How we fall apart was one of my top reads and recommendations last year, especially to fellow POC/Asians. I had high hopes for this newest one and I wasn’t disappointed. I really enjoyed the characters as well as the real life way their cultures influenced their day to day lives. It was a fast paced mystery read with quite a few suprisies.

Anna is finally in college ready to spread her wings from her family, even if the college is just across town. She’s ready to investigate the death of her former babysitter and stumbles across an old family rival, Chris. After some racist attacks against Asians she believes that it could be connected to her babysitters death. With feelings building between them, they set out to figure out what happened to her and root out the hate crimes that are happening around town. The social aspects of the book and what the current climate is like for many tied in very well and the themes touched on resonated with me. This social activism tied in with a mystery book was excellent.

Highly recommend.

The Lies We Tell by Katie Zhao is a 4.5 out of 5 stars, terrifying & unputdownable dark academia young adult mystery novel. It revolves around college freshman Anna Xu attending Brookings University & learning to balance college life, grueling academics & also trying to solve the cold case murder of her childhood babysitter, Melissa Hong, from seven years ago. As the year progresses, there’s a horrifying appearance of hate crimes & racism coupled with the mounting tension of weird occurrences happening in Anna’s life. I would highly recommend reading The Lies We Tell if you’re in the mood for a dark academia thriller! Please check trigger warnings!
This book also has a slowburn childhood academic rivals to the most adorable budding romance. They just made my heart happy. I could totally see this becoming a fantastic movie.
I have currently read two books by Katie Zhao & thoroughly enjoyed both of them. I’m such a fan of her eloquent writing style. Her stories scarily & perfectly mount the stress & tension of the thriller throughout, similar to the tunes of escalating horror movie music. She writes dark academia so well that I hope to keep happily reading them. I did predict the ending to this, but I still reveled in hearing how it all came together.
Finally, I think it realistically portrays the horrors that come from just being & existing as a person of color in America along with the racism, bullying, name calling, actual violence & more that exist when people don’t accept those that are unlike them. It shows the worst of humanity. Thankfully, then it also showcases the optimistic hopefulness at the act of everyone coming together & celebrating each other’s differences & the necessity of fighting against racism for a better tomorrow for all. Katie Zhao is a brilliant thriller writer & I hope everyone else enjoys this as much as me!
The Lies We Tell by Katie Zhao comes out August 9, 2022!

Massive thanks to NetGalley & Bloomsbury USA Children's Books for giving me the opportunity to read an arc of this in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger warnings: This book mentions &/or contains racism, hate crimes, xenophobia, violence, murder,

I will post this on my Instagram & Goodreads once it gets less than one month before release. I will add links once I do post.

Actual Rating: 3.5 Stars

The Lies We Tell by Katie Zhao was a book I was most interested in especially since I really loved Katie Zhao's previous work, with How We Fall Apart a little disappointing but it was okay. I was a little reserved about this novel, but I really enjoyed this one a lot especially since I was not expecting the tadbit of enemies to lovers in it, and that Anna's parents rivals is the Lus who's that exactly who Anna's boyfriend is: the son of the Lus.

I really loved the discussion of Asian hate crimes in America and how it makes Asian and Asian American feel unsafe, even while at school. And that type of thing needs to stop, along with other hate crimes.

I loved the fact that this is set on college campus! There's so few books with characters in college and I really want more of that, especially since at times, I don't want to read new adult books with it being on college campus. YA is sometimes better for that!

This is a pretty solid YA mystery on it's own. However, I finished How We Fall Apart earlier this month, and this is listed as book #2 in the series. In How We Fall Apart, there is an unanswered secret that a lot of people are going to expect answered when picking this book up. Also, none of the characters overlap, and the setting is different. The only thing tying the books together is the theme/genre of "social activism/we all belong here anthem crossed with a thriller". I really like Katie Zhao's writing style, but I was wrongly expecting something else from this book.

3.5 /5

I’m really struggling with how to review this book because I wanted to love everything. I really wish it would have been longer. It had so many great parts and the plot was good but it almost felt like it was trying to achieve so much that it missed the mark for me. Personally I think this could have been a duology. The mystery and plot felt like it happened a bit too fast. At 325 pages I found my self thinking there wasn't enough time to grasp the gravity of the events and the details we were being given. When the threats and mystery finally started to unfold the book was basically over. The mystery to me was predictable and the ending almost felt a bit anticlimactic. The romance was okay but I did appreciate how it tried to brighten up a darker story.

I struggled with the mashup of contemporary social activism/ thriller. As an Asian American I appreciated the inclusion of real life and current events. I definitely think it’s important to readers but some how I felt like this story tried to throw so many layers at us it almost lost its poignancy.

I don’t want to deter people from reading this with my review. I think this is a good book but it is trying to tackle so much. At it’s core it’s relatable. It’s about growing up and growing into oneself all while dealing with hateful stereotypes and racism. It’s also about family and being flawed and trying to find a place in this world. If you like fast paced contemporary thrillers then maybe give this a shot.

Thank you Bloomsbury USA Children's Books and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A pretty good mystery with a solid coming of age story line with just a tiny hint of romance. Well done and kept me turning the pages.