Sara Snow

Sara Snow is BB Easton’s close friend, a psychologist, and an associate professor whose advice gives BB a new way to interpret her husband’s behavior. When BB suspects that Ken Easton has read her private journal, Sara turns the discovery into a comic research proposal: use the journal to influence a marriage, then study what happens. The friendship makes her both confidante and provocateur, while her later messages show the same irreverent humor applied to her own romantic life.

Identity and Background

BB Easton describes Sara as her closest friend and calls her “the Evil Professor” in the heading to their email exchange. The account of their shared history places them together in the same school system, where both worked as school psychologists and, in BB’s joking formulation, tried to get fired. About three years before the exchange, Sara left that work and moved two thousand miles away to become a distinguished psychology professor at a research university. The university’s name is withheld, but a later email signature identifies her as an associate professor in its Department of Psychology and gives her credentials as a PhD.

BB presents Sara’s professional advancement through affectionate teasing rather than formal biography. She compares Sara’s career move to becoming Sheryl Sandberg, then contrasts her intelligence with her characterization of Sara as extravagantly chaotic. The joke does not erase Sara’s expertise: she is the friend BB turns to for an interpretation of Ken’s conduct, and she responds in the language of psychological intervention. Her professional title and their intimacy coexist in the email exchange, where a colleague’s analytical vocabulary becomes material for friendship and comedy.

The Journal Discovery and Sara’s Advice

In an exchange dated Thursday, August 29, BB tells Sara about the possibility that Ken has read her journal. Sara first challenges the idea that his behavior sounds like Ken and asks how BB knows. She then suggests checking the browser history, joking that a person who had read something that incriminating might also have used the computer to arrange a safe house. The imagined disappearance is an escalation for comic effect, not evidence of a real threat. Sara also teases BB for leaving her “porn journal” without a password, turning the privacy breach into a shared joke even as she helps BB think through what may have happened.

Once BB explains that Ken’s behavior has changed, Sara supplies a strikingly different interpretation from BB’s initial fear that he is withdrawing from her. She tells BB that Ken is not icing her out but responding to an intervention: after reading about BB’s dissatisfaction, he has begun making adjustments without her having to ask directly. Sara calls the apparent mechanism “Subliminal Spousal Bibliotherapy,” treating BB’s journal as an indirect means of marital behavior modification. Her reading is important because it recasts Ken’s attention to a private account of their relationship as an unexpected form of response rather than simple rejection.

Sara immediately extends the idea into a plan. She advises BB to plant more exaggerated stories in the journal so that Ken, if he continues reading, will encounter further prompts. At the same time, she imagines conducting a longitudinal study and presenting the results on Good Morning America, with Robin Roberts as her imagined interviewer. The scheme promises, in her joking projection, both tenure and an Audi R8, while offering women a way to save their marriages. Her enthusiasm makes the proposal deliberately double-edged: she is offering BB support, but she also casts their intimate predicament as the basis for a study and a public career opportunity.

Sara’s Romantic Life and Their Friendship

Sara’s own relationships enter BB’s account as further evidence of her uninhibited social life. She tells BB that she has slept with a former coworker who is very much married. BB says the revelation unsettles her not simply because the man is married, but because he was the last person she expected to be unfaithful. That distinction keeps the focus on the surprise of the person involved, while Sara’s disclosure shows the frankness with which the friends discuss sex and fidelity. It also prompts BB to consider her own behavior and to reassure herself that the writing experiment is not meant to push Ken away.

Other details arrive through messages and missed calls rather than a continuous account of Sara’s life. Sara gives BB’s number to one of her Las Vegas one-night stands, so BB receives a message from a confused man wondering why the outgoing greeting identifies her as BB. BB admits that she does not discourage the practice because the resulting voicemails amuse her. Sara’s mother also leaves a message asking BB to pray that an Alex Sara is seeing will get her pregnant, hoping for a grandchild. These episodes show how Sara’s social and romantic business spills into BB’s daily life, and how the friends’ amusement at the resulting confusion is reciprocal.

Their closeness is also visible in the book’s closing text conversation. BB announces that Sara should pack her bags for a date with Matt Lauer; Sara jokes that a married, middle-aged, white man sounds like her type. BB then declares the bibliotherapy experiment finished, and Sara’s surprised question about whether BB is done leads to the information that Ken called her out the night before. The exchange marks a shift from Sara’s earlier encouragement to plant more material: the experiment has reached a point where Ken is responding directly, though the brief messages do not supply the details of that confrontation.

Narrative Role and Characterization

Sara is presented principally through BB’s recollections, emails, and text messages, so her character emerges through the friendship’s fast, teasing exchanges rather than through independent narration. The professional adviser and the outrageous confidante are not separate versions of her: the same person who identifies a possible behavioral pattern proposes turning it into a longitudinal study, then jokes about television appearances and career rewards. Her advice is consequential, but the book does not establish that Sara’s prediction or proposed study has been tested systematically; the concept remains part of the narrative’s comic account of BB’s attempt to influence her marriage.

The final messages extend the portrait beyond the experiment. Sara jokes about a potential baby daddy with a GED, imagines that she might call him and marry him, and describes the prospect of settling down in deliberately outrageous terms involving autoerotic asphyxiation. The exchange offers no basis for treating those remarks as a literal plan or report of harm; they function as black comedy between friends. Across the emails, phone messages, and texts, Sara’s defining role is therefore not simply that of a psychologist supplying an explanation. She is BB’s candid audience and comic collaborator, helping turn private anxiety into shared language—and helping frame the journal experiment as both a marital intervention and an escalating joke.