49 pages • 1 hour read
Meghan QuinnSo This Is War
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Levi”
In the team conference room, Levi’s teammates tease him about not having a love life. They think he’s hiding something and suggest he’s involved with Wylie. The conversation ends when Wood appears. Wood takes Levi aside and demands updates on Wylie. Levi informs him Wylie is doing a good job and completing all the tasks without complaint. Wood reminds Levi that he wants her to hate the job and demands that Wood make Wylie fly to the East Coast where they’re playing so she doesn’t have time to work on her art. Levi tries protesting, but Wood reminds him of what’s at stake. He also insists that Wylie shouldn’t have her own hotel room and should stay on a cot in Levi’s room so that she feels uncomfortable. Levi is skeptical but agrees. Afterward, Levi calls Wylie and tells her to fly out.
Levi texts the girlfriends about what’s going on. They suggest that he amplify the sexual tension between him and Wylie when they’re sharing a room. They think if he massages her, he can get her to break and reveal her interest in him.
Levi tells Wylie to meet him in his room after she lands. She’s confused by the arrangement and warns Levi she doesn’t have appropriate clothes. After she changes, he offers to give her a massage, trying to play out his friends’ scheme. They talk for a while during the massage, but then Wylie falls asleep diagonally across the bed. Levi texts his friends about their failed plan. He then sleeps on the cot so he doesn’t wake Wylie.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Wylie”
Wylie wakes up embarrassed that she fell asleep in Levi’s bed. When he emerges from the shower, he asks her to lotion his body for him. He then demands that she get him coffee before taking a shower and changing. She’s irritated but doesn’t protest.
Throughout Wylie’s hectic morning, she thinks about what happened with Levi. She wishes she could work on her logo design but doesn’t have time. On the team plane, a flight attendant named Giselle asks Wylie about Wood’s relationship status. Wylie is surprised that Wood and Giselle are attracted to each other. Giselle reveals that another flight attendant, Jessica, gave her number to Levi. Wylie feels jealous, realizing how attractive Jessica is. Levi appears, interrupting their conversation. Wylie asks him about Jessica. He insists she isn’t his type, but Wylie is.
The team arrives in Chicago. Wylie and Levi are sharing a hotel room again. That night, Wylie realizes how intimate the dynamic is and wonders if Levi is taunting her. Then they go out for dinner, and she notices Levi flirting. Afterward, she calls Sandie with updates. Sandie suggests that Levi knows she’s onto him and urges her to torture him even more. Wylie decides to get him back as best she can.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Levi”
Levi texts the girlfriends. He thinks Wylie knows that he’s onto her. The friends urge him not to back down. That night in the hotel room, Levi turns up the AC so Wylie will want to share his bed for warmth. She joins him in the bed. They start touching each other, and Wylie takes off her shirt. Levi is convinced she’s going to give in, but she pulls away and climbs into the cot. Levi wants to go further with her but doesn’t want to lose.
After the game the next night, Levi returns to the room. Wylie has turned up the heat. She urges him to take off his clothes to cool down. She then straddles him and rubs against his genitals. When they are about to orgasm, she closes herself in the bathroom, touches herself, and loudly orgasms and screams his name. Wylie touches himself on the opposite side of the wall.
The next day, Levi’s teammates confront him about how different he’s been acting. They give him a bologna sandwich to remind him they care about him and are there if he needs them.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Wylie”
The night after they fly home, Levi asks Wylie to come to a club with him. Wood wants Levi to task Wylie with helping him pick up a woman. After Sandie gets off work, she goes to Wylie’s apartment to help her get ready to go out.
Levi has a plan to break Wylie. He’s arranged for them to go to one of his favorite sex clubs, where he’s friends with one of the women who works there, Samantha. Samantha is in on his game.
At the club, excitement overwhelms Wylie. There are naked couples having sex on stage and other patrons touching themselves or performing sexual acts with other people. Levi explains that everyone can take off their tops in the public space, but they can only have sex in the private rooms. Samantha approaches Wylie and asks about Levi. Wylie explains that she’s Levi’s assistant and there to help him pick up a woman. Samantha straddles Wylie, and they start touching each other while Levi watches. Wylie hopes she’s arousing Levi and making him want her. However, just as she and Samantha are about to kiss, Levi pulls Samantha away and takes her to a back room.
Desperate to be with Levi, Wylie chases after them. She stops the door before Levi can close them into the private room. She begs him not to sleep with Samantha because she wants to sleep with him. Levi tells Samantha to leave. Afterward, Levi and Wylie have sex in the private room.
Levi drives Wylie home. At the apartment, they talk, admitting that they shouldn’t have engaged in this game or let Wood use them. They don’t regret having sex and agree to “figure out how [they] can move forward from here” (311). Levi wants Wylie to be able to work on her art and agrees to take some of the blame when Wood finds out. They have sex again on Levi’s couch.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Wylie”
Wylie calls Sandie with updates. She talks about her and Levi’s sexual encounters and Levi’s interest in her life. Sandie is happy for her and suggests that Levi could be the one.
After the call, Wylie joins Levi in his room. They talk about their relationship and Wylie’s dynamic with Wood. Levi reiterates that he wants to support her no matter the risks. He tells her about his friends’ girlfriends, and she encourages him to text them with updates. While he texts them, Wylie touches his genitals. After he sets his phone aside, they have sex again.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
The events of these chapters complicate Levi and Wylie’s romantic, sexual, and working relationships. Throughout the novel thus far, Levi and Wylie have tried to tamp down their attraction to one another to seize agency within their complicated arrangement. Wylie has tried to use Levi’s attraction to her to get revenge for manipulating her and working with his father behind her back. Meanwhile, Levi tries to use Wylie’s attraction to him to tease her for toying with him. These back-and-forth dynamics reinforce the novel’s title, So This is War.
Levi and Wylie are embroiled in a protracted battle of wits. They have each used their intelligence to divine the other’s weaknesses and to use these weaknesses against each other. These dynamics intensify the Forbidden Love and Forced Proximity parameters of the novel, and they complicate both Levi’s and Wylie’s ability to strike a Balance Between Personal and Professional Life and navigate the complex Power Dynamics in Relationships. Both Levi and Wylie are obsessed with power and control and thus reluctant to give up. However, over time, their intensifying battle with each other grants Wood more power over both and thus threatens their ability to pursue a healthy relationship.
The stakes of Levi and Wylie’s relationship and the overarching narrative change when Levi and Wylie finally engage in consensual intercourse. The scenes at the sex club in Chapter 14 mark a narrative turning point and bring the protagonists to physical and emotional crossroads. Before Levi and Wylie have sex, Wylie is convinced that her games are her way of “controlling [her] goals” and “taking the men by the dick and […] making them suffer” (265). She tells Sandie that she is “strap[ping] on the war paint” and that she won’t give in to Levi’s power over her (265). The figurative language in this dialogue from Chapter 12 captures Wylie’s determination and desperation for power. However, her priorities shift once she understands that she and Levi might not have to be enemies. Once they have sex with each other in Chapter 14, they can interact and communicate as equals. Becoming sexually intimate with one another allows them to become emotionally vulnerable and honest with each other. The novel thus suggests that close relationships manifest in a myriad of ways but require comprehensive intimacy and trust.
The novel explores Identity and Self-Discovery Through Love through Levi and Wylie’s evolving romantic and sexual dynamic. Before Chapter 14, the characters are convinced they can only be true to themselves if they battle each other for control and beat their opponent at their own game. After they have sex, Levi and Wylie begin to converse in more open, mature, and authentic ways. For example, Wylie opens up to Levi about her fraught relationship with her dad and her desire to establish herself as an artist. Levi apologizes in turn and explains his involvement with Wood and his desire to support Wylie. In the scene where they return to Levi’s apartment from the sex club, the characters use direct, unadorned, and plain language with each other. Levi says things like, “I should have cherished you. I should have told you the truth right away” (310). In response, Wylie says, “I’m better than the person my dad thinks I am […] and I got lost” (310). The characters aren’t hiding their feelings as they have throughout the preceding chapters. The spareness and simplicity capture their desire to be genuine and honor who they are as individuals as they pursue a romantic and sexual relationship. They are learning how to support one another as people while loving each other, too. The novel thus suggests that sexual intimacy gives way to emotional intimacy and creates possibilities for encouragement, support, comfort, and empowerment.
