Grey has spent every summer with her grandmother in a tourist town featuring psychics, being surrounded by her friends and their psychic gifts, tending her grandmother's new age store, even while she herself has no psychic gift. Well, this summer is different- this summer her best friend Elora is missing, her friend group is coming apart at the seams and Grey is having the most intense realistic dreams of death. Can coming back to the only place she called home help solve the mystery of Elora's disappearance?

Overall this was a really interesting and twisty murder mystery with some mild paranormal elements that I enjoyed. Dark and Shallow Lies was a standalone novel with a satisfying ending that wrapped up nicely and I would love to read more from this author in the future. Her plot was unique, the mystery was unpredictable and the characters (be it the main or the side) were all very well fleshed out and developed, as if they were real people I knew and understood. I highly recommend this for anyone who enjoys mysteries with a psychic spin, conflicted angsty emotions and realistic dangers, be it from people or nature.

I wasn't able to read this book prior to it's pub date due to unforeseen circumstances in my personal life. I regret that I was not able to do this, but I want to let the publisher and Netgalley know that I did not simply ignore this responsibility. I appreciate the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for gifting me this copy anyway.

OBSESSED is an understatement. This book was absolutely fantastic. It sucked me in and did not disappoint. I fell in love with the mysterious characters and the spooky small town vibes. I've already recommended this book to so many people. Probably my favorite read of 2021.

17-year-old Elora disappeared six months previously from La Cachette, Louisiana, the psychic capital of the country, and her best friend and "twin flame," Grey, is determined to find her. Grey doesn't believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she believes that in a town full of psychics, no one knows what happened to Elora. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something and no one is to be trusted. To further complicate matters, Elora keeps making brief appearances in Grey's mind that are dark and disturbing. When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou with links to Elora and the town's dark history, Grey realizes that La Cachette's past is far more present and dangerous than she'd ever understood.
Grey, the main character spends every summer in La Cachette with her grandmother and her best friend Elora. This summer is different though, Elora has been missing for six months and no one knows what happened. She disappeared into thin air and was never seen again. La Cachette is home to a lot of psychics, but not a single one has a clue what happened to Elora. Grey is spending the summer figuring out where her best friend; her twin flame went, but it seems like everyone knows a secret or two in La Cachette and they don’t want to be uncovered. Not to mention the boy in the storm with the icy blue eyes that Grey has never seen before this summer. Does he have something to do with Elora missing?

The beginning is very intriguing and grabs your attention , it kinda goes off in another direction so give it time to come back around. It’s a captivating Young Adult Southern Gothic Thriller with fascinating supernatural elements .

The synopsis had me intrigued. I went into the book excited to read it. Only to be let down, it was so slow from the beginning. I kept having to put it down. I will say the writing was great the atmosphere was another good thing of the book just the pacing and the characters weren't memorable at all.

Thank you PenguinTeen for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a paranormal thriller about a girl named Grey who comes back to her isolated hometown for the summer. Her best friend’s been missing for the last six months and she wants to find out what happened to her.

While Grey’s own magical powers are showing up for the first time, her other friends have had theirs for years. They can feel other peoples’ emotions, can hear conversations and can communicate with the dead. But all of their powers are not enough to find out what happened to Elora.

The mystery is intriguing and the writing is beautifully atmospheric. I do feel like the middle part dragged on. I loved the beginning, it kept me turning the pages, but once I got to the middle, and later the ending, I felt a little let down. The twists were predictable and I wasn’t happy about the love triangle that got established along the way.

There’s subtle hints of queer representation, but nothing really noteworthy.

I’ve read better and worse mystery books. I’d recommend it for the enchanting writing style, the very fitting, isolated setting and the found family between the friends, rather than for the disappointing revelations at the end.

content warnings: suicide, murder, violence, physical abuse, incest (step siblings)

This book is fantastic! Full of bayou charm and mystery. 10 children born in La Cachette that summer and only 7 are left. Elora has been missing and Grey is back in La Chachette this summer to find out what happened to her. But what she finds along the way is lies, betrayal, and that she never really knew any of the summer children. Perfectly twisty!

This one was not for me. I felt like the writing style was too juvenile for my taste and it felt like reading thru molasses to get through it.

I liked this book a lot.
The atmosphere in Louisiana is captured super great, the fantasy part is exciting and the characters were just cool.
There are a lot of plot twists and you guess surprisingly little, which I thought was great. What I also liked: It wasn't all easy, pretty and clean. Some of the characters were messy and made mistakes, as young people do. I thought that was really well captured for a Young Adult book.
If you're looking for a paranormal Young Adult thriller set in the sultry American South that has great characters and a bunch of twists and turns, then read this book 💙

From the beginning I could tell Ginny Myers Sain is a powerful story teller. Her words combine to paint a beautiful and haunting picture of the south, dripping with sweat and secrets.

I’m not one to love really dark things so I found enough in this to not be super freaked out (haha) but there were definite moments of the “creep” factor to satisfy.

Toward the end I will say there was perhaps too much left to the imagination for me when it came to “answers” but I did find I couldn’t put this down.

This book makes me think of The Raven Boys & the Diviner’s.

❗️Language and a few adult scenes. Underage drinking & smoking.

—-
Thanks to Bloomsbury for this gifted copy.

This is such a perfect book to read in crisp autumn weather with the leaves turning orange and the air making you feel some type of way! I just thoroughly enjoyed reading this in autumn and it was a great experience. It's a dark atmospheric book with so many amazing characters, like I love them. I just realized this is a debut book and I'm just blown away by the masterpiece this book is! I recommend highly!

Dark and Shallow Lies is a gothic mystery with a paranormal twist that is equally chilly and atmospheric. Thank you Penguin Teen for the e-arc!

I enjoyed this YA paranormal novel more than the adult paranormal story I've read in the recent past! Its eerie, dark and will keep you guessing or atleast checking in on your shoulders. The story progresses in a slow pace than I had expected, but the interesting happenings kept me totally invested.

I know many readers loved this, but gothic fiction is a hit or miss for me. So I kept my mind open and this book is a hit for me!! One of the great YA books I’ve read this year.

I didn't even know I was reading a debut novel but apparently, that is exactly what Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain is! I have to hand it to her, this was a super gripping and well-written YA mystery/thriller, and I loved it. It is very atmospheric, and I really liked the way the audiobook is done with water sounds for the second viewpoint (which is quite small). Most of the story is told from the viewpoint of Grey, but the bayou also felt like a character in itself which is a major part of why the book felt so atmospheric. There is also a fantasy/supernatural aspect that I really enjoyed and the mystery of what happened to Elora among other things was very surprising and well done.

I loved the way the audiobook was executed, but I wasn't too keen on the narrator which was Emma Ashton. I somehow listened to her twice in a row and at times I thought she was slightly better in this one, but still not my favorite narrator. Her pauses seemed really off to me which made the book feel choppier than it actually is. The element of the water sound was spot on though and I am glad I got to experience the book that way. Dark and Shallow Lies had me interested from the very first moment, and I could definitely see this being a reread of the physical book at some point. I couldn't believe how real the town of La Cachette felt to me and Sain really nailed the setting of this novel. If you like psychic and supernatural elements plus YA, then you definitely need to read Dark and Shallow Lies.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This book follows Grey, a teenager who grew up in a small town in Louisiana and now visits every summer to catch up with her old friends. When her best friend vanishes, she spends her summer digging into the mystery of what happened to discover the truth.

Here’s what I loved:
✨ The cast of characters were so interesting and each one had a distinct personality! One of my pet peeves is side characters that you can’t tell apart but these you could identify right away even before their name is mentioned.
✨ The setting and atmosphere were wonderfully creepy! I think this would make a brilliant movie almost for that alone
✨ The psychic/magic aspect was intriguing because each character has a different power and I wanted to learn more about all of the different abilities.
✨ The ending was a PERFECT way of wrapping the story up
✨ The cover is gorgeous and shiny 😍

If I could change one thing, it’s that it was extremely obvious that the red herrings were trying to lead you astray. I want to trick myself into believing the wrong thing, not have it bashed over my head. That being said - the actual twists were still shocking and I did not see them coming!!

After a bunch of YA thriller duds in a row, this was a great change of pace and I highly recommend adding it to your fall TBR!

Ginny Myers Sain’s debut, Dark and Shallow Lies, ended up not being the book for me. The story was very much character-driven, which is usually one of my favorite types of novels, but this book's pacing felt off to me.

Sain spends much of the novel describing her setting: La Cachette, Louisana. Through ​her storytelling, Sain brings Louisiana’s oppressive heat and tumultuous storms to the forefront so that readers can experience the dramatic setting right alongside Grey. Not only is Grey trying to solve the mystery of Elora's disappearance, but she must do so before an approaching hurricane hits the small town. Other readers may be immediately drawn in by Sain's eery descriptions of La Cachette, making Dark and Shallow Lies the perfect atmospheric read for Fall.

Many thanks to the TBR And Beyond Tours, NetGalley, and Penguin Teen for e-ARC. All opinions are my own.

Dark and Shallow Lies is a dark, mysterious and creative book. The cover is what drew me in, it’s gorgeous and creepy.


"How do you keep a secret in a town full of psychics?"

17 year old Grey returns to her place of birth, La Cachette for the Summer. A place in the bayou where she grew up with 10 other children all born in the same year. La Cachette is a small town deep in the bayou, known as the psychic capital of the world.
Grey’s best friend is missing, we follow the clues with her to try and find what happened to her.

I thought this was such a great novel. I love small town mysteries! I’ve always been fascinated by stories of the south, this had everything I love in a mystery.

The writing is beautiful yet creepy. I’m shocked that this is a debut. I look forward to reading her next book.

The story isn’t just a regular mystery, the touch of magical realism made it that much better.

I listened to the audiobook and I have to say it’s one of y favorites by far. I really loved what they did with Greys visions. The narrator Emma Ashton did a fantastic job with the Cajun accents.

I highly recommend this book if you love thrillers! Don’t let the YA genre stop you, it’s a great read.

Grey spends her summers in her hometown of La Cachette, Louisiana, the Psychic Capital of the World. This is the first time Grey has returned since her best friend, Elora, went missing earlier in the year. Grey and Elora were closer than friends. They shared a birthday and always felt like sisters. Grey’s goal for the summer was to find out the truth of what happened to Elora. However, she didn’t think she would discover the truths behind other mysterious disappearances and deaths, including the secrets her mother took to her grave.

This was a spooky, mystical story, perfect for the fall season. The town of La Cachette was full of psychics. All of the kids born in the same year as Grey had some kind of psychic ability. Grey didn’t think she had a gift until she started seeing visions of what happened to Elora in her final moments. The town itself was also spooky. It was quite isolated from the rest of the world. The town was the target of hurricanes, like New Orleans. It added to the spookiness and unpredictability of the town.

The ending was shocking and surprising. There was one character who I found suspicious from the beginning, and I thought they were the one responsible for Elora’s disappearance. This character was involved, but it was a complicated ending. There were some other revelations at the end that were quite disturbing and unexpected.

Dark and Shallow Lies is a creepy YA story.

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Older students who enjoy darker fiction and thrillers will eat this one up. I thought I had the mystery figured out, but I was completely wrong and never saw it coming. However, the best part about this book is the sense of place. The author does a great job making you feel like you are sweating through a hot summer night listening to the frogs sing.

Holy sh*t! This book scared me. And it reminded me why i do not like scary, creepy books like this.
But it had me hooked! I read it in about 5 hours, almost in one sitting because i just could not put it down! It was well written and it took me quite a while to figure out who did it. I did figure it out a little before Grey did though. The roamnce was sweet but a little bit unneccesary in my opinion.
Overall a really scary book.