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.
Prologue-Chapter 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “Levi”
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes sexual violence and exploitation.
The coach of the Vancouver Agitators, Will Wood, demands that the general manager Andie Lintour remove Levi Posey from the team. He caught Levi having sex with his daughter Wylie Wood in the locker room. Andie argues that he can’t fire his star defenseman over the issue. Furious, Wood benches Levi. Levi knows he messed up, but the situation is more complicated than it seems. He decides to consult his teammates to make a plan and resolve everything.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Wylie”
One year prior, Wylie took a trip with her dad so she could visit her best friend Sandie. In the hotel, they got ready to go out and talked about Wylie’s dad. He’s been single since Wylie was little and is often difficult to please. The friends finished dressing and went down to the hotel bar. Sandie worried they’d run into Wylie’s dad, but Wylie insisted that because she was a 21-year-old graduate student, she could do what she wanted.
In the bar, Sandie ran into her crush Dale, who asked her out. Wylie told Sandie to take the date, and they’d catch up another night. After they left, Wylie ordered a drink at the bar. Levi Posey sat next to her. Wylie knew who he was, but he didn’t know who she was. They flirted and became increasingly intimate. Wylie considered going upstairs with Levi and kissed him; however, she saw her dad in the dining room when she looked over Levi’s shoulder. She pulled away and left without giving Levi an explanation or her name.
A year later, Wylie sits in her dad’s office eating a bologna sandwich. She took it from the cafeteria fridge but doesn’t know whose it is. When Wood joins her, Wylie tells him she wants to drop out of graduate school. She’s studying business but wants to pursue art instead. Furious, Wood demands that she finish her final year because she’s living with him and he’s paying for her education. Wylie tries to explain how much she cares about art and doesn’t want to waste any more time on business. Finally, Wood gives in on one condition. If Wylie can work a job, support herself, and find housing for the next semester, he’ll let her drop out. He won’t give her money, but he’ll orchestrate the job. He says she’ll be a personal assistant like “all other struggling creatives” (27). Although overwhelmed, Wylie takes the deal.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Levi”
Levi discovers that someone has eaten his bologna sandwich and interrogates his teammates. His best friends on the team are Silas Taters, Pacey Lawes, Eli Hornsby, Halsey Holmes, and Oden O’Connor. They all know not to touch his bologna. They’ve been close for years, and Levi has helped most of them find their current significant others. Wood then appears and demands to see Levi in his office. Levi feels nervous as he often gets in trouble with Wood. He has a reputation for being a lady’s man, and Wood often reprimands him for setting a bad example.
In the office, Wood reminds Levi of the time he saved him from sleeping with an undercover reporter. In exchange, Wood wants Levi to hire his daughter as his personal assistant. However, Wood wants Levi to make her life miserable so that she returns to school and forgets her dreams of being an artist. Wood also insists that Levi can’t be friends with her or sleep with her. Levi is confused by the arrangement but knows he doesn’t have a choice. Wood promises to email him a list of instructions.
After the game, Levi reports to Wood’s office to meet his daughter. When she arrives, Levi is shocked to see she’s the girl from the bar. Ever since their interaction, he has been looking for her and even hired a private investigator to find her. Wood tells them to meet in a conference room about working together. Once in private, Levi tries to get Wylie to talk about the night they met. She dismisses it, insisting she wants to focus on the job. Levi drops the issue but is mesmerized by her eyes.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Wylie”
Wylie tries to focus during the meeting with Levi but is overwhelmed by how attractive he is. She doesn’t want to get distracted as she needs to prove to her dad that she can support herself. While they’re discussing logistics, Wylie admits she doesn’t have a place to live. Wood told Levi he can’t house Wylie, but he offers her the nanny apartment connected to his house if she promises not to tell Wood. Levi admits he’s uncomfortable with the arrangement and they agree to put their kiss in the past. They exchange numbers and make plans to meet in the morning.
The next morning, Wylie tells Wood she’s going to look at apartments. On her way to Levi’s, she texts Sandie, admitting she’s attracted to Levi but can’t be with him because of her dad.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Levi”
Wood emails Levi a list of instructions and a specific set of tasks for Wylie. They’re all menial and senseless, but Levi knows he doesn’t have a choice. He sits on his couch reflecting on the arrangement and wishing he didn’t have to treat Wylie poorly. He texts his teammates but doesn’t reveal that Wylie is the girl he was looking for.
Levi tells himself to keep things professional when Wylie arrives. However, they joke and flirt throughout Levi’s tour of the house. She compliments his space and remarks on his good taste. He then takes her to the nanny's apartment. He did nothing to fix it up and feels embarrassed showing it to her. A mouse scurries through the room, and he steps on it and kills it. Disgusted and upset, he screams. Back in the kitchen afterward, Wylie notices Levi’s baking supplies. Levi privately imagines them baking naked together. Wylie asks if he has plants, and he tasks her with buying him a Ficus. Afterward, he takes her to his room, where she examines his belongings and asks how she can help him pack for away games. She’s surprised he doesn’t own designer duffles and has a drawer of condoms and vibrators. One falls to the floor and buzzes around Levi’s foot. He’s embarrassed, but Wylie seems amused.
Before Levi leaves for practice, he gives Wylie her father’s tasks, which include typing up a book in a different font, hand sharpening 50 pencils, sorting out Skittles by color, and cleaning a stain on his placemat.
Afterward, Levi texts his friends but doesn’t reveal anything further about Wylie.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Wylie”
Wylie invites Sandie over to help her clean and set up her new space. They talk about Wylie’s crush on Levi while they work. Wylie also tells Sandie about Levi’s odd chores, which they agree seem out of character. The friends spend several hours painting and arranging the room. That night, Wood calls Wylie, surprised to hear she has a new place already because he only gave her a week to move out. She cuts the call short to get some rest. At one in the morning, Levi texts asking her to pick up bagels from a shop that’s 45 minutes away. She’s even more annoyed when he tells her to put them in the freezer.
Wylie is exhausted the next morning when Levi texts telling her to meet him in the kitchen. He doesn’t eat the bagels and instead asks her to pick him up a smoothie and bring it to the arena. He then hands her a book on Vermont and tells her to retype it. After he leaves, Wylie feels annoyed but tells herself everything will be okay.
Prologue-Chapter 5 Analysis
The opening chapters of the novel introduce the primary narrative conflicts, stakes, characters, and themes. These chapters also establish the structural rules of the novel, which restrict the main characters’ actions and increase tension. The narrative is written from the first-person perspective of the two protagonists, Levi Posey and Wylie Wood, and these alternating storylines quickly allow for the exploration of several tropes and themes.
Firstly, So This Is War relies upon the Forbidden Love and Forced Proximity tropes. Levi’s and Wylie’s perspectives capture the tension between the two characters as they are forced into proximity without being able to act on their intensifying feelings. Their new working relationship comes to dictate the novel’s primary conflict, as neither Levi nor Wylie has a choice about the arrangement. Their imposed working relationship introduces the difficult Balance Between Personal and Professional Life. Indeed, as Levi and Wylie spend more time together, they not only have to quiet their feelings for each other so as not to upset Coach Will Wood, but they must also strive to preserve their professional reputations by compartmentalizing their personal desires.
Both Levi’s and Wylie’s relationships with Wood entrap the main characters and limit their autonomy over both their personal and professional lives. In the context of Levi’s storyline, Levi has no choice but to accept Wood’s arrangement with Wylie because he “needs […] to return [Wood’s] favor” of saving him from sleeping with an undercover reporter (35). Furthermore, Levi’s job depends on his relationship with Wood. Because Levi has a historically tempestuous relationship with his coach, he is eager to appease him in the narrative present. Wood therefore has power over Levi’s future and can limit his opportunities if he doesn’t go along with his plan to hire Wylie. Meanwhile, Wylie’s character is similarly indebted to Wood. Wood is not only Wylie’s father; he is her source of financial backing. He pays for her education and houses her. Wood therefore has power over Wylie’s future, too, and can control how she spends her time and if she can support herself. Because he’s convinced that she’s “throwing away a stable future” by threatening to drop out of her graduate program (25), he fabricates the arrangement with Levi to control her. In these ways, Wood is the character with the most power. He is using Levi and Wylie for his own gain and to get the outcome that he wants.
The complexities of Power Dynamics in Relationships are also shown through the working relationship Wood creates between Levi and Wylie. Levi and Wylie have had feelings for each other since they met a year before the narrative present. Their feelings are mutual, which suggests that the characters are equals and aren’t vying for one another’s attention. However, their new working arrangement upsets this balance of power. Levi must now “act like an ass to [Wylie] because her father wants to prove a point, and somehow [he’s] been placed in the middle” (63). Levi’s behaviors to Wylie throughout their early interactions therefore cast him as an insensitive, domineering, and petty boss. Wylie is skeptical of the meaningless tasks he gives her and his seeming disregard for her feelings. The novel particularly uses the errand to retrieve bagels to represent this power dynamic. Levi isn’t just asking for something unreasonable; he’s failing to take her comfort and sleep schedule into account. In these ways, the bagels reify Levi’s power over Wylie. However, Wylie doesn’t question Levi because he’s the authority figure in the relationship by employing her. These complex interpersonal issues reveal the ways in which imbalances of power might complicate human interactions and leave the individual feeling helpless and alone.
Wylie and Levi’s working relationship also challenges both characters to consider their priorities and reflect on what they want for themselves. Because Levi has “been searching high and low for over the better part of a year” for Wylie (46), he’s desperate to talk about what happened between them when they first start working together. However, Wylie’s point of view on the matter diverges from Levi’s, as she wants to “keep this professional” and prove herself “to be the best assistant [she] can be” (49, 50). Wylie has higher stakes in the arrangement and wants to focus on her future. Her text messages and conversations with Sandie reveal that she is indeed attracted to Wylie. However, she wants to set her feelings aside because her father would be furious if she and Wood got together, and she is desperate to prove herself and pursue her dreams. Meanwhile, Levi must similarly protect his reputation and focus on his goals despite his feelings. His decision not to tell his friends about the matter reveals his attempt to maintain his professional and personal integrity.
