by Ashley Elston ★★★★★
There has been a lot of buzz about First Lie Wins, as happens with most "Reese's Book Club" selections, but I intentionally went into this one with almost no knowledge of what to expect. That helped with my enjoyment of the book, and so I'll keep details on the plot to a minimum.
The novel is told from the point of view of Evelyn "Evie" Porter, a woman in her twenties who has recently started a relationship with a man named Ryan Sumner in a small Louisiana town. We open with Evie meeting a cadre of Ryan's closest friends, men and women who have known him since childhood. Evie is, predictably, being politely grilled on who she is and where she came from, since she seemed to burst on the scene out of nowhere. We find out that Evie met Ryan when he helped fix Evie's flat tire -- awww, isn't that so cute? -- after which a friend quips, "I wouldn't be surprised if he flattened your tire just so he could be there to help you fix it." Laughs all around follow, and then we get this bit of commentary from Evie:
"I smile and laugh, not too loud and not too long, to show that I, too, am amused at the thought that Ryan would go to such extremes to meet me.
Amused that any person would have watched another long enough to know that he always filled up at that truck stop for gas on Thursday evenings after spending the day in his East Texas office. That someone knew he favored the pumps on the west side of the building, and that his eyes almost always lingered a little too long on any female who crossed his path, especially those dressed in short skirts. And that same someone would pick up on little things, like the LSU baseball cap in the back seat or the frat tee showing through his white dress shirt or the country club sticker in the bottom left corner of his windshield, to ensure that when they did meet there would be things to talk about. That someone would hold a nail just so in a valve while the air whistled away.
I mean, it's amusing to believe one person would go to those lengths just to meet another."
So, what do we know? We know that this relationship was manufactured by Evie, and that it began based on a lie. But we have no idea why. Is Evie a stalker, obsessed with Ryan? Is she a thief, trying to weasel her way into his life and what seems to be a substantial bank account? Is she there to take revenge for a past wrong Ryan caused someone close to her? Is she some type of spy, and is Ryan not who he appears to be? There are a plethora of possibilities, and author Ashley Elston gradually brings the reasons behind Evie's motivation to light.
This is a plot-driven novel first, with a number of interesting misdirections and twists that keep the reader guessing about who is telling the truth (as a novel titled First Lie Wins should!). That twisty, well-plotted storyline is its greatest asset. Elston uses flashbacks throughout to build character depth (primarily for Evie) and round out the plot, filling in potential plot holes through those flashbacks. The character development is solid, if not amazing, and it's enough to firm up the connection between the reader and the primary characters in the book. While the flashback sequences could have been a convenient way for Elston to write herself out of a corner, they never really felt that way. Instead, those additions felt necessary and useful in developing the characters as opposed to a plotting crutch.
There's a cat-and-mouse, "who's playing who" element to the novel, and while characters are routinely lying to each other -- there's a little bit of a Gone Girl vibe from that -- I'm happy to say that the reader isn't one of the victims. The "unreliable narrator" is an annoying (and, in my opinion, lazy) writing tactic. I will not be reading any more Alex Michaelides after being duped into that scenario in The Silent Patient and then again in The Fury, but thankfully there's none of that here. Not everything is revealed at once, but the reader isn't intentionally misled by the author or the narrator, just so that the author can spring a "twist" upon them at the last minute. Instead, Elston crafts a smartly-plotted twisty story that is all the more enjoyable because she didn't "cheat", so to speak.
This one won't win the Pulitzer, but I can virtually guarantee it's going to be made into a movie or series, with my money on the latter. The consistent misdirections are perfect for end-of-episode cliffhangers, and those will have people bingeing this in a weekend. It's a fun read, great for the beach or a plane, but has enough enjoyable components between the plot and some of the depth developed for Evie that it creeps just over the 4-5 threshold to be a low 5-star book for me. Worth your time.