize it or.

[B]

Correct. Yes.

[A]

But even, even still, I think a lingering thing of that is like, you, you cannot criticize the troops. You cannot, you cannot besmirch the, the patriotism of any of these people. Like, to protest Memorial Day like never would happen in a million years.

[B]

It's just so strange.

[A]

You had to do like, if you, if you're going to criticize anything that the government or the military was doing in that conflict, you needed to do so much things throat clearing before you could get to the, the, the point about it. Even though you were talking about like people torturing other people.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's just, it's just such an interesting thing because I do think the. I, and again, I don't mean to diminish student protests around the Iraq War.

[A]

No, no, no, it's, it's all.

[B]

Yeah, but historically and certainly in the DNA of this novel as originally written, I think like four teens kind of awash in the world after a tragedy has a resonance with where the country was during Vietnam. That is not quite a one to one with where the country was in 2010. It just like.

[A]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's also, it's also worth noting, like we, we were alive to. To experience. We were what protests of the Iraq War looked like, and we were not alive to experience what the Vietnam War looked like. Like. It is.

[B]

This is just my estimation. Yes.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm just, like. It's possible that the. The, like, what reality on the ground felt like and what, like, history records as having succeeded could be, like, slightly different. I don't know.

[B]

It all. My. My biggest takeaway is that it just kind of took me out as an update because it felt like all the characters were talking like it was. We're still in the Vietnam War and people are protesting on college campuses all the time. And I am gleaning as I read it that this is a 2010 novel now, and it doesn't quite feel the same.

[A]

Yeah, no. By the time you get to 2010, an anti memorial Day protest would be like, run up to the Supreme Court.

[B]

Yeah, probably. Probably.

[A]

It's like the bong hits for Jesus. Then, you know.

[B]

God, that kid rules. Anyway, so on anti Memorial Day, Barry has. He's gone back to the frat house. He has gotten a call from. Wow, this episode's running long. Sorry, it's. Yeah, we got it.

[A]

We gotta. We gotta. We gotta figure out what we did last.

[B]

Barry's. Barry's gotten a call from Helen, but he didn't call her back. And he gets a call from someone else. Again, there's some, like, chicanery of. Barry, Barry, your cell phone's dead. People are calling the frat house looking for you. So he has to answer the common room phone.

[A]

And, Barry, nobody has a micro USB charger to use for your cell phone.

[B]

After the phone call, he walks out onto the football field. And while the fireworks of Memorial Day are going off, which is an interesting choice, someone shoots him. And it goes. The bullet goes in his spine. Will he be paralyzed? Will he be forced to be controlled by his parents forever? That is Barry's quandary. Collie. Our new friend helps Helen go to the hospital to visit him, But Barry's family doesn't like her enough to let her see him. And the details of this are kind of obfuscated on purpose. Purpose. Like, we spend a few chapters before we get Barry's perspective on who called him in the first place. Rey and Julie are, like, wondering what happened. And because they can't figure out what actually happened, they decide to look up more of this. They're like, oh, did somebody, you know who's sending the messages attack Barry? Which. Which is what happened. But. But Barry is so depressed by getting Shot and maybe paralyzed. And then also hearing that was brought to the hospital by a. Some other dude that. And so mad about everything that he, like, lets all of his friends think that maybe something else happened.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

He recants later when his foot is able to move and he's like, oh, I was just super depressed and angry. I should not. I. I should have been forthcoming about what happened, which is that somebody called him and was like, what if I had a special camera that took pictures of a kid getting hit by a car a year ago? You could come buy them from me. And then he got shot. Julian Ray go to the house of the boy who was killed, and they meet his older sister, who tells them that the family is all broken up, that their mom has had a nervous breakdown. She blames herself for the death because it's like, this really sad. Duncan is good at this. Duncan is really good at, like, dropping into a little sad vignette of a. Of a family relationship. It happens in the Helen family. It happens in Rey and Barry's families also. But with this one, it's like this kid was maybe 10, 11, I think.

[A]

Okay. And the kid who got. Who got killed killed last summer.

[B]

Yeah. And the. And the parents were like, this kid is like, needs to be a little bit more independent. The kids out of sleepover, is feeling anxious and wants to come home. And the parents are like, we think you can hang. We're not going to come get you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so the kid runs away from the sleepover, gets on his bike and starts riding home and then is hit. Very, very sad.

[A]

And that's such a. Like, even, you know, it's different talking about parenting now versus very much so, even 2010. But, like, it's. It is a thing that you think about all the time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What. What is. What is going to be better for the kid ultimately? Is it going to be doing what they say they want and making sure they're comfortable and, like, listening to them and hearing them, or is it going to be making them do something that they don't want to do because you know that ultimately they'll either end up up liking it or that you think that it'll be, like, better for them in the long run to have done it? Like, it's. It's. If I ended up on. On the end of that decision that the parents are ending up on in this book, like, I would be devastated. Like, I was just. I would be. I would not be doing good.

[B]

No. And. And this mother is not doing good. She is, like, receiving Medical treatment, and her husband is with her in another town. Something I was not expecting about this book is that Duncan does spend at least, like, half a chapter checking in with each. Except for Rey, we don't really know. We do meet Ray's parents checking in with each of the parent sets and, like, giving us a little bit of background on who raised these kids. And that's just not a mode I recall from, like, the slasher film and.

[A]

Speaks, as far as I know from the slasher film, like, nobody exists in the world except for these teens and the hooks and then the hook guy. Yeah, right.

[B]

And so it is, like, I think it speaks a little bit to maybe why Duncan's voice, like, took off and resonated with people is that she is putting forward this pretty. Like, I had a hard time stopping reading this book. Like, I finished it very quickly. It's not very long. And I was pretty propelled through it by just the way that she structured her chapters. And I was also then struck by her being like, well, I do need to take a breath here and just, like, let you see who these parents are. And I need you to, like, see them interact with each other in a way that's a little surprising. There's a beat with Barry's parents where when they think he's gonna be paralyzed, and his mom is already kind of planning for, well, I guess he's gonna live with us for the rest of his life.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And his dad is like, stop it. Like, if he can't walk, he can't walk. We'll help him figure it out. But, like, that doesn't mean that he's not gonna be an adult who can care for himself and, like, live a full life. And our job is to help him get there. And, like, you've not spent any time with these people, and all of a sudden, this dad is, like, rolling out an amazing version of parenthood. And it's, like, pretty moving. So Duncan's just able to access that very quickly in a way that I respect. But so coming out of this meeting with the. With the dead boy's sister, you get a little bit of background on this family. And you also get a little note that someone taller than the boy's sister has been helping her paint this house. Her parents are out of town. While the mom gets care, she briefly mentions that she has an older brother and someone is. Is helping paint the house yellow on a spot that is taller than this woman can reach. It's like, the weirdest little. What clue.

[A]

That could be anybody for Any reason?

[B]

No.

[A]

Like, that's not anything.

[B]

There are men's. There's a men's shirt on the clothesline. Andrew. Ooh.

[A]

Where. Where on earth could you buy a men's shirt?

[B]

Weird. When no woman would ever wear. Yeah. A men's shirt for any reason, but yeah. So Ray meets Barry in the hospital. Ultimately, Barry gives him a cockamamie story because he's so sad. But that, you know, that's rectified. Later. Ray runs into Bud, who invites him to a Starbucks.

[A]

2010.

[B]

2010, they're going to Starbucks.

[A]

Invites them to a Starbucks where they can talk about the hour long season premiere of the Office.

[B]

And they kind of have a, like, listen. Bud's like, listen, I'm gonna date Julie kind of out of nowhere.

[A]

I don't care how many Arcade Fire albums you try to give me, I'm gonna date her. This is all 2010 stuff.

[B]

Bud is.

[A]

These are 2010 jokes.

[B]

Bud is an Iraq War vet. And that becomes important later. But okay, the. At the end of this weird coffee scene where Ray is like, why is this guy being, like, vaguely aggro to me? I obviously, I love his girlfriend, but why is this happening? He does notice. Did Bud have yellow paint on his hand? So then we get some of these, like, mini parent scenes. We get a fight between Helen and Kali where Kali is like, hey, listen, lady, I get that you're hot, but you treat people like trash. You've not asked me a single question about myself. Even though I help you get to the hospital for your boyfriend who was shot, I'm mad at you. And he storms off.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then we get a little snippet of a scene in Helen's apartment where a man with paint on his hands is waiting for her to arrive. And it's ominous, right, because there's no.

[A]

Two reasons you could have yellow paint on your hands. There's no, like, two place where you could get paint. There's nowhere else you get a men's shirt. Like, all these things all interlock.

[B]

No, it's pretty clean. And the book is moving so fast that it's like, well, of course, of course.

[A]

Unlike our episode about it.

[B]

Of course. And Helen comes back to her apartment and Kali is in there, what, sitting ominously. And he has yellow paint on his hand and he has trapped her in the room. And he starts monologuing about how when he was in Iraq and he got wounded and he learned that his brother died, and he came home and he found out that someone sent yellow roses to the funeral and he was very upset, and he is a little cracked up from the war, he says, which feels way more. I mean, obviously, like, this is not a thing that didn't happen in the Iraq war, but.

[A]

No, I don't.

[B]

The words feel very Vietnam War.

[A]

I don't. I don't think this is one where we can be like, yeah, one. One war left lasting scars on people who served in it, and the other one didn't. I feel like this was one of the ones that. That's pretty universal.

[B]

It is.

[A]

I'm not gonna back you up on this.

[B]

No, it's more just a war word choice. Like, I. I think that's kind of what I'm zeroing in on is that it feels a little more. If it's an older word choice, I think that. That.

[A]

That is fair.

[B]

Sure. I'm not saying that that part feels true. Across both conflicts.

[A]

I. I think there. There are. Yeah, they're definitely going to be ways where the specifics of the war, like, are evident and ones where actually the universality of. Of.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Of war is. Is going to make more of a statement.

[B]

This novel never uses the word trauma, and I do think that that is, like, PTSD and things like that is certainly something that comes into common usage.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Following the Iraq war. But he came home and he tracks down Julie, apparently because of the roses. He asked the cashier who sent the roses. She gives him a physical description because she clearly just paid with cash and from sending Julie a letter. He is then linked to Barry and Helen and Ray. And it's all very frightening. He's clearly trying to kill Helen right now. She manages to escape from a bathroom window. And, Andrew, I have to tell you. Spoiler alert for I know what you did last summer.

[A]

Here we go.

[B]

It was not until this very moment that I realized that Collie and Bud were the same guy.

[A]

Whoa. That's interesting, given the.

[B]

I had not read anything about the setup for this novel.

[A]

Just the name. The name thing that we had that we had talked about before, where Bud and Collingworth or whatever his name is, are very different. They're very different names.

[B]

Bud is a nickname that his little half brother gave him because he couldn't pronounce Collingsworth, so he called him Buddy or whatever.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Which you find out a little bit later. But, like, the. The both of them having gone to the war thing is not mentioned until this exact moment. I thought it was the novel doing. There are two guys at play. There's Bud and there's Kali. It's going to be one of them. And I had not at all suspected that the novel was going to reveal that they were the same person. And I thought that was pretty effective. Okay, I'm spoiling it for everyone, obviously, but I do think it works. I think it was a. A successful little, like, coup. Because it's not a movie. The fact that they could be the same person and you not know as a. As a reader is a little more plausible. Right. Like, she's not. You don't have. There's no actor portraying the same. It's like a thing that a. That a novel can get away with because it's like they're just names on a page. Right?

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You can't see that. But is actually Collie with, like a fake mustache.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Or whatever.

[B]

Yeah. Or like you shoot them from, like, an angle where you never see them or something. Right.

[A]

Or like. Or like Mike Myers is playing Austin Powers and Dr. Evil. Both. And not everybody realizes.

[B]

Not everyone realizes that it's very strange.

[A]

This is not a joke. We did just watch these movies with somebody was like, whoa, that's Mike Myers is both of those.

[B]

Yeah. And so not to drag her, but.

[A]

I don't think she's here.

[B]

I don't think she's here with us.

[A]

Like, an hour and five minutes into Helen.

[B]

Helen does escape resourcefully. And we never hear, you know, the novel ends before we hear from her again. Cut to Bud picking Julie up from a date. There's a bit where Julie reveals to her mom, who's having a lot of bad, ominous feelings, that she doesn't have a number by which she can reach Bud. She. He doesn't have a cell phone and she doesn't know his home phone number.

[A]

Seems that's. I feel like that's accurate to 2010. If I did not have either of those things, I would know. I would have no idea how to get into.

[B]

But would you have been on several dates with a person without having their phone?

[A]

No, probably not.

[B]

That's the thing. That's kind of weird. Yeah, that's kind of weird. And so when her mom is like, I don't think you should go on your date tonight. She can't even call him to cancel because she doesn't know how. So he shows up.

[A]

Well, so they hadn't even invented ghosting yet either.

[B]

No. He does lure her outside to his car, even though she. She's like, I'm not going on this date. And he reveals that, you know, he is the murderer or the intended murderer because they Murdered his half brother.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And he's going to kill her. But. And his whole thing is, like, if we brought this to court now, what would happen? Nothing. Like, nothing would really happen. Maybe one of you would go to prison for a few years, and that would not. Like, really. At most, that would happen. It's not worth it.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

He tries to kill her. Ray shows up just in time. And when Julie is like, why didn't he try to kill you? Ray's like, well, the punishment was going to be a world with you dead in it. And that's what I was going to have to live with. And then the novel's over.

[A]

I know what you did last summer.

[B]

I know what you did last summer. The 2010 reboot. The 2010 thing. I first clocked it when Barry's car had a GPS in it.

[A]

Mm.

[B]

Because his frat buddies are joking about whether or not he can find the way to Helen's place, because he goes there all the time. They're like, oh, you're gonna know the way there. And he's like, don't worry. My car has a gps. And I was like, I mean, did.

[A]

You pay Garmin for the map updates that you need to download to your GPS from your computer that's running Windows 7? They talk about how, like, whether they're going to Upgrade to Windows 7 or if they're going to keep running Window at Windows xp or, like, where. How they. How does anybody feel about ipods? Like, it's one thing to have phones being flux, but surely somebody would have an ipod.

[B]

True. Surely someone would. Especially if there's Starbucks. There's, like, lack of branded tech in this. No, it did give me pause because, like, I had not done any research. And so I'm reading this book that I think is from 1973, and someone has a GPS in their car. And I'm a little confused. That was the first.

[A]

You know, you don't know when anybody invented anything.

[B]

I truly do not.

[A]

They could have GPS in 1960.

[B]

I truly was like, wait a second. And then there's like. And then a few pages later, there's, like, a reference to texting, and I'm like, oh, okay. This book does have a thing, which we, I think, identified in some of our goosebumps reads, where references to modern technology will just kind of get appended to the end of a paragraph, and then no one will comment on it. Like, the. She even DJs her own webcast in the afternoon. No one else talks about. No one talks about this.

[A]

Well, I Think like you the.

[B]

Or paragraphs that end with, oh, I was trying to get a hold of my folks and I couldn't and my cell is dead. And then like, no one meant.

[A]

Yeah, but nobody talks about it. Like, there's a. There is a lack of specificity.

[B]

Yeah. That.

[A]

That, like, it is both. That it gets tacked on to the end of things. And then also everybody suddenly forgets every, like, brand name or every, like it's not important. Like how, how you would. You would text or call somebody, how you would look up who somebody is on the Internet. Like, we just, we suddenly don't. We suddenly don't know how to talk about these things.

[B]

Yeah, it's just. It's just a funny thing.

[A]

Like in R.L. stein, it was always like, oh, the newest.

[B]

The newest video games or whatever.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No, and. And the, The Washington Post obit for her has a little bit on this, referencing the. The updates. You can go find a Publisher's Weekly article about it from 2010. I think there were some rights that were getting renewed, which prompted reissues of the novels and, and, you know, at, you know, them asking her to update them. But Duncan told the LA Times the existence of cell phones created unexpected complications. My plots, she told them, are based on the heroine not being able to call for help. Other things, she remarked, had not changed. They included girls wanting to be loved, wanting to be needed, wanting to feel worth, wanting to find a place for themselves in life, wanting to figure out what was right and what was wrong. Now, I do think, like, I probably undersold the parts of this book that are Julie and Helen in particular, trying to figure out where they fit into. You know, the tragedy is an occasion for them to reevaluate themselves as, like, burgeoning adults. And they are trying to make good decisions or just decisions that will set them up for getting away from this awful thing that happened. And so you can look at that as a. An allegory or a metaphor for like, the transition into adulthood a little bit. And I think that is probably what if, like, if. If this is a book that maybe you read when you were younger or folks a generation older than us who read it, that might have been what it. What spoke to you about it, aside from the thriller mystery of it all. You know, I think it's one of these. We encounter these, I think, a lot where it's like, it's a genre book that has just that little extra going on in terms of character work. That is what makes it like, makes it a thing that's gonna sit on somebody's shelf until they go, what if we made it a slasher movie? Like, enough people are gonna be like, I've heard of that. We should do something with it. So cool book. Weird 2010 update. Very.

[A]

I can't. I'm like, I wish I could. I wish I had more like very 2010 specific references in my. In my.

[B]

My bag of Arcade Fire is very good, though.

[A]

Thank you. Thank you.

[B]

That was a good pull. And. And I do think it is, like, an. A very telling moment between the ubiquity of cell phones and the ubiquity of social media. Like that. If you. If you did these updates, even five years later, you'd have to account for a very different set of teen behavior.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you.

[A]

They'd have to be talking about Game of Thrones all the time. Like, it would be a whole thing.

[B]

Yeah, they would. They would indeed. So that's. I know what you did for last summer. I was very surprised by the reveal of the murder of the, like, intended murderer. Anyway, he doesn't actually kill anybody. Pretty good book. I think you probably enjoy it if you read it.

[A]

I'm glad. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[B]

So that's what I got.

[A]

I'm glad and I'm glad that got you a little bit.

[B]

It did.

[A]

I was surprised with the name Reve.

[B]

Yeah, I was, in fact, surprised. It was one of those things where I was looking for the suspects over the course of the novel. I definitely didn't believe that Helen's sister was a real suspect. And so I had these two boys kind of earmarked, and then the novel said, what if. What if they were the same?

[A]

Yeah, what if.

[B]

Pretty cool move. That's. I know what you did last summer, Andrew. I'm glad that we figured out what each of us read last summer. Got to the.

[A]

I'm glad that we did figure it out, because I did. I didn't get. I didn't dig too deep because I was just doing it. Like, I. It was five minutes before we were going to get on to do the. To record the podcast. I was like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna do this bit real quick. Let me just open this. Open the slack, open the spreadsheet, see what the record says.

[B]

Well, we got to the bottom of it. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, Andrew, for letting me tell you about this book. If you, the listener at home, want to tell us about your favorite part of the I know what you did last summer franchise, have you more of.

[A]

Spooktober 2025 or any any past spooktobers.

[B]

Yeah, let us know. Send us an email overdupodmail.com we would love to hear from you. You can also find us on social media. Verdupod Our theme song is composed by Nick Lauranges. Andrew if folks want to know more. Wow. What if they want to know more?

[A]

What if they want to know more?

[B]

Where do they go?

[A]

Podcast.com is the Internet website. Our home on the world Wide web. You go there, you get all the links to the stuff that Craig was just talking about and also the books that we have read. The ones we are going to read. A little web player thing, our whole archive, a bunch of other stuff. The other URL to know about is patreon.com overduepod we have mentioned it a couple times but that is a way to support the show directly financially and buy us books, buy us equipment, buy us web hosting, buy us childcare, buy us all kinds of little odds and ends that we need to make the time to make the show.

[B]

Little odds and ends like child.

[A]

Little odds and ends like child. It's just like important that some you it's frowned upon and just put them in a little cage and it's like with, with and like fill their food bowl up. You know you're not supposed to do that anymore. Speaking of things that are different now than they were in 1973. Patreon.com you also get access to our our Discord community. Early access to our long read project. We are we we either just have just or will soon post the latest episode of our silly marillion series about J.R.R. tolkien's the Silmarillion. We are rolling into the end of that. I don't know what we're gonna do next but you'll. You'll know when we do. And then our newsletter ad free episodes other stuff patreon.com overduepod I do not know what I what either of us are reading next week.

[B]

Week we'll find out.

[A]

It's going to be November.

[B]

It's so scary that we don't know.

[A]

Yeah. What's with the scariest thing of all is what happens after Spooktober.

[B]

Truly.

[A]

Because you think about. You spend so much time anticipating Spooktober that you don't, you know, you don't want to think about what comes after.

[B]

I. I don't want to know. I've got a bowl full of candy and I don't know who's going to eat it.

[A]

Probably me. All right. Everybody until we talk to you. Next time, please try to be happy.

[B]

You.

[A]

That was a Headgum podcast.