This Girl
52 pages • 1-hour read
Colleen HooverThis Girl
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Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide references illness or death, cursing, sexual content, and a romantic relationship between a high-school teacher and his 18-year-old student.
Chapter 6 Summary
On their honeymoon, Lake asks Will to recount what he was thinking when he first saw her in the school hallway.
The three-day weekend after their first date feels endless to Will, who cannot stop thinking about Lake. Monday morning, Will leaves a note on Lake’s Jeep saying he cannot wait to see her, then second-guesses it. Julia catches him and encourages him to leave the note.
At school, Mrs. Alex informs Will that his faculty advisor will observe his fourth-period class at 11 o’clock and hands him a new student’s registration form, which he ignores. He turns a corner and finds Lake in the hallway holding a schedule. She hugs him, and he realizes with horror that she is the new student in his third-period class. Another student, Javier, arrives and addresses Will as Mr. Cooper, confirming Lake’s dawning realization that he is her teacher.
During class, Javier comments that Lake is hot. Will loses his temper and ejects him from class. After class, Gavin confronts Will, who explains neither he nor Lake knew about the other’s situation. Gavin realizes Will has already fallen for Lake.
After school, Will finds Lake crying in her Jeep in front of her house and gets in to talk. He apologizes and explains he is a contracted student teacher who needs the job to support Caulder. Heartbroken, Lake listens as Will says she must withdraw from his class so they can separate themselves. Furious, she points out that they live across the street from each other. Will insists it must be all or nothing, and since it cannot be all, it has to be nothing. Lake kicks a garden gnome, vows she will be out of his class by tomorrow, and slams her door.
Kel and Caulder witness the scene and ask if Will is going to marry Lake so they can become brothers, adding to his turmoil. The next morning, Mrs. Alex tells him Lake has requested a transfer to Russian Literature. Will finds Lake attempting to forge his signature on the form. Deciding it is selfish to make her drop poetry—a subject she loves—he suggests she stay so they can learn how to be around each other. Lake agrees, calling him Mr. Cooper as she leaves.
Chapter 7 Summary
On the honeymoon, Will’s story makes Lake feel emotional. Will mentions a second conversation he had with Julia that Lake doesn’t know about, and reveals he wrote a poem about her that she’s never heard.
After Lake agrees to stay in Will’s class, Will struggles to get through the week. Having Lake in his third-period class remains a daily challenge. He goes to a poetry slam hoping for distraction. Gavin and Eddie join him. Eddie mentions wanting to set Lake up with a student named Nick, which makes Will jealous.
Will performs a new poem titled This Girl. It describes his life as a barren valley he had accepted, and a girl who joins him there, placing her hand on his and climbing down with him. After the performance, Eddie is in tears.
Gavin suggests they set Will up on a date with someone else to help him get over Lake. Will immediately refuses. Eddie agrees with Gavin and offers to set up a double date with a family friend for Saturday. Will says he is not going and leaves the club.
Chapter 8 Summary
On the honeymoon, Lake is upset that Gavin and Eddie tried to set Will up. To distract her, Will changes the subject to the following night and his conversation with her mother.
The night after Will performs his poem about Lake, Will, Caulder, and Kel start a daily ritual they call “Suck and Sweet,” in which they tell each other the best and worst parts of their day. Julia knocks and asks to speak with Will alone. Julia acknowledges the situation with Lake was a misunderstanding, but worries about the intensity of Lake’s feelings. She asks Will to promise he will deny his heart and not pursue Lake, warning that it will end in disaster. Will promises to keep their relationship strictly professional, privately admitting he must stay away because he is not strong enough.
Julia starts crying while looking at a picture of Will’s parents and asks what it was like when they died. His answer—that it felt like every nightmare becoming reality—causes her to break down. Julia confesses she’s not ready for Lake and Kel to know what is happening, and Will intuits that she’s sick. He hugs her and promises to keep her secret, which makes him want to protect Lake even more.
Chapter 9 Summary
On the honeymoon, Lake cries hearing about Will’s conversation with her mother. Will reveals he agreed to let Gavin and Eddie set him up on a date with Taylor. Lake becomes angry and demands details.
The narrative shifts to the day of Will’s date with Taylor. Will meets Gavin, Eddie, and Taylor at a restaurant, but Gavin and Eddie immediately make a flimsy excuse and leave them alone. Will and Taylor have a pleasant conversation, but throughout the date, he thinks about Lake and realizes he cannot settle for anything less than what he feels for her.
At Taylor’s door, before Will can end things, Taylor kisses him. He finds the kiss pleasant but passionless, unlike kissing Lake. Will tells her he has feelings for someone else and that the timing is wrong. Taylor understands and asks him to keep her number in case the timing gets better. Will agrees.
Chapter 10 Summary
On the honeymoon, Lake is furious about Will’s kiss with Taylor and locks herself in the bathroom. She lashes out in jealousy, accusing Will of having a backup plan and of going on dates while Lake’s mother was dying. Hurt, Will storms into the hallway. Lake apologizes through the door, explaining her insecurities and desire to be his soulmate. Feeling guilty and hypocritical, Will returns and finds her crying. They make up in the shower. Later, Will asks if she remembers the first time he kissed her neck.
The narrative shifts to a day three weeks after Will learned of Julia’s illness. Having Lake in his third-period class remains challenging for them both. He sees her laughing with Nick, which puts him in a bad mood. During a writing assignment, Will and Lake make eye contact for the first time in weeks, sharing an intense, silent moment.
After school, Will finds Lake in the parking lot hitting her Jeep’s battery with a crowbar. He reluctantly helps her. She admits how hard their separation has been, assuming it’s been easy for him. Will confesses it has been excruciating and that he would have quit his job for her if not for Caulder. Nick arrives and offers Lake a ride home, which Will allows.
That night, Caulder and Kel go missing, and Will and Lake eventually find them asleep in Will’s car. Will reveals he had her Jeep fixed and invites her inside to give her the keys. They continue their earlier conversation. Lake suggests the possibility of getting a GED so they can be together, but Will calls it a dumb idea. An accidental touch breaks his resolve. Lake tells Will she will wait for him until she graduates.
Overcome with emotion, Will kisses her neck and then her mouth. As it escalates, he remembers his promise to Julia and the difficulties Lake is about to face. He finds the strength to pull away, but she pulls herself onto his lap and kisses him again. Will gives in briefly, then pushes her off and stands.
To push her away permanently, Will lies and says he does not want her to wait. He tells her she deserves better than his responsibilities would allow, ranking her third in his list of priorities. When Lake confesses she is falling in love with him, he steels himself and says she cannot fall in love with him. He tells her he won’t touch her again. In tears, she calls him an asshole and storms out. Will collapses against his bedroom door, heartbroken by what he has done.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
The reveal that Lake is Will’s student foregrounds the novel’s thematic focus on The Conflict Between Personal Desire and Moral Responsibility. Will’s internal conflict forces him to try to reconcile his attraction to Lake, his professional ethics, and his personal responsibilities. His student teaching contract is necessary to support his younger brother, Caulder, which initially forces him to take a rigid stance, insisting that he and Lake sever all contact. Julia’s warning that their relationship will “end in disaster” (105) and the reveal of her terminal illness raise the narrative stakes by providing additional reasons that they shouldn’t be together. At the same time, realizing that Julia is dying complicates his decision to cut off contact with Lake. He wants to protect his career, but he also cares about Lake’s pain and wants to be the one to comfort her when she discovers the truth about her mother’s illness. Will’s competing desires lead to conflicting actions. For example, in Chapter 10, Will breaks his resolve and kisses Lake, reflecting that “[n]othing and no one can come between [them] and this moment. Not Caulder, not [his] morals, not [his] job, not [his] school, not Julia” (138). Yet, moments later, he intentionally hurts her in an attempt to drive her away—ostensibly for her own good: “I push her off me and back onto the couch, then stand up. I’ve got one chance to prove to her that this is bad. As good as it feels, it’s wrong. So wrong” (140). His internal monologue explicitly names the forbidden romance trope that defines their relationship across the novel.
The motif of slam poetry provides Will with an outlet for the emotions his responsibilities force him to suppress. In contrast to a world governed by professional ethics and personal responsibilities, the slam stage becomes a space for raw, emotional honesty. His performance of “This Girl” directly articulates his innermost feelings under the guise of creative expression. The poem’s central metaphor, which describes his life as a barren valley and Lake as a girl who joins him there, articulates his desire for a partner to share his burdens, not a savior to erase them. The poem defines his ideal love as one of shared experience and mutual support. This performance allows him to communicate his feelings in a coded yet public forum, revealing his vulnerability while maintaining the professional facade required of him as a teacher. Poetry functions as a symbolic space where Will’s emotional self can exist without violating the codes of his external world.
The narrative’s structural reliance on a dual timeline—alternating between the honeymoon in the present and Will’s retelling of the past—highlights Hoover’s thematic interest in Reconciling with the Past to Build a Future. The frame of the honeymoon shifts the narrative tension from if the couple will unite to how they navigated the emotional and ethical obstacles in their path. The honeymoon frame acts as a reflective space where the characters can process the trauma of their courtship. Lake’s intense jealousy upon learning about Will’s date with Taylor, for example, layers an argument in the characters’ present with an insecurity born from the past when she felt de-prioritized. Her accusation that Will was “going on dates and kissing other girls while [she] sat home, watching [her] own mother die” (124) reveals the lasting wounds of that time, demonstrating the ongoing impact of the scars of the past. This structure emphasizes that building a future requires a direct and often painful confrontation with the past.
Both Will and Lake’s past tension and conflict resolution on their honeymoon highlight the novel’s thematic exploration of The Duality of Love as Both a Healing and Destabilizing Force. Lake reacts with jealousy to Will’s story about Taylor, leading to an emotionally volatile and destabilizing argument. However, their ability to identify those feelings and resolve them together allows them to heal from past insecurities. Similarly, after their first meeting, Lake’s arrival disrupts the grief and responsibility that have defined Will’s life. Yet, this same connection destabilizes the order he has constructed. Hoover signals this emotional disruption through Will’s loss of professional composure when he ejects Javier from his classroom for a disrespectful comment about Lake. For Lake, Will represents a potential source of happiness in a new town, but their impossible situation throws her into emotional turmoil. The love that could heal them becomes a primary source of their pain. This paradox positions love within their relationship as a complex force that can disrupt and wound even as it offers solace.
The secrets Will is forced to keep lead him to feel increasingly isolated. After his conversation with Julia, he becomes the keeper of her secret about her illness, an additional burden to carry along with his role as Caulder’s guardian. This new secret cements his resolve to distance himself from Lake, but it also increases the pull he feels to her by establishing an additional layer of shared loss. The forbidden nature of their romance means he can’t confide in his friends or be honest with Lake about the true reason for his withdrawal, forcing him into a position where his actions are consistently misinterpreted. His attempts to protect Lake manifest as cruelty, deepening the wounds he is trying to prevent.
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