45 pages • 1 hour read
Jeneva RoseYou Shouldn't Have Come Here
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaLiterary Devices
Dual First-Person Narrators
You Shouldn’t Have Come Here is told in alternating chapters between dual first-person narrators Grace and Calvin. Amid physical and emotional challenges, the narrators’ mutual attraction grows. However, the foreboding tone implies something malevolent will occur: Because Grace’s narration is fearful and reserved from the beginning, the reader naturally feels suspicious of Calvin. However, Calvin’s narration insists he would never harm her. Thus, the use of dual first-person narrators, especially unreliable narrators, forces readers to remain open to Calvin’s innocence and Grace’s inaction until he attacks her in Chapter 48. This attack reveals Grace as a fellow serial killer, with Chapter 52 introducing a third first-person narrator: Grace’s true self, Avery. Overall, Jeneva Rose uses narration to lull the reader into a false sense of security before subverting their expectations.
Foreshadowing
Rose foreshadows future murders through innuendo and nightmare-related imagery. For example, as Grace drives toward Calvin’s ranch, she thinks, “There was something both beautiful and terrifying about the isolation. It made you feel important and insignificant at the same time” (6). As if in response, some characters comment on her beauty and resilience, while others claim she does not belong at the ranch. Calvin himself declares “she is everything and she is nothing” (144), which foreshadows his murder attempt: Grace is his everything, whom he intends to reduce to nothing. In turn, Grace reduces him to nothing and sees her daughter Margot as everything, hinting at her desire to turn Margot into a potential accomplice or mirror.
As for Grace’s lucid nightmares, they serve as similar warnings. She dreams of Calvin tying her to a bed and stabbing her, foreshadowing not only Calvin’s intent to turn her into a trophy but her own knife attack on him. Characters namedrop the title of the novel four times—with the fourth recitation coming from Grace to Calvin in his bedroom.
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By Jeneva Rose
