READING GROUP GUIDE

1. Jessica is very determined to prove herself the most successful

member of the class during Homecoming. Why does she need
to prove herself? How do you navigate the dangers of comparing
yourself to others, especially people in your graduating class or
distant social media friends?

2. Jessica describes Jack as “undeniably good” and struggles to think

she could ever be good. Do you think there is such thing as a truly
good person? Do any of the characters in this book qualify?

3. Jessica’s father is not alone in wanting his child to be extraor-

dinary. What are the consequences of placing those kinds of
demands on kids? Do you think Jessica is an outlier, or do a lot of
otherwise-­successful students worry about managing their par-
ents’ expectations?

InMyDreams_INT.indd 333 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 ASHLEY WINSTEAD

4. Jessica and Coop bond over lacking the privilege their friends
all share. Compare their strategies for fitting in without that
privilege.

5. The Phi Delta Fraternity of 2008 and the NFL of Frankie’s expec-
tations are not supportive places for LGBTQIA+ members. What
was your impression of his attempts to navigate those attitudes?
What would you do in his position?

6. Jessica and Caro argue about the “girl code” when it comes to
leaking the sex tape. How do you feel about the girl code? Do you
think they violated it? When?

7. Courtney thinks disdainfully that the East House Seven are all
so obsessed with each other that they’re practically in love. How
does that level of friendship develop throughout the book? Is it
healthy?

8. How is the phrase “supposed to be” used as a weapon throughout

the book? Whom does it hurt?

9. What consequences would you expect for Dr. Garvey when his
affairs came to light? How does tenure work against students in
cases like Garvey’s?

10. Describe the development of Mint’s anger. Was there ever a

moment when someone could have intervened? How could he
have channeled his anger in a healthier way?

11. Each of the East House Seven carries some form of guilt over
Heather’s death. Compare the ways they manage that guilt.

334

InMyDreams_INT.indd 334 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 IN MY DREAMS I HOLD A KNIFE

Besides the murderer, do you think any of them should be

blamed?

12. How did you view Jessica’s choice at the end of the book? Where
do you see her going?

335

InMyDreams_INT.indd 335 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 A CONVERSATION
WITH THE AUTHOR

Jessica’s overachieving attitude is so familiar. Do you have any per-

sonal strategies for maintaining balance while working toward your
goals?
Balance is not something I’m known for, actually. I could probably
use some advice from my dear readers on how to reach it. I tend to
become consumed by ideas or goals; I expect a lot from myself, and I’m
very impatient about next steps, achievements. But I’ve made peace with
this. I am an intense, ambitious woman.
My trick is to allow my obsessions to exist as a hum in the back of
my mind, a thing I return to throughout the day when work meetings
get dull. It becomes something that pushes me, a fire that fuels me day
in and day out, keeping me from burning out. So maybe that means
I do have balance, if I’ve reduced that big, hungry wanting we all feel
to a constant hum in my mind? I’m certainly not running around like
Jessica, going to wild, destructive lengths to secure the things I want.
Even though clearly, I’m capable of imagining those things! I guess my

InMyDreams_INT.indd 336 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 IN MY DREAMS I HOLD A KNIFE

advice is to nurture the flame of your desire, tend to it daily, and become
friends with it, so neither of you undermines the other.

Speaking of goals, throughout the book there are many cases of

“success” coinciding with “failure.” For example, Jessica feels very suc-
cessful in her consulting career, while knowing that she failed all her
specific post-­graduate goals. Do you have any examples of failures that
ultimately led you to a different kind of success?
I am going to say something bold: I’ve failed at almost everything I’ve
attempted in my life. At the very least, I’ve failed to do things the way I
expected. In fact, I started writing this book after being crushed by my
failure to achieve something I really wanted. This book was born out of
failure.
Stewing in grief and anger, I thought to myself, Why do I feel so
frenzied by this disappointment, so desperate? And what if there was a
woman who didn’t tamp down those feelings but explored them to their
dark ends? And so a villain was born.
The thing about Jessica is, on one hand, she’s a privileged woman
most people would look at and say, you have so much. You’re success-
ful. Part of her recognizes that (and would polish those words like
trophies if she heard them). But on the other hand, she’s not success-
ful in the ways that are personally meaningful to her. I don’t think
she’s capable of recognizing, at the start of the book, what meaningful
success looks like to her—­not to her dad, or Mint, or the world writ
large. It will take her the whole book to do battle with other people’s
versions of success and discover her own—­and by the end, she’s
done so many terrible things, been so close-minded, that she may
not deserve to be successful. I’m leaving the question of what Jessica
deserves up to the reader.
If you don’t mind me wearing my scholar hat for a moment, one
of Jessica’s biggest, earliest flaws is that she swallowed the capitalist,

337

InMyDreams_INT.indd 337 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 ASHLEY WINSTEAD

patriarchal system wholesale. She’s so deeply conditioned by the neolib-

eral idea of what success means: that she has to be the best at everything;
that she has to achieve this uncomplicated, unnuanced version of first
place in every aspect of her life in order to be valuable. It’s an ugly belief
system because it’s ultimately about achieving power and dominance
over other people; there’s no room for give and take. Jessica’s fatal flaw
is that she saw how bad this belief system treated people like her father
and she still subscribed wholeheartedly; in fact, she contorts herself in
service of it almost until the end.
Unlike Jessica, I’ve worked hard to accept that failure is normal, that
there’s no one right way to be, and that if I tell myself I’m successful,
poof! I am. I’m the arbiter of value in my own life. Who else’s opinion
matters, in the end?

Jessica tries to think of herself and others as “good” or “bad.” Do you

think people can be just one or the other? Do you think book charac-
ters follow the same rules?
I don’t think anyone is good or bad—­I think we all hold a range of
possibilities, and our circumstances tug, seduce, compel, or command
certain things out of us. These interactions form patterns of behav-
ior that concretize over time until, often, the way we behave is more a
matter of habit.
I think the fact that we can recognize a range of possibilities within
ourselves and within one another is the reason we find storytelling so
compelling. We want to trace the good in the people we might other-
wise call bad, uncover the bad in the people who appear good. We’re
all hungry to explore our complexities through book characters, so in
that way, I do think they follow the same rules (the interesting ones, at
least!). The license book characters have is they get to explore the outer
limits of our good and bad tendencies, extremes most of us wouldn’t be
able to get away with. So in that way, reading a book is like watching an

338

InMyDreams_INT.indd 338 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 IN MY DREAMS I HOLD A KNIFE

experiment unfold: What could happen if I leaned into certain possibil-

ities within myself?

As much fun as it is to watch your characters crumble, you highlight

the weight of trauma, insecurity, toxic friendships, and expectations
bearing down on them. Do you have any advice for college students, or
anyone else, who are trying to manage that weight?
My advice is hard-­earned from personal experience, so it might not
be right for everyone. With that said, the most important thing I have
done is to work on no longer feeling ashamed of myself or anything
that’s happened to me. That’s my advice: let go of shame and guilt.
Shame can creep in and manifest as a lot of other things—­anxiety,
sleeplessness, anger—­so take the time to really explore yourself and
the weight you’re feeling. Look at yourself the way you would a book
character, putting together the narrative of your life and thinking
about the many events that have shaped you, shaped your desires and
your actions, good and bad. See yourself in your complexity, and then
give yourself the grace and forgiveness you would give any interesting,
complex character.
For anyone struggling with sexual trauma, allow yourself to feel the
way you feel. Don’t get tamped down or hushed up by the world. Be full
of rage, if you are full of rage. Allow yourself time to stop the world if you
need to. Know you are loved in the full complexity of who you are and
that you are not alone.
The best thing I discovered in college was that I had access to free
counseling. (This is true of grad school, too.) What a gift. Talking to
someone else about how you’re feeling is healing.

When all your characters have secrets, how do you get to know them?
Did you have their failures and alibis mapped out before you began
writing, or did you figure out their roles as you went?

339

InMyDreams_INT.indd 339 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 ASHLEY WINSTEAD

Ah, people’s secrets are the best way to get to know them! That’s actu-
ally how I dove into each of my characters—­I went right for the jugu-
lar. I do a ton of character and relationship mapping before writing any
book, and especially for this one. I wrote pages about who each char-
acter was—­not just the surface stuff but, more importantly, how they
saw themselves, what they wanted in their heart of hearts, what stood
in the way of getting what they wanted, and what, if taken from them,
would make their lives crumble. Then I mapped their relationships with
each other (Jessica and Mint; Mint and Caro; Frankie and Coop; etc.)
and particularly with Heather. I was looking to understand how Heather
could threaten each of them in ways that would make them plausible
suspects, so she had to be connected to what they most wanted and were
most afraid to lose.
Once I feel like I know what makes my characters tick, then I turn to
plot. The plot grows logically and usually organically out of characters’
worst fears and deepest desires, and how those things interplay. And
yes—­I keep a very meticulous account of alibis and timelines! I actu-
ally overwrite those parts for myself beforehand, so I go into writing
each scene knowing more than what’s explicitly on the page. Hopefully
it contributes to a larger mood and tension.

How did you keep everything—­the repressed memories, the motiva-

tions, the insecurities—­straight once you figured them out?
I devoted a lot of time to imagining who each character was and how
they felt about each other and themselves, so I felt like I knew my char-
acters inside out. By the time I started writing In My Dreams I Hold a
Knife, it was almost like they were friends whose stories I’d absorbed.
After my pre-­writing, I wrote an extremely meticulous outline, chapter
by chapter, where I color-­coded the different storylines so I could liter-
ally visualize the plots weaving together.

340

InMyDreams_INT.indd 340 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 IN MY DREAMS I HOLD A KNIFE

There’s a lot of darkness in this book. If you could shield a single char-
acter from the secrets and horror, who would it be?
You know, Amber Van Swann didn’t deserve an ounce of what
happened to her. Neither did Heather, of course, though she wasn’t the
easiest person to get along with, either. I’d shield those two. Everyone
else either bought their trouble or needed a wake-­up call.

What draws you to psychological thrillers as a writer? As a reader?

When I pick up a psychological thriller as a reader, I’m asking it for one
thing: Tell me who I am—­the parts I haven’t figured out yet for myself.
Of course, I’m reading for all the other things, too: getting hooked by a
mystery and feeling that burning desire to uncover the answers, the plea-
sure of being surprised, the beauty of urgent language and the thrill of
swift pacing. But it’s that hunger to see characters react to dark, thrilling,
high-­stakes, emotionally packed events that really draws me. What would
I do? What parts of the character resonate or repel me? Even better, what
does the book say not just about me as an individual but the larger we?
As a writer, I’m drawn to the genre for a reason that’s both simpler and
harder to describe: I write psychological thrillers when I have a hunger
to tell. When there’s something burning inside me and I feel an almost
obsessive urgency to get it on the page. To me, it’s a genre of confes-
sion, and I tend to write hunched over, breathing faster, heart pounding.
Writing psychological thrillers is like falling under a spell that won’t be
broken until I get the truth down on the page.

Do you have a writing routine? How do you get to the page and put
together an entire novel?
I’m the queen of routines. I love them. I write in the exact same
spot every day, with the exact same rhythms. I am not a spontaneous
creature! But I think it helps my productivity. I try to write as much as
humanly possible every day, so I fit in writing after pouring my first cup

341

InMyDreams_INT.indd 341 4/12/21 4:17 PM

 ASHLEY WINSTEAD

of coffee in the morning and before starting my other work. As soon

as the work day is over, I switch back over to my novel, and then the
evening hours fly by until it’s time for wine (and hopefully my husband
is making dinner). Usually I’m able to pull myself out of my fictional
world to at least eat, but then it’s right back to writing until my eyes
glaze over and I drag myself to bed. Luckily, at that point, I usually get a
second wind that lets me read in bed—­my favorite thing in the world.

What are you reading these days?

This will be a time capsule, because I’m a voracious reader and go
through about two to three books a week, across genres. Right now, it’s
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat, Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan,
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, and More Than Just a Pretty
Face by Syed Masood. All excellent. But my constants are poetry: on
any given week, you can find me re-­reading Crush by Richard Siken and
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes.
Siken and Hayes slay me.

342

InMyDreams_INT.indd 342 4/12/21 4:17 PM