I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan

The moment she opens it, her heart drops at the sight of the words, “I Know What You Did Last Summer”. Only this letter is different from the rest. The morning of Julie’s good news of learning she will be going to an Ivy League School, another letter arrives for her. Helen quit high school her Junior year in order to be Channel 5’s new Golden Girl personality. Barry is now one of the star players on his college football team. Ray ran off to California to be a fisherman not long after the incident. Julie, once the top cheerleader who had the lowest grades, is now accepted into an Ivy League school with a high GPA. A year passes by and they all have changed. Teens Julie, Ray, Barry, and Helen hit a child on his bicycle in the middle of the night while joyriding, drinking, and smoking pot. Granted, the novel was originally written in ’73, but I thought the film would be at least more similar than it had been. I got my hands on a revised copy of the novel and I was quite surprised with the vast difference between the novel and the book. When you hear the words, I Know What You Did Last Summer, nine times out of ten, people will immediately think of the classic 1997 slasher film starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. The events following the crime caused readers to look over their shoulder and teach them to always come clean. Back in the seventies, author Lois Duncan penned a novel detailing the events surrounding a group of teenagers from a small town who hid a dirty secret entailing a hit and run and the discarding of a body.

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan