Just Listen

The theme of truth and lies is deeply ingrained in this story. Annabel’s main struggle revolves around telling the truth rather than suffocating her real thoughts, feelings, opinions, and experiences. In one of the worst-case scenarios, Annabel’s omission of Will raping her not only harms her mental, emotional, and physical health, causing embodied trauma symptoms like vomiting whenever she’s triggered, but it ruins her friendship with Sophie and lets Will, the perpetrator, off without consequence. Annabel is so fearful of hurting others that she avoids telling people anything that may upset them, even though her secret about Will is hurting her most.

Unlike Annabel, Owen believes deeply in being honest. He doesn’t consider white lies or lies of omission acceptable; nothing but the full truth satisfies him. In Owen’s perspective, the truth is black and white and should be told unflinchingly, even if the truth might hurt someone’s feelings. His perspective is that that hurt is temporary, while the hurt of telling a lie cuts deeper and can last much longer. When Annabel and Owen meet, their viewpoints about the truth clash, but Owen ultimately inspires Annabel to tell the truth instead of letting her emotions fester.