The Lies I Tell

CW: Sexual abuse of a minor, abortion, rape, adult language (not extremely detailed or graphic)

This plotline is so unique and refreshing after the monotonous tone of the thriller genre lately. The two protagonists are strong, determined women that are on a mission to right the wrongs done in their lives. As the story unfolds, we find out that both women are not all they seem. Kat has a secret trauma that begins with Meg while Meg has suffered injustices at the hands of her next target. The two scorned women befriend each other with ulterior motives and a game of cat and mouse ensues.

I really appreciated the two women's strong characters and standing for what they believed in. I genuinely liked both of them and felt their hurt throughout show more the story. While I do not think revenge is the answer, this was an entertaining and thrilling novel. It was hard to put down because I needed to know what happened next. The different POVs and altering timelines added to the burn towards the ending. If you're looking for a different type of thriller with great female characters and suspenseful twists and turns, this is it! show less

I pre-ordered 'The Lies I Tell' after being impressed by Julie Clark's last novel, 'The Flight'. After a novel as good as 'The Flight', I knew it would be s a challenge for Julie Clark to bring out something that matched it for originality, tension and complete absorption in the lives of others. It was a challenge that she met in full. I started 'The Lies I Tell' on a long drive and got so hooked that I read two-thirds of the novel on the first day and was still on the edge of my seat, eager to see how everything unfolds.

'The Lies I Tell' Is a story of a long con that has the momentum of a slick heist movie. You can see all the pieces being put together with competence and daring to pull off a con that requires everything to be planned show more in detail and to be perfectly executed and even then will need a little luck to succeed. Julie Clark cranks up the tension in several ways: firstly, the reader is never certain what the end game is - what success looks like for the person running the con; secondly, we get to see more than one con, each one revealed a little bit at a time, establishing the con-artist's competence and hinting at possible outcomes without giving a definitive answer; thirdly, there are two cons going on at the same time, one by the con artist and one by a woman trying covertly to get close enough to her to take her down.

The cleverness of the plot was a joy, it kept me guessing and guessing again. Then there was the emotional uplift that came from seeing plausibly abusive men, with a history of harming women, being taken down by a woman who they fail to recognise as a threat. Then there was the lying. The reader knows that both of the main women characters are lying about who they are and what they want. Each of the women also knows the other is a liar. What is constantly, deliciously, tantalisingly unclear is when they are lying and why they are lying. The women are not the only liars. The men around them also lie and cheat. The women don't always lie to each other, which makes it harder to know what any exchange means. Most importantly, the motives of the two main players don't become fully clear until the final chapters of the novel.

In addition to all that, what made the book fly for me, was the way that Julie Clark made me care about the two main women, both as individuals and in how they related to each other. Both women have had terrible experiences with men. Both have cause to seek revenge. In principle, one is a con artist and one is an avenger. In practice, that distinction breaks down.

In the end, everything comes back to intent. It's not the lies these women tell that are important but why they tell them. The answer to that question provided a splendid resolution to an original and surprising thriller that got better and better as the book went on. Even when I was ninety per cent through the book, I was still having to guess at the resolution. When it came, it was worth the wait and put everything that went before it into perspective.

I recommend the audiobook version of 'The Lies I tell'. Lauryn Allman did a splendid job, managing to provide appropriate and distinctive voices for the main female characters and credible voices for the men. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

https://soundcloud.com/hodderbooks/the-lies-i-tell-by-julie-clark-rear-by-lauryn... show less

A real page-turner! Meg Williams, con artist/grifter returns to California, and investigative reporter Kat is hot on her trail. But in the words of Aretha Franklin, "Who's zooming who?" That is the question. Meg sets a trap for each of her marks that is not only intricately planned but also orchestrated beautifully. I found myself routing for her success, with some type of vicarious enjoyment as I imagined myself getting even with some people in a similar way!

I inhaled this book - opened it, had a cup of coffee, ate lunch and rarely looked up until I turned the last page. It is a story of a master manipulator, her backstory, her cunning and meticulous planning. She is a scammer, a Con Artist, a woman on a mission to take and destroy - maybe.
Point and counterpoint - there is also a journalist who is determined to have the full story and to demand her own retribution - if she can stop her own unraveling and downward spiral. The psychological mind bending is on every page, every thought and it is often exhausting in a good way.

Meg and Kat, both damaged, both admirable, both believe “The difference between justice and revenge comes down to who’s telling the story.” This is a phenomenal, show more hard to put down psychological thriller which is over too quickly. Julie Clark is a masterful story spinner and she has hit an out of the park home run with this book.

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks for a copy. show less

This was a near perfect thriller for me. I really enjoyed the way the two POV's wove together, as well as the way the past wove with the present. The way the book ended left me wanting a little more answers, but I'm not someone for ambiguous endings to begin with. Otherwise I loved the writing, the twists and turns, and everything in between.

Meg Williams and Kat Reynolds are the central characters in Julie Clark's compelling work of psychological suspense, "The Lies I Tell." Meg is bitter over a scam that cost her mother, Rosie, the home that she loved. Years earlier, Ron Ashton, Rosie's boyfriend, tricked her into signing over her house to him; he subsequently evicted her and her daughter, who had to spend their nights sleeping in the family car. Ever since, Meg has been planning her revenge against Ashton, but meanwhile, she is honing her skills by moving from place to place under assumed names and defrauding men who mistreat the women in their lives.

Kat is an unsuccessful reporter who is fascinated by Meg's exploits, and she is gathering information to write a story show more about the grifter's schemes. Kat hopes to use this sensational exposé as a springboard to boost her faltering career. Meg and Kat, who take turns narrating, could not be more different. While Meg is a cynical manipulator, Kat is cautious, lacks self-confidence, and is loyal to her irresponsible fiancé.

It is fascinating to watch Meg earn her victims' trust by telling them what they want to hear. Although Meg's behavior is far from admirable, we can understand why she targets men who are selfish and narcissistic. "The Lies I Tell" is an ingeniously plotted, fast-paced, and addictive novel about an individual who uses her good looks, charm, and devious mind to balance the scales of justice. show less

Bestselling author Julie Clark was fascinated by a podcast about a con artist who "went to elaborate lengths to lure in his victims, gain their trust, and then steal everything they owned." She envisioned female con artists being even more effective because women are generally perceived as less threatening than men. She asked herself, "Would people be more inclined to trust them?"

From the outset, Clark makes Meg a richly sympathetic con artist. Early in the story, Meg reveals that her latest target, Ron Ashton, tricked her mother, robbed them of what was rightfully theirs, and is now a powerful politician. Meg's first-person narrative is highly effective and heightens her story's emotional impact. She explains that Ashton "tore my life show more apart, sending my mother into a downward spiral she never recovered from and leaving me to live alone in a car for my final year of high school and beyond." Meg describes how her mother longed for a true partner, believing women should stand on their own, but fell victim to the scheming, deceitful Ashton. Meg's dreams were crushed and she learned to take refuge in libraries, using the computers there to establish a dating profile that ensured at least three dinner dates per week in order to stay fed. Living in her car, she worked at the YMCA where she was able to shower before her shift and hide her true circumstances from her boss and coworkers. She was never quite able to save enough enough money to get a place to live due to car registration fees, rising gas prices, and parking tickets issued as a result of the ongoing search for a safe place to park and catch a few hours of sleep. She inadvertently fell into a life of grifting when she discovered the profile on a dating site of a math teacher, Cory Dempsey, at her high school. Crafting a fake identity and life story, Meg used her knowledge about the forty-eight-year-old, who had been promoted to high school principal, as a basis for her first scam. Initially, she was motivated by her need for a safe place to live. But as she learned more about him, she formulated a plan to extract revenge and found she enjoyed being someone else. Eventually, Meg reached the point that "harming someone who harmed someone she cared about felt right to her" and found a lucrative career as a con artist.

Meg explains how she creates elaborate, detailed backstories about herself, focuses on specific targets, and "plays the long game," taking time to study her prey. She methodically infiltrates her victims' lives, heavily using social media to establish connections with her victims' friends and business associates. That way, the mutual acquaintance can vouch for her when she finally meets the victim, corroborating details of the identity she has fabricated. And she reinvests in her business, using the money she makes from her cons to fund her future scams. She keeps meticulous records of her pursuits.

By the time Meg meets Kat, she has been spent ten years perfecting her techniques, all in preparation for and leading up to the one big con that will destroy Ashton, the man who ruined her life. As Meg compellingly explains, being a con artist is not just a role she never planned to play. It is a lonely existence and she has no intention of being a grifter indefinitely.

When Kat and Meg's lives intersected a decade ago, Kat's career as an investigative journalist was just beginning. Chasing the Cory Dempsey story, she saw a chance to score an interview with a reluctant witness. It could lead not only to the discovery of new and shocking information about the story, but also, perhaps, to details about Meg herself that would enable her to successfully pitch a story about her and allow Kat to advance in a highly competitive industry. Her risk did not pay off. Instead, her life quickly derailed. She was "collateral damage" as a result of a series of events set in motion by Meg. She has blamed Meg ever since, determined to expose Meg as the fraud that she is and put her life back in order. Clark also employs a first-person narrative to convey Kat's story, pulling readers into her innermost thoughts and motivations in chapters that alternate with Meg's account. Kat reveals that she knows blaming Meg for what happened to her is not entirely rational, but she embarks, like Meg, on a mission to "balance the scales."

Kat is living with her fiancé, Scott, a police detective with a gambling problem, when she learns that Meg has returned. Meg is posing as a real estate broker, and Kat secures a job as Meg's assistant. She plans to infiltrate Meg's life, ingratiating herself in much the way that Meg does with her victims, in order to gather enough evidence to finally write the exposé that will unmask Meg and establish Kat as a credible, respected journalist. She believes that Meg has no idea who she really is, but before long, Kat finds herself being reeled in by Meg, and doubting everything she thought she knew as she strives to keep her life from unraveling yet again. Trust is a theme Clark deftly explores through Kat's experiences. She made the mistake of trusting years ago and the consequences devastated her. But did she learn from the experience? Is her trust in Scott misplaced? Has she learned to trust her own instincts? And could her growing fondness for Meg, despite her knowledge of Meg's actions, undermine her efforts to get her life and career back on track?

The Lies I Tell is a smart, absorbing story about two women who craft false identities and attempt to con each other. Both are motivated by deep wounds inflicted by others who wronged them. In Meg's case, she lost her beloved mother as a result of Ashton's callous wrongdoing. Both women are intent on retribution, believing that they can exact justice and, in the process, free themselves from past hurts and forge for themselves the kind of futures they have long dreamed about. Clark cleverly keeps readers guessing "who is the cat and who is the mouse" in a tale that is simultaneously full of surprises and heart-wrenching. Clark has made Meg a relatable anti-hero for whom readers will find themselves rooting.

And The Lies I Tell is yet another cautionary tale about the dangers of social media. The methods Meg employs to gather insight into her victims and enable her to believably ingratiate herself in their lives illustrate the inherent dangers of posting personal details online. Posts detailing life experiences, birthplaces, current and past residences, jobs held, names of relatives, etc. can easily provide a con artist the entrée he/she seeks.

For Clark, The Lies I Tell is "about justice; it's about taking back what you think belongs to you.” And that theme is particularly poignant, resonant, and timely given that Clark's two protagonists are female and this is still "a world where women often get the short end of the stick."

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book. show less