Here is a comprehensive collection of important quotes from the book, complete with detailed analysis.
Most Important Quotes
The Cracks in the Facade
"There’s something off about the house. Something that nags at me, makes me feel uneasy, though I don’t know what it is that makes me feel this way. On the surface, it’s perfectly idyllic... But I know better than to take things at face value."
Speaker: Sadie Foust | Context: Chapter: SADIE (beginning of the book); Sadie’s first impression of the Maine house after Will’s sister Alice dies
Analysis: Sadie’s unease sets a Gothic tone and primes the reader to distrust the idyllic surface of this new life. The house functions as a mirror for the narrative itself—beautiful yet ominous—signaling the novel’s preoccupation with Deception and Manipulation. As the focalizer, Sadie’s intuition becomes a compass for the story’s creeping dread, even as her perceptions prove unreliable. The line foreshadows that what’s “off” extends beyond the house to her marriage, the town, and ultimately her own fractured psyche.
The Manipulator's Claim
"If it wasn’t for me, they never would’ve met. He was mine before he was hers. She forgets that all the time."
Speaker: Camille | Context: Chapter: CAMILLE (first Camille chapter); Camille recounts orchestrating Will and Sadie’s meeting
Analysis: Camille’s possessive diction—“mine,” “hers”—reduces people to property, encapsulating jealousy as a power struggle centered on Will Foust. The claim creates instant dramatic irony: readers know a secret Sadie doesn’t, intensifying the tension between appearance and reality. The line exemplifies the novel’s architecture of control, foreshadowing the emotional warfare and Gaslighting and Psychological Abuse that define the triangle. It’s memorable because it reframes the romance as a rigged game of ownership, not intimacy.
The Revelation of a Killer
"I didn’t need to connect with Morgan. I needed to disconnect. I didn’t know she lived on the island when we moved here. If I did, we wouldn’t have come... Morgan was a stupid kid the night I took Erin’s life."
Speaker: Will Foust | Context: Chapter: WILL (final chapter); Will confesses to murdering Morgan Baines and his former fiancée, Erin
Analysis: Will’s confession detonates the plot, retroactively staining every calm, rational gesture with predation. His chilling euphemisms—“disconnect,” “stupid kid”—expose a calculating mind that minimizes victims and evades accountability. The monologue perfects the novel’s slow-burn misdirection, bringing Deception and Manipulation to a devastating payoff and clarifying why Morgan Baines was a threat. It’s the hinge of the mystery, proving Sadie’s early dread was not paranoia but prescience.
A Fractured Identity
"Dissociative identity disorder often begins with a history of abuse at a young age. The alternate personalities form as a coping mechanism. They serve different purposes, like protecting the host. Standing up, speaking up for the host. Harboring the painful memories."
Speaker: The Therapist | Context: Chapter: SADIE (near the end; interrogation/evaluation reveals Sadie’s alters, including Camille and a child)
Analysis: This clinical explanation reinterprets the novel’s “hauntings” as psychological fallouts of Trauma and Its Lasting Effects. It clarifies how alters function narratively—Camille as protector and enforcer, the child as the keeper of terror—transforming scattered clues into a coherent psychological map. By naming the mechanism, it sharpens the theme of Unreliable Perception and Memory, revealing why Sadie’s narration fractures. The moment pivots Sadie’s arc from survival to integration, redefining the antagonist as both external and internal.
Thematic Quotes
Deception and Manipulation
"Cheating spouses are masters at manipulation, she said. He may tell you things to keep you from ending the affair. He has both a wife and a lover on the side. He has no incentive to change."
Speaker: The Therapist (as recalled by Camille) | Context: Chapter: CAMILLE; Camille recalls therapy advice about her affair with the married Will
Analysis: Filtered through Camille’s perspective, this advice becomes a study in selective hearing and self-deception, reinforcing Deception and Manipulation. The counsel describes a common cheater, yet Will’s machinations prove far darker, turning ordinary duplicity into predation. Ironically, Camille treats the warning as validation, illustrating how victims can internalize rationales that keep them in harm’s orbit. The quote reveals nested layers of deceit: Will manipulates both women, Camille manipulates herself, and the truth is continually fogged by desire.
Trauma and Its Lasting Effects
"You have no fucking clue what it was like to hear her cry in the middle of the night. Pain so bad at times that she couldn’t help but scream... She didn’t want me to help her live. She wanted me to help her die."
Speaker: Imogen | Context: Chapter: SADIE; at the cemetery, Imogen reveals Alice’s death was assisted suicide
Analysis: Imogen’s confession strips away her “hostile teen” mask and exposes grief hardened into armor, a raw embodiment of Trauma and Its Lasting Effects. The stark language and cadence place the reader inside a night of unendurable suffering, complicating judgments about her behavior. By reframing her rage as the residue of an impossible mercy, the scene humanizes Imogen and deepens the novel’s moral ambiguity. It’s unforgettable because it confronts the ethics of caretaking and the cost of love under extreme duress.
Unreliable Perception and Memory
"Are you prone to periods of blackouts, Dr. Foust? Thirty minutes, an hour pass that you can’t remember?... I didn’t black out for the extent of my young childhood. I just don’t remember."
Speaker: The Therapist and Sadie Foust | Context: Chapter: SADIE; during evaluation, Sadie admits she has no memories before age eleven
Analysis: The therapist’s clinical questioning punctures Sadie’s confidence in her own mind, crystallizing Unreliable Perception and Memory. The ellipses and measured phrasing heighten the dread of discovery, as “blackouts” become signposts for dissociation and alter control. For a physician who prizes evidence, acknowledging a childhood-sized void is a devastating epistemic blow. This exchange systematically dismantles the narrator’s authority, preparing the reader to reinterpret the entire plot through the lens of trauma-induced fragmentation.
Character-Defining Quotes
Sadie Foust
"We can never really know what anyone else is thinking. And yet when children make poor choices, parents are the first to be blamed."
Speaker: Sadie Foust | Context: Chapter: SADIE; reflecting on Otto’s bullying incident in Chicago while waiting in the car
Analysis: Sadie’s clinical detachment collides with parental guilt, revealing a mind trained to diagnose but haunted by unknowables. Her anxiety about judgment foreshadows the scrutiny that will follow her to Maine and ties back to the hidden stresses inside her family. The line echoes the book’s central tension between surface and depth: public narratives blame parents, while private realities remain opaque. It defines Sadie as a thinker on the outside looking in—even within her home—mirroring her larger struggle to assemble a truth she cannot fully remember.
Will Foust
"This is our home, Sadie. Whether we like it or not, for now this is our home. We have to make do."
Speaker: Will Foust | Context: Chapter: SADIE; after Sadie wants to leave Maine in the wake of Morgan’s murder and the bloody washcloth
Analysis: Will’s words masquerade as steadiness but function as containment, converting the house into a trap disguised as pragmatism. “Make do” becomes a chilling directive once we know his crimes, revealing how domestic rhetoric can serve coercion. The cadence of reasonableness is itself a tool of Gaslighting and Psychological Abuse, recasting fear as overreaction. The line distills his duality: public caretaker, private controller.
Camille
"I was addicted. I couldn’t get enough of him. I watched him, I mirrored him. I followed his routine. I knew where his boys went to school, which coffee shops he patronized, what he ate for lunch."
Speaker: Camille | Context: Chapter: CAMILLE; detailing her escalating obsession and stalking of Will
Analysis: The language of addiction reframes desire as compulsion, and the list-like syntax traces surveillance turning into ritual. Camille’s methodical mirroring casts her as both hunter and shadow, a predatory presence who erases boundaries to feel whole. As an alter, she channels Sadie’s protective fury into action, embodying the psyche’s hard, amoral edge. The quote is defining because it fuels the book’s menace: obsession mistaken for intimacy, vigilance for love.
Imogen
"Stay the fuck away from me."
Speaker: Imogen | Context: Chapter: SADIE; Imogen’s first words to Will and Sadie upon their arrival in Maine
Analysis: This boundary-setting outburst functions as a verbal barricade, signaling trauma before the novel names it. The clipped, profane command refuses caretaking narratives and asserts control over a space newly invaded by outsiders. Initially read as teen hostility, the line later registers as grief’s alarm system—self-protection in the aftermath of catastrophe. It’s a thesis statement for Imogen’s arc: anger as a survival strategy shaped by Trauma and Its Lasting Effects.
Opening and Closing Lines
Opening Lines
"There’s something off about the house. Something that nags at me, makes me feel uneasy, though I don’t know what it is that makes me feel this way."
Speaker: Sadie Foust | Context: Chapter: SADIE; the novel’s first lines
Analysis: The book opens with intuition rather than incident, establishing suspense through mood and perception. The house becomes an atmospheric barometer, measuring pressures that will explode inside the family and Sadie’s mind. This framing aligns the reader with a narrator whose instincts are sharp even when her memory is not, seeding Unreliable Perception and Memory. It’s an elegant thesis for a domestic gothic: the familiar is already uncanny.
Closing Lines
"If time can turn something so undesired into something so loved, the same can happen to all of us. The same can happen to me. It’s happening already."
Speaker: Sadie Foust | Context: Chapter: SADIE; final lines of the book
Analysis: The beach glass metaphor captures post-traumatic transformation: abrasion becomes polish, shards become keepsakes. The anaphora (“The same can happen…”) turns hope into a mantra, translating survival into forward motion. Having faced external danger and internal division, Sadie claims a future defined by integration rather than fracture. The closing affirms the novel’s quiet optimism—that even the most jagged lives can be made smooth by time and care.