The Boyfriend

“My eyes are pulled away […] to the pulsation of her carotid artery, below the angle of her jaw. Most peoples’ hearts beat at about sixty to one hundred pulses every minute—I wonder how fast Daisy’s heart beats. If I could watch for a minute, I could calculate her heart rate.”

In the “Before” sections of the novel, McFadden establishes Tom’s obsession with blood and violence, linking it thematically to the physical and emotional violence perpetuated by his father, highlighting Cycles of Violence and Neglect in Families as a central theme. As an adult, he channels this fascination into a career as a medical examiner to indulge his violent tendencies in a socially acceptable context.

“All I want is a decent man who doesn’t have a drinking or a gambling problem, who is fun to talk to, who has a nice smile, and who likes me as much as I like them.”

By using the dating word as a backdrop for a psychological thriller, McFadden frames the challenges of finding basic romantic connection as a kind of exercise in psychological warfare. McFadden defines Sydney as a character through her deep desire for human connection—not an idealized fairy tale, but a relationship grounded in real, honest affection.

“No way,’ Bonnie says. ‘Dating is cutthroat these days. You do what you have to do to survive, you know? And if he’s a decent guy, it’s worth it.’”

Throughout the novel, McFadden presents the dating world as a dangerous place for single women, and men as a violent threat. The use of the words “cutthroat” and “survive” in this passage reflects this pessimistic view of dating. McFadden consistently pairs this bleak perspective with a contradictory optimism in her female characters that they will find true love if they just work hard enough, underscoring The Pressure of Social Expectations that position marriage as the end game for women.

“I lay my palm on my chest. ‘I will never kill a flower ever again.’ And I mean it. I will never kill a flower ever again.”

McFadden roots her characterization of Tom as a teen in the tension he feels between his violent impulses and what he believes to be right. He consistently finds himself internally at odds with the person he is and the person he thinks he should be. The author’s depiction of the adult Tom as a man able to control his violent impulses more effectively in order to fit in with others adds dramatic tension to his relationship with Sydney.

“She grins at me. ‘I figured you could handle it. Alison gets squeamish, but I know you won’t.’

‘Definitely not.’”

In the novel’s final twist, it is revealed that Daisy/Gretchen is responsible for the murders that have been pinned on Tom. Given that context, this passage can be interpreted as Daisy attempting to test or provoke Tom’s reaction to blood, suggesting that their shared love of blood and violence makes Tom and Daisy a perfect match.

“‘It’s none of your damn business what I do when I go out!’ he shouts at her. ‘Your job is to look pretty and have dinner on the table every night! And you’re doing a shitty job at both!’”

McFadden depicts Tom’s father as a violent alcoholic who frequently abuses his wife, establishing a pattern of misogynistic violence that Tom finds repulsive despite his fascination with violence. Over the course of his arc, Tom ultimately rejects his father’s misogyny, but embraces his brutality by adhering to a principled moral code—committing violence only in defense of women.

“But the one thing that was really important to her was finding her other half. She didn’t enjoy going on dates every single night. She did it because she was searching for love. She wanted someone to spend her life with.”

Like Sydney, Bonnie used Cynch to find dates because she truly believes in the possibility of finding love. Throughout the novel, McFadden presents dating apps like the fictional Cynch as a tool that both poses a threat to women’s safety and presents an opportunity for genuine connection, framing online dating as an inherent gamble.

“His name is Travis, and he looks exactly like his photo. […] We like the same movies (not Rocky), we have the same sense of humor, and best of all, he hasn’t made me FaceTime his mother once in the entire time we’ve been having coffee together.”

During Sydney’s date with Travis, McFadden suggests that she has not fully processed the trauma of Kevin’s assault. The references to Travis looking like his dating photo, not liking Rocky, and not FaceTiming his mother suggest that Sydney is experiencing the date through her memories of Kevin. The trauma of that date lingers into her date with Travis.

“Everyone thinks Slug is the creep and you’re the nice one, because you’re polite and smart and good looking. But you’re just as bad as he is. No, actually, you’re much worse. Because you hide it. He’s a creep, but you’re dangerous.”

This passage reflects the novel’s thematic interest in Navigating Misogyny and Safety Risks in the Dating World. Here, Allison accuses Tom of pretending to be a good guy in order to get close to and harm women. She suggests that men like Tom are more dangerous than obvious creeps because women may not suspect them of harm.

“‘I saw her walking down the street the other day,’ he goes on. ‘She was looking good. Don’t the Driscolls live on Peach Street? And isn’t her bedroom the one in the back…on the second floor?’”

This passage uses the overt threat posed by Tom’s father to highlight the broader threat of violence faced by women and girls of all ages. Tom’s father’s attempt to get under his son’s skin by threatening sexualized violence against Daisy demonstrates a misogynistic worldview in which women are pawns and property rather than people, and it provides the impetus for Tom’s pathological need to protect the women in his life from violent men despite his own violent tendencies.

“I reported him to Cynch. And I told the detective investigating Bonnie’s murder. So what else can I do? And he hasn’t done anything, you know, threatening exactly.”

Despite the fact that Kevin assaulted Sydney, appeared at what he believed to be her home, and repeatedly attempted to talk to her in her neighborhood, Sydney still believes that he has not done enough to warrant reporting to the police. Sydney’s willingness to excuse Kevin’s disturbing behavior suggests that the violence and misogyny that she repeatedly encounters while dating in New York City has caused her to normalize it.

“Murder is wrong, and I know that. But when I had that knife in my hand, I couldn’t stop myself. The urge to plunge the knife into his soft belly was almost overwhelming. And the truth is, I enjoyed watching him die. It was one of the best moments of my life.”

The sensory language that McFadden employs in Tom’s description of his father’s murder highlights the pleasure Tom takes in violence. However the author also distinguishes Tom from his father through his ability to repress those impulses as an adult, suggesting that Tom’s awareness of right and wrong provides self-imposed limits on his violence.

“I don’t want to hear about some super-serious relationship he had and why it went wrong. But at the same time, if he’s never lived with a woman by his age, that’s also a red flag.”

Despite the novel’s thematic interest in the safety risks of the dating world, female characters like Sydney and Bonnie still believe that monogamous relationships are the standard to which they should aspire. In this passage, Sydney suggests that men are expected to uphold the same standard, framing single men in their thirties as potentially problematic for not yet being married.

“Despite all my experience with blood, the thought of a person getting their fingers chopped off turns my stomach […] But Tom looks so crestfallen that he can’t tell me all about the hand ravaged by a firecracker. He’s quiet the entire rest of the way down the block.”

In this passage, McFadden uses Tom’s fascination with violence to present a heightened version of the desire to connect in romantic relationships. Although Tom’s moral code keeps his love of violence in check, it doesn’t diminish his natural desire to share the deepest parts of himself with a romantic partner. Sydney aversion to this aspect of Tom despite their romantic chemistry foreshadows the novel’s conclusion in which Tom realizes that the only person who will understand and accept him is Gretchen/Daisy.

“I can either dump the guy because he has commitment issues, or I can hope that things change and continue enjoying incredible sex.”

This passage points to the novel’s thematic interest in the importance of trusting instincts—an element that proves critical in Sydney’s arc, leading her to mistrust and ultimately reject Tom and embrace a relationship with Jake. McFadden emphasizes Sydney learning to trust her own instincts as an ongoing process—two months into her relationship with Tom, she knows that he is not willing to commit to her but remains with him despite her instincts urging her to run. As the novel builds toward its climax, Sydney begins to listen to her instincts and allow them to dictate her actions.

“‘And then there was this assault charge too, but it was so unfair,’ she goes on. ‘He told me all about it, and seriously, he didn’t do anything wrong! But with that in his record, we both thought it would be better if he had an alibi.’”

McFadden’s reveal of Gretchen as the true killer in the novel’s climax paints everything about her friendship with Sydney as duplicitous. Her relationship with Randy is revealed to be a ruse to get closer to Tom.

“Then I lift my eyes to look at the buildings surrounding me. There are two buildings that have a very decent view of my own building. And within those buildings, there are literally hundreds of windows. Hundreds of opportunities for someone to be watching me.”

McFadden positions Kevin and his stalking of Sydney as a tangible representation of the constant sense of danger she feels after Bonnie’s death. The degree of fear Sydney feels undergirds the novel’s epilogue in which Sydney chooses not to report Tom’s murder of Kevin. Her failure to report the crime reflects a conflicted kind of complicity in a murder that restores her sense of safety.

“And while I do believe she could do better, I can’t deny that he clearly loves her. Gretchen’s had her share of heartbreak, and she deserves a happy ending.”

Despite the novel’s emphasis on the misogyny and safety risks in the dating world, McFadden’s female characters still express a clear belief in the goal of finding romantic love through the process of dating. This passage suggests that Sydney is willing to let her friend marry a man with a record of stalking and assaulting women because she believes being alone would be worse.

“In a movie, this would be the moment when the bad guy realizes that I have caught on to him and that he can’t let me leave—at least, not alive. I watch the wheels turning in his brain.”

Throughout the novel, Sydney imagines herself as a romance heroine and Tom as her rescuing hero. In the novel’s final sections, however, she begins to see Tom as the perpetrator in a murder thriller instead. This meta-awareness of the danger of her position ultimately keeps Sydney safe as she learns to trust her own instincts about Tom.

“In spite of everything, he’s my best friend. When we were in grade school, nobody wanted to hang out with either one of us. Slug was more obviously weird and creepy, but I had trouble making friends too.”

The novel suggests that violent people are drawn to other violent people; in this instance, Slug and Tom are drawn together because of the violence and neglect they each experience in their home lives. Although he doesn’t admit it until the end of the novel, Tom is also drawn to Gretchen/Daisy because of her violent impulses.

“‘When I saw that man, I wanted to run over to you, grab you by the shoulders, and tell you to run away.’ Great. Even Arlene knew my boyfriend was a creep.”

Throughout the novel, Sydney blames herself for Bonnie’s death and for not knowing that Tom was a threat to them both—a failure to listen to her own instincts that ultimately catalyzes her personal growth. However, McFadden nuances Sydney’s self-flagellation in this scene during the novel’s conclusion by revealing Tom’s moral stance toward his own violence, suggesting that Sydney’s instincts were not completely off base where Tom is concerned.

“The investigation into his disappearance was shockingly minimal. As it turned out, my dad had been racking up debts all over town, and he’d gotten on the bad side of a few dangerous people, so everyone figured he took off to escape having his kneecaps broken. It didn’t hurt matters that the daughter of the town’s police chief was on my side.”

McFadden’s employs a dual timeline structure for her novel, allowing the events of the past timeline to dictate and inform events in the present. In order for the events of the present to unfold as they do, Gretchen/Daisy and Tom need to get away with murder in the past, leaving them free to perpetrate the crimes of the present.

“‘It won’t happen with anyone else but me,’ she says, ‘and you know it. There is nobody else who could possibly understand you the way I do. With anyone else, your life would be a lie.’”

In the novel’s conclusion, McFadden creates an abrupt shift away from the established trajectory of her protagonist—who spends the novel pursuing a traditional, romantic happy ending—and instead gives the happy ending to her antagonists, Tom and Gretchen/Daisy, who embrace their shared passions and run away together. This narrative choice underscores the novel’s thematic interest in cycles of violence in families.