Listen for the Lie

Based on the title, I was reluctant to dive in to Listen for the Lie, because it suggested to me that this was going to be one of those schlocky books that intentionally misleads the reader with an unreliable narrator, or throws in a "twist" that you a) guessed in chapter two or b) never saw coming...but only because it was so unrealistic. Listen for the Lie, thankfully, is none of those things.

Lucy Chase's life is about to get much more frustrating and much more public. Five years ago, she was the prime suspect in the murder of her best friend in a small Texas town. No charges were brought, and she fled to L.A. for a fresh start. But Ben Owens's newest season of his "Listen for the Lie" true crime podcast just came out (ah, that's where the title comes from!), and it's capturing the nation's attention. The subject is the unsolved murder of Lucy's friend, Savannah "Savvy" Harper, and Ben is determined to solve the case.

Lucy has no memory of the night of the murder. She was found hours after Savvy was discovered, stumbling down the road, disoriented, and with Savvy's blood covering her dress. Lucy doesn't think she would ever do anything to Savvy, but she's not 100% sure. To complicate matters, she also finds herself having daily murderous thoughts about the people she encounters, using whatever items are on hand. "I briefly imagine stabbing the fork straight into his neck," she says to herself while holding a carving fork and knife. "It's two-pronged, so it would leave twin bloody little holes, like a vampire bite." Adding further doubt, those thoughts seem to be encouraged by a voice inside her head, regularly urging her "Let's kill—" when Lucy finds herself in an uncomfortable situation.

Lucy has a frayed relationship with her parents, but her one favorite family member and consistent advocate is her grandma. Grandma is turning 80, and planning a big party for herself, and she guilts Lucy into coming back to the small town (and the scene of the crime) to attend the party. It will be Lucy's first time back in five years, returning to a town where everyone thinks she's guilty (even her parents), and a national podcast has shined a new light on the events of Savvy's murder.

The novel evolves from there, as Lucy returns to the fictional Plumpton, TX and between both Ben Owens's podcast and Lucy starting to uncover some long-buried town secrets (as well as some of her own memories), what happened to Savvy eventually comes to light. Lucy is a great character; deep down, she's sad and frustrated and probably depressed, but outwardly she's sarcastic and guarded. As Ben says on the podcast, "Lucy is extremely sarcastic and comes off as flip at times, even about serious things." One of Lucy's favorite things to do is make people uncomfortable by suggesting to them that she murdered Savvy:

"We all know who did it—"

I raise my hand. Betsy's mouth drops open.

Grandma pulls my hand down. "Not the right crowd for that kind of joke, hon."

It's her caustic way of dealing with the emotional strain of Savvy's murder and everything that followed.

I mentioned "as Ben says on the podcast"—author Amy Tintera uses podcast transcripts to relay to the reader what the characters in the book are listening to each time Ben drops a new episode. As such, while Lucy is the narrator of the novel, we get additional information that Lucy wouldn't be privy to through the podcast, and we see different points of view without entire chapters devoted to a different narrator. It's remarkably effective for gradually revealing the truth about Savvy's murder, especially when you factor in Lucy's amnesia. It also makes me wish a little bit that I had done the audiobook version of this rather than print; I suspect that, if executed well, listening to this one could be an even better experience.

Overall, it's really good! I was more than pleasantly surprised with just how much I enjoyed Listen for the Lie and I swiftly devoured the book. The small town interrelationships are authentically rendered, and Lucy is the perfect blend of sympathetic and sarcastic badass...even if she might be a murderer. Among the mystery and thriller novels that I read in 2024, this stands with the best of them. Highly recommended for a quick, fun, and mostly flawless murder mystery.