OKAY.

Things I thought this book did well:
-I loved the art school setting at a smaller college. Especially having a nepo baby in the program with them completely unaware that she is only there because of her name. The arts are so full of that.
-The opening few chapters with realizing Willow was missing on the morning of 9/11 was really something. I haven't read many books about 9/11 that aren't explicitly about 9/11. I liked the way that this book gave the average person in Brooklyn's observations about that day and the months that followed.
-I HATED Willow halfway through the book. I didn't like any of the characters but I lowkey didn't care if she was alive or not. And that's the goal of the book I think?
-Making it seem like Willow had <spoiler> actually died when the towers collapsed when she had been murdered by their professor for whatever reason </spoiler> was a fun bait and switch. Both <spoiler> deaths are tragic but one is tragic in a national way whereas the other is tragic in a gross way. Going from the glamorous funeral in Chicago where there was no body to bury to finding her body decomposing in a nasty patch of grass was wild. I do like the detail of the photographed corpse as well. Her body never stopped being art in a way. She turned from an ingénue subject of her own self portraits to a corpse decomposing being used as a way to make money. </spoiler>
-All the discussions of female artists navigating the world which caters largely to men and ignores the women who they use and destroy was great. I will never not love a book about women artists.

However, I sincerely hated every single character. Anna, bless her, was a horrible black hole of need and validation. Her tragic backstory was heartbreaking as we've all known how quickly something like that can happen, but it doesn't excuse her following Willow around like a puppy just waiting for the next scrap.
Willow was a nightmare monster person. The mental illness discussion was brought up and then not really discussed at all. She was a manipulative bitch and I wasn't sad she was dead. I'm just sad she still got what she wanted in death.

I don't know. I found myself reading this quickly because the mystery was compelling. It was juicy and fast-paced. It was just full of the most insufferable people making insufferable decisions. I enjoyed it quite a bit. A really fun and suspenseful read.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the eARC!

<i>That had always been Willow’s goal—to be a muse, a flattened, perfected image</i>

Art is meant to make you feel something. To make you think. To make you uncomfortable and make you ask questions. That’s exactly what Tell Them You Lied did.

Willow and Anna’s story is told in perfect balance over two timelines, slowly coming together to a perfect merging point. Over and over again, Leffler leads the reader down one path only to take a sharp turn at the end, and doing it in such a way that you feel that this was the only path that could have been taken.

<i>I only meant something to him when you could see.</i>

The energy of Anna and Willow’s relationship was so reminiscent of Girl, Interrupted - uncomfortable and beautiful and tender and tense all in one mishmashed ball of connection and understanding. The writing is beautiful, and Leffler keeps you on the edge of your seat right to the very end.

<i>You got everything you wanted, Willow. But it’s okay. I promise not to tell.</i>

Ooooo what a debut!

I’ll always have such a connection to books that take place on or around 9/11 since I was growing up in New York when it happened. It was such a unique time in history and Laura Leffler captured the feel of it to a T.

This felt like such a unique twist on the thriller genre. Flashing back to the way Anna and Willows friendship started to the state of it currently was fascinating to watch the way it unraveled.

I truly loved this book - the twists, the Y2K vibes, the writing, the New York setting. Truly so good.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I DNF’d this one at around 20%. That said, I want to acknowledge that my experience might be more about timing and personal preference than the actual quality of the book. I’m definitely a mood reader, and sometimes that impacts how a story lands for me.
The premise initially caught my attention, but once I got into it, the pacing felt much slower than I anticipated. I found myself skimming through some sections, which is usually a sign that I'm not fully connecting. While the writing is solid and I can see what the story is aiming for, I just didn’t feel pulled in enough to continue.
This might work well for readers who enjoy a more gradual build and quiet tension, but it just wasn’t the right fit for me at this moment.

Tell Them You Lied sets the stage for a twisty thriller, but somewhere along the way, it tripped over its own red herrings.

I spent most of the book not knowing who to believe — which can be great — but also not really liking anyone, which made it hard to stay invested. The characters felt more like familiar archetypes than fresh faces, and some of the plot points felt a bit recycled from thrillers past. Cue the mysterious past, the shady husband, the conveniently lost memory… you know the drill.

It’s not bad — the pacing kept me going, and I did want to know how it ended — but it didn’t offer much I hadn’t seen before. If you’re new to the genre, you might enjoy the ride more. If you’re a seasoned thriller reader, this one might feel a little déjà vu.

Thanks to NetGalley & Hyperion Avenue for the chance to read this book

This book was decently interesting, I think the 9/11 plot took everyone by surprise and took this book in a very different route than it was suppose to be going, I understood the point of putting that in the book but I personally think it was a very distracting topic to just throw in a book and act like it was a side subject in a story, I think the author might have took a brave chance on throwing that in but I think it would have been a better story with something else, not as distracting and bringing up a real life tragedy an throwing it into the mix. The dynamic between characters was what kept me reading trying to find out why this girl was so horrible they decided to play such a horrible prank on her, but at the end of the day I really don't think i liked any of them or cared enough to see what happened to the them in the end, I felt like it dragged on a bit and I was just reading as fast as i could to get it over with. I think the author should have focused on putting more in to the ending subject of the story, it all felt so rushed by the time we found out what actually happened, I get it was supposed to be a completely plot twist/surprise but by the time it showed up it just felt like a quick rushed ending and it could have been bettter.

Thank you to Hyperion avenue via Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Anna meets Willow in Art school, she has never met anyone like her and she becomes best friends with her even uses her as her muse. 5 years later living in New York things drastically change she realizes that Willow is not such a nice person and the New York Art scene is all about survival of the fittest. Anna tries to make Willow see what a monster she has become, but instead she isn’t sure if she sent her friend running into the events of September 11th 2001 instead.

I loved this book, I found the description of the events of 9/11 from the perspective of those blocks away very fascinating. Willow was not a likable character, but I can see why someone like Anna would be attracted to her as a friend. Anna however is also a unlikable character as well. Overall the backstories really help to explain why the girls are the way they are and the book itself is really good. The twists were well placed and I definitely did not think anything close to what happened. Loved the authors writing style as well. Well worth the read.

I can’t even lie when I say the gorgeous cover drew me in on this one. Super dope. I’ve kind of hopped off the thriller train lately due to the overwhelming hype on “unBELIEVEable twists!!!” so I was a bit apprehensive going into this one. It’s definitely a slow burn, maybe even more of a dark character study, than a thriller. There are some twists thrown in there but they’re well executed.

Tell Them You Lied follows the friendship of Anna and Willow. Anna’s a wallflower ready to come out swinging in the art world, whereas Willow has always been a force of nature. Their friendship runs deep but the blade cuts both ways. We follow their story for four years, starting their freshman year of art school until 09.11.2001 when a mean prank is interrupted by the horrific events of September 11th. The story alternates timelines with Anna narrating current events while the past is in third person.

I’ve definitely known a Willow or two. Someone’s who’s been hurt badly and feels the need to dish out little bits of pain here and there, even to those their closest with. TTYL (even the initials are 2k 😬) nails this portrayal. The millennial nostalgia is there and it’s a solid read. I was hooked right up until the last page. I liked the ending but there were bits of it that I could’ve done without as they seemed a bit forced. All in all a solid read. If you appreciate dark academia reads with heavy character building, I’d recommend TTYL.

Tell them you lied is a novel of frenemies, art, and obsession. When Anna meets Willow, she is instantly taken in. She had never met anyone like her and is enthralled with her wild nature and charisma. However, willow begins to show sides to Anna that Anna isn’t a fan of-controlling, risk taking and attention seeking behaviors, etc. Anna decides to finally give her a taste of her own medicine and plays a prank on her-on 9/11. With the towers burning around her, Anna has no idea if willow is dead or alive and has no where to turn or who to trust-she has to piece together the past four years of their friendship to understand who her friend is and where she may be. If everything she knew was really true..

The comps to bunny and luckiest girl alive do track..and I can say the rating are the same. Those were all middle of the road reads, so maybe these type of twisted female friendship reads don’t do it for me? I always like the concept more than the execution and all are middle of the road reads for me!

Thanks to the publisher for providing this arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Anna had never met anyone like Willow and was completely at her mercy from their first meeting in college. Becoming inseparable as time went on the two were complete opposites. Willow ruled the roost and whatever Willow wanted, Willow got, even if she hurt others along the way. After college the two (along with other friends) headed to New York to further their art careers. Willow had no problems stepping on toes along the way, even if those toes were Anna’s. When Anna decided to put Willow in her place with a silly prank, she had no idea what was about to transpire. It’s 9/11 and as the World Trade Centers fall, Willow is declared missing. Is she really missing or is she giving Anna a taste of her own medicine. Soon Anna doesn’t know who to trust and has no idea if Willow is alive or dead. As she digs deeper she has more questions than answers. Where is Willow and is Anna now in danger was well? Alternating between their college years and 2001 in New York, this book draws you in page by page and has a twist that most won’t see coming. Thank you to Disney Electronic Content and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

2.5 stars

I wanted to love this one, but I think I liked the cover the most. If you like toxic characters and friends, this might be more up your alley, but for me it just made me never invested. I didn't really care about the plot. It also goes back and forth from their time in art school and a 9/11 timeline. The prose is quite readable and it is a fast read, which I think is essential in a thriller. The art initially intrigued me, but felt forced after awhile.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy to form opinions from.

😵‍💫 I really liked this!! 😵‍💫 (4.5/5)

This was such an interesting and unique book. I wanted to read it when I saw it was for readers of Bunny and Luckiest Girl Alive. There are definitely some aspects of both of those books in here, but it’s also something I haven’t really read before.

One thing that makes this book so unique, is the present timeline is set on 9/11 in NYC. It starts soon after the first building was attacked. But while everyone is reeling from these attacks, the FMC Anna is trying to figure out what happened to her friend that was supposed to be “mugged” that morning- an elaborate prank Anna set up meant to scare her friend Willow.

The chaotic backdrop of NYC in the aftermath of 9/11 alone made this book hard to put down. But combined with the psychological thriller aspect, and I sped through this one extremely fast. It gets very dark and at times uncomfortable, but this one will have me thinking about it for a long time to come.

𝑾𝒉𝒐 𝑰'𝒅 𝑹𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒐:
Dark academia and art lovers, those that can stand a bit darker books. Readers of Bunny, Luckiest Girl Alive, and The Hunting Wives. Anyone with 9/11 triggers should stay away.

I was given this book to review by NetGalley, all thoughts and views are my own. This book was a literal fiction book, instead of a thriller as presented a little spoiler. So here we go
SPOILER AHEAD
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The way I feel about Anne the main character, she is a closeted lesbian, who is obsessed with Willow, and it presents itself throughout the whole book, even down to setting Willow up. Anne's jealousy of all willows boyfriends presents an inner conflict for Anne and she has secrets but I feel this book took too long to get to the point and the time jumps between 9 /11 and college days were so annoying the concept seems cool but the delivery failed

Anna met Willow at art school and was immediately drawn to her. Willow is beautiful and cool and free spirited and has a natural grace that Anna envies. They seemingly become instant friends. But Willow has secrets and manipulates those around her. Several years later when they are both living in NYC and she disappears on 9/11, Anna isn't sure what's real and what's not.
Told in dual timelines, this was such a great read! I'm not sure I liked any of these characters but in a good way. The writing was excellent, the storyline unique and intriguing. This had me hooked and it was so hard to put down!

This was such an intriguing read!
I first loved the dual timelines; that's one of my favorite ways to read a fictional book. I also enjoyed the development of the characters and their intense relationships. I really related to the FMC and her need to change the outcome of her life when a young adult, but also to impress and keep her strong relationships with not so loyal friends/sexual relationships.
The "thriller' or mystery aspect of this was fun as well, making me wonder what secret would be unturned next. I also thought the impact of 9/11 was really helpful in aiding with the intensity behind the search for the missing friend, Willow.

This was such a unique story and unlike anything I have read, even though it reminded me of a few other books. This really captured those manipulative female friendships you have in college (or maybe it was just me?) Willow and Anna were an excellent duo, equally petty, frustrating and flawed. But since I like reading about trainwrecks it worked. The surprises in this one were so well done and elevated the plot.

Toxic female friendship among art students in the years before and the days after 9/11. This was a dark, twisty whirlwind of a book that kept me guessing and speculating right up until the end.

Anna and Willow meet as first year art students in university and immediately form a connection as two of the more serious female students within a largely male student body. Even early on, their friendship has tinges of the darkness and conflict to come. They are each other’s competition as artists, as women, as objects of desire. Anna is a familiar sort of character- a naïve middle-class midwesterner who genuinely believes in her own talent and is ready to put in the work to become a true artist. Willow’s character, in contrast, is just the kind of person a character like Anna inevitably becomes entangled with at college. She’s rich, beautiful, enigmatic, and image-obsessed. It quickly becomes obvious that Willow’s desire for her friends and the world to be as fixated on her image as she is will come to form the core of the novel’s conflict.

The plot of this thriller is cleverly revealed through alternating chapters focusing on Anna. The present, narrated in the first person, centers around the morning of 9/11 and the days following. Willow is missing and Anna may be involved in orchestrating a prank that caused her disappearance. The past is slowly disclosed over the course of Anna and her classmates’ years at college and is narrated in the third person. As the past creeps closer to the present, one thing is very clear- neither Willow nor Anna should be trusted to tell the reader or each other the full truth.

The biggest strengths of this book are its depiction of time and place and the exploration of the dynamics of female friendship in the male-centered art world. I loved the art school coterie orbiting a single charismatic character- this felt very familiar to me as a theme from other books without seeming overdone or trite. The female characters were all very well developed but the men seemed cut from the same cloth- perhaps this was intentional.

Without revealing any spoilers, I’ll say that the big reveals at the end of this book were shocking and hard to guess, which I appreciate, though it did feel a little rushed and messy. Overall, I highly recommend this to anyone who loves a twisty thriller with a dual timeline and a complex female friendship.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the opportunity to be an early reader for this title, which is available now!

What a rollercoaster of a story. I could have sworn things were going to go in a different direction ten thousand different times, but the ways things *did* go were absolutely phenomenal. I will be honest, I found both Willow and Anna to be extremely unlikable, BUT I think that was a good thing. It was very refreshing to read a story with incredibly flawed female characters. Flawed almost to the point of irredemption. Even though I thought they were both just downright horrible to one another, I was incredibly invested in their entwined fates. The story brought up a lot of questions about how people interact. At what point do you take accountability? For your own actions and for the influence you have over others? I, genuinely, spent the entire time I was reading this telling friends and family (with spoilers, of course) that Anna was queer in some way. The attitudes she has about Willow, and really Willow's attitudes about Anna, all just scream internalized homophobia and a deeply innate and relatable uncertainty about sexuality. There were points where the art discussion, especially Anna's perspectives on fame and artwork, got to be too much for me, and I wanted to quit the book, but sticking through it til the end was absolutely worth the frustration. The mentions of hunger throughout the book also very much pointed to the blood-curdling desire just beneath the skin of the story. It was beautiful. Fantastic book.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (4.5 stars)
Twisty, bold, and dripping with secrets—this one grabbed me and didn’t let go.

Laura Leffler’s Tell Them You Lied is a razor-sharp psychological thriller that brilliantly explores the lies we tell—to others and to ourselves. From the very first page, I was hooked by the chilling atmosphere and haunting questions that spiral through the narrative. The writing is taut, intelligent, and layered, pulling you deeper into a tangled web of memory, guilt, and shifting truths.

The protagonist is complex and vulnerable, and Leffler does a fantastic job peeling back her layers slowly, letting the reader question everything alongside her. There are reveals that made me audibly gasp, and the pacing had just the right balance of slow-burn suspense and jaw-dropping twists.

What sets this novel apart is its emotional depth. It’s not just a thriller—it’s a story about trauma, the unreliability of memory, and the desperate ways we try to protect ourselves from the truth. The ending was satisfying and unexpected, landing just right for the emotional journey that preceded it.

The only reason I held back from a full 5 stars is that one or two threads could have been tightened a touch more in the final act—but that didn’t diminish my overall experience.

If you love smart thrillers with an edge of literary flair and emotional resonance, Tell Them You Lied is one to put on your radar. I’ll definitely be watching for whatever Laura Leffler writes next.

I love a good psychological spiral. Toss in some art school trauma and a missing girl whose vanishing act coincides with one of the most chaotic days in modern history, and I’m already way too invested before the end of chapter one. But “Tell Them You Lied” by Laura Leffler is not just trauma-flavored fiction — it is a full-blown what the hell did I just read friendship meltdown wrapped in envy, obsession, and emotional crimes nobody’s going to jail for (but absolutely should).

We start with Anna, our narrator, who is every “quiet girl” in your freshman dorm that seems sweet until you realize she’s been silently cataloging your every flaw. She gets pulled into the gravitational force of Willow — charismatic, effortlessly cool, terrifying in that way only talented people with absolutely no emotional accountability can be. They meet at a prestigious art school, where their dynamic shifts between muse and monster, best friend and psychological hostage, faster than a hungover gallery intern can say “toxic codependency.”

Now, Willow isn’t just Anna’s artistic rival — she’s the mirror Anna stares into every day and asks, “Why am I not you?” Their friendship is drenched in competition and validation-seeking, with Anna orbiting Willow like the moon around a sun that’s already dead. And then — plot twist! — Anna decides to stage a fake mugging to scare Willow straight. Because when your bestie’s getting too successful, obviously the next step is light psychological warfare.

Except this all happens the morning of September 11, 2001. You heard me. Willow disappears in the literal smoke and ash of one of the most catastrophic events in American history, and Anna… does not exactly report her plan to police. She just, you know, hopes it all works itself out. Girl. What.

The novel bounces between their college years and the chaotic days after 9/11, and while the timeline flip-flopping can get a little "wait, are we in 1999 or having an emotional breakdown in 2001," the slow unraveling of Anna’s version of events is what kept me hooked. She's not unreliable so much as deeply self-justifying — like that friend who tells a story where they’re clearly the villain but they swear it’s just “complicated.”

Leffler nails the tension of female friendship that isn’t built on love but on need. Anna needs Willow to look at her and say she matters. Willow needs Anna to be her audience. Neither of them actually sees the other. It’s like watching two mirrors try to reflect each other — a little dazzling, kind of nauseating, and always one bad day away from shattering. Co-dependency feels like the polite clinical term you’d scribble on a chart when the more accurate diagnosis is “mutually assured emotional destruction.” These are two very broken people, duct-taping themselves together with ego and unresolved trauma, then wandering around breaking everyone else like it’s performance art.

Now, the elephant in the burning room: the 9/11 plot device. Yeah, it’s bold. Did it feel a little shoehorned? At times. But does it also underline how we all try to hide personal catastrophe inside public chaos? Kinda. I’ll give it credit — it made me uncomfortable in the exact way psychological thrillers should.

This is a 3.5-star read for me — messy in places, a little too enamored with its own atmosphere, but ultimately fascinating in the way watching two people emotionally detonate each other always is. And that ending? Never saw it coming. Spoiler: it’s not in a therapist’s office, where it 100% should have been. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely the kind of book you finish and immediately text someone, “I have THOUGHTS.”

Huge thanks to Hyperion Avenue and NetGalley for the ARC — this one fully rewired my trust issues and left me side-eyeing every college friendship like it’s a crime scene.