You Belong Here

Megan Miranda is the bestselling author of adult and young adult thriller novels. As with Miranda’s other novels, including Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club pick The Last House Guest (2019), You Belong Here centers on a persistent female character who comes to terms with her fraught past. The novel is a crime thriller with elements of dark academia and metafiction, in which the protagonist, Beckett Bowery, must confront her worst fears after her daughter begins attending the college where Beckett’s own senior year ended in tragedy 20 years ago. As Beckett’s past comes back to haunt her, the novel explores themes such as History’s Impact on the Present, Confronting Truths Versus Perpetuating Secrets, and The Subjective Nature of Justice.

The study guide uses the 2025 Marysue Ricci Books eBook edition.

Content Warning: The novel and guide contain depictions of death, violence, harassment, and bullying.

Plot Summary

The story focuses on the distressing, interlinked college experiences of Beckett Bowery and her 18-year-old daughter, Delilah Bowery. The narrative goes back and forth between Delilah’s present and Beckett’s past, but the summary presents events chronologically for clarity.

Beckett Bowery was born and raised in Wyatt Valley—a fictional college town in West Virginia that’s around the Blue Ridge Mountains. The university, Wyatt College, is privileged and esteemed. Beckett’s parents have taught there for years. Doc, Beckett’s mother, teaches psychology; Hal, Beckett’s father, teaches anthropology, and he’s in charge of the school’s archives. He has a collection of valuables that he stores in the family home near the school.

Beckett is keenly familiar with the school and the town, and there’s ever-present tension between the two. The townspeople view the campus as their own; the students are temporary. Due to her parents, Beckett can attend Wyatt College for free, so she is expected to go there. Her roommate, Adalyn Vale, is only attending Wyatt College so her father will support her financially. Adalyn and Beckett become close friends, as Adalyn’s commitment to excitement captivates Beckett.

At the town bar, the Low Bar, Adalyn and Beckett challenge two local men in their early 20s, Charlie Waters and Micah White, to a game of darts for money. They lose, and Adalyn glibly claims that she can’t pay them, so they force her to hand over her pearl necklace. For revenge, Adalyn scratches “trash” on the side of Charlie’s new Ford truck. Charlie and Micah drive the truck through campus to scare Adalyn and Beckett. Cliff Simmons—Charlie and Micah’s friend and Beckett’s nonserious high school romantic partner—warns Beckett that Charlie and Micah will target them during the howling.

The howling is a longstanding Wyatt College tradition. When fall arrives, the wind travels through the mountains and creates a “howling” sound. During the first howling of the year, the students run to the former school president’s house without getting caught by seniors in masks. If a student gets caught, they return to the dorms alone.

Aware of Charlie and Micah’s stratagem, Adalyn and Beckett plan to lock Charlie and Micah in the school’s old steam tunnels (the school once used them to move goods between the main campus and the president’s house). Through her father, Beckett gets the skeleton key to the tunnels, and they trap Charlie and Micah. Adalyn sets the old president’s house on fire; the smoke fills the tunnel below, killing Micah and Charlie. Beckett tries to find Adalyn, but Adalyn vanishes with Doc’s help, as Doc wants to conceal Beckett’s involvement.

Beckett doesn’t face legal consequences for her role in the deaths. The school reaches a financial settlement with the families, and the school ostensibly sends Beckett to their “sister school” in London, where she meets an art history student, Trevor, and becomes pregnant with Delilah. As Trevor doesn’t think he’s ready for a child, Beckett commits to having Delilah by herself, though Trevor has a positive presence in Delilah’s life.

Doc and Hal become semi-retired. Adalyn extorts them for money so they mortgage their house and sell antiques—which have an unclear link to the school—to keep her quiet. Beckett and Delilah move to Charlotte. She works as a ghostwriter, writing books under pseudonyms or other people’s names. Delilah, much to Beckett’s irritation, attends Wyatt College. Beckett and Delilah drive to Virginia and stay at her parents’ house as Beckett helps Delilah move in.

Doc and Hal fly to Peru, where Hal is a guest professor, and Beckett returns to Charlotte. In early October, during the middle of the night, she receives a dropped phone call from Delilah. Beckett heard the howling wind before the call mysteriously ended. Unable to contact her, Beckett rapidly drives to Virginia. Staying at her parents’ house, Beckett hears strange noises. To find Delilah, Beckett contacts campus security, local police, and Cliff, who’s now an associate dean of students. Fred Mayhew was the police officer who interviewed Beckett when she was at college. Now he’s a detective, and he’s suspicious of the Bowery family.

While looking for Deliah, Beckett sees Bryce Wharton appear from the woods. Bryce is a student at Wyatt College, and his mother, Violet, was four years ahead of Beckett in high school. Beckett asks Violet about Delilah, and Violet calls Bryce, who lies and says he spent the night in his dorm. Beckett believes Delilah’s disappearance relates to the howling. Violet reminds Beckett that the school banned it after “the tragedy,” but Beckett is certain that the students still do it.

One of Delilah’s friends, a local named Sierra, looks for Delilah and finds a dead body at the construction site for the soon-to-be renovated student center. Authorities say the body is Adalyn. Meanwhile, Beckett constantly receives odious texts from the mysterious FordGroup, an anonymous harasser who originally claimed to be contacting her to write a memoir on an unsolved crime in a small town—a message that was actually about Beckett. The messages quickly turned more sinister, and as she keeps getting them after Adalyn’s death, Beckett thinks Adalyn wasn’t harassing Delilah.

Trevor drives to Virginia to support Beckett, and Delilah suddenly reappears in the basement. She tells Beckett and Mayhew that she got lost and cautiously waited till sunrise to find her way home. Delilah says she lost her phone, but Beckett finds it in the dumbwaiter box in her parents’ basement. Delilah claims she didn’t know it was there. She says someone has been stealing her belongings, but she hasn’t been staying at the house; Delilah, a “theater kid,” has been sleeping in the school’s theater. Mayhew suspects Delilah and/or Beckett is involved in Adalyn’s death.

Through a neighbor, Beckett learns that Bryce’s father was Charlie, so Violet was pregnant with Bryce when Charlie died. Beckett quickly identifies Bryce as the bully and follows someone she thinks is Bryce into the tunnels. The person turns out to be Violet. Before Violet explains her actions, Beckett calls Mayhew, so Mayhew hears everything.

Beckett learns that Bryce has been bullying Delilah. During the howling, he intended to “prank” Delilah by telling her—and only her—that the old town quarry was home base. Adalyn, looking out for Delilah, showed up instead. Bryce claims Adalyn fell, and Violet helped Bryce move the body to the construction site. Violet wants “justice” and intends to set the tunnel on fire.

Once Violet realizes Mayhew has heard everything, she runs outside, where police lead her away. Mayhew arrests Beckett for her role in Charlie and Micah’s death. She accepts a plea deal and receives a multi-year prison sentence. She feels like she “owes the time,” and she can’t wait to go home to Trevor and Delilah.