The Note

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains a description of suicide.

May is the primary protagonist. She struggles with post-quarantine anxiety, but her commanding, direct personality has allowed her to succeed academically and musically. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard and Columbia Law, May worked in Big Law, where she was praised as being clever and easy to work with, but not quite aggressive enough. She left Big Law to pursue a tenure-track position as an assistant professor at Fordham Law. As a former prosecutor, May is used to working with and trusting the police.

She is Chinese American and was raised by a single mother, Coral, who worked hard to provide for her. May’s parents briefly dated before her mother became pregnant. Her father did not want the responsibility of being a parent, so he agreed to marry her mother in order to help her to obtain US citizenship—under the condition that they would divorce and she would then raise the baby alone. May did not know about this arrangement until a curious Kelsey asked Coral about the family’s history years before the novel’s main events.

May is now engaged to Josh, a sweet but clingy man, but she used to date Kelsey’s stepbrother, Nate, who is charismatic and ego-driven.