BookCLE IG Account: https://www.instagram.com/bookcle/

Links:
Goodreads—Posted 5/16/25: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7103072162
Fable—Posted 5/16/25: https://fable.co/review/38ea04f5-3ae6-43a0-a914-bf1894f4e5a4/share
Instagram—Run Date 5/22/25-5/27/25: LINKS COMING SOON
Bluesky—Run Date 5/22/25-5/27/25: LINKS COMING SOON


Twisty, haunting, and unexpectedly raw, "Tell Them You Lied" by Kate Brody is a thriller that peels back layers of truth, obsession, and regret—set against the backdrop of one of the most defining days in American history. At its core, the novel follows Anna and her intoxicating friendship with the magnetic Willow, a relationship born in the competitive halls of art school and marred by betrayal, longing, and blurred intentions. As Anna grapples with her disillusionment and a desperate bid to reclaim power, an ill-conceived plan to teach Willow a lesson collides with the morning of 9/11—sending both her world and the city spiraling into chaos.

This book dredged up every ounce of my teenage angst, my early-2000s insecurities, and that desperate need to belong, to matter, to be seen. Brody nails the truth about being young and passionate and drowning in the feeling that everything is life or death—only to look back years later and realize it was never that deep. The novel dissects perception and how we justify our worst decisions in the name of love, art, or survival. And then there's Willow—god, I hate her. But I love to hate her. You will too. She’s the kind of character that hooks into your brain, impossible to pin down, equal parts aspirational and monstrous. But the question is… where is she?

I wasn’t prepared for 9/11 to take such a central role, but it doesn’t just mark the setting—it becomes part of the story’s identity. Brody carefully captures the confusion, fear, and eerie stillness of that day with startling clarity, evoking the same emotions I felt as a teenager living through it. For those of us who remember that fatal day, a haunting kind of nostalgia jumps off the pages; for those who don’t, this book gives you visceral insight into the disorientation and aftermath. The novel feels modern and messy with a melancholic sentimentality as its muse.

"Tell Them You Lied" is a whip-smart novel living on the edge of truth and sanity. But no one is innocent here. Not Anna. Not Willow. Maybe not even you.

Thank you to Laura Leffler, Hyperion Avenue, & NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my authentic review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review. Unfortunately, I didn’t really care for this book. I feel like I have read a version of this toxic female college/early 20s friendship dozens of times, so nothing about this felt particularly original. I also thought it was weird and unnecessary to set this with 9/11 as a backdrop. It ended up being completely irrelevant by the time the last “twist” happened, so it could have been set during any other time period in New York. I also wasn’t a big fan of the writing style; the shifts from first person to third person POV kept taking me out of the story. Overall, this is a quick read that I’m sure TikTok will like, but it wasn’t for me.

Reading Tell Them You Lied is kind of like watching a late 90s/early 2000s sitcom–featuring a dynamic group, cramped apartments in big cities, struggling for work, and somewhat tone deaf references to socio-political events–except every single character is some shade of awful.

If unlikeable characters are not your thing, this debut is definitely going to be a skip. Personally, you give me a main character who stages a mugging to lure her best friend back into the toxicity of their college glory days and I am ALL for it. Anna and Willow’s dynamic is compelling. Their entanglement changes them both and effectively blurs the lines between love and hate, between wanting to be someone and wanting them dead.

While it’s quite clear from the beginning that Willow is a vicious and self-motivated woman, there are so many uncovered events throughout the book that further reveal her abject cruelty. Even so, it’s understandable why Anna, a character who is far from blameless herself, immediately fell into her orbit. She's cool and smart and pretty, and she defends Anna’s artwork in front of the entire class. Perhaps one of my favorite lines of the book comes when Anna is examining one of Willow’s self portraits:

“You were beautiful, of course, but there was something wrong with you, too, something tight and angry and mean right below the surface.”

Speaking of Anna, she is like the ultimate unreliable narrator. I was constantly going back and forth on my opinion of what must have happened to Willow alongside Anna’s own struggle. Yes, it seems in character for Willow to stage her own disappearance for fun, but am I really believing the theories of a character who stages a violent mugging for her best friend? And this dissonance really increases as we learn more about the actions of each of these girls, the push and pull of things they have done for each other and the things they’ve done to each other.

One thing that detracted from my enjoyment of this debut was the inclusion of the events of 9/11 and the way they were handled. It really felt like this had little significance on how the plot played out. Yes, it provided a reason why Anna and other characters were concerned by Willow’s disappearance, but it ultimately felt more like a convenient backdrop for the story. I will say that the impacts of this event felt somewhat more present in the latter sections of the novel with slight explorations into the paranoia of New York communities in the aftermath of the event, but it hardly felt like enough to justify the strangely blasé way that a significant real-life tragedy was used as plot fluff.

I also would have liked to see just a bit more exploration of Anna and Willow’s dynamic, particularly the development between the more wholesome starting events of their friendship to the more insidious and revenge-soaked actions. What we did have was really interesting to read about, and I personally would have liked to see a few more examples of this.

This book was crazy.
Two art students have, what I would describe as, a toxic friendship. Anna becomes obsessed with Willow. Willow is confident and knows how to get what she wants, at any cost. Anna can’t keep up, but does she even really want to?
Y’all. This was a wild ride. The ending wasn’t what I was expecting. There were parts I wasn’t as engaged with, but most of the time I was straight up hooked.
Great listen. Thank you netgalley!

What a wild ride, one that kept me reading and waiting for the other twist and turns to happen. You will never guess or know what is about to come up and I enjoyed guessing all through out.

When Anna meet Willow at the start of college, she immediately feels like this girl was supposed to be in her life. They quickly become best friends, but Willow always seems to be holding everyone at arms length. It’s now five years later and the crew is living in NYC, with Anna and Willow rooming together. Things aren’t exactly going to plan though…did the set up mugging happen? Was Willow somehow near the twin towers as they fell? Where else could she be?

Oh man this book! Toxic girl friends relationships are so messy! I kind of hated everyone in this book, but still found myself rooting for certain characters? I love a book that leaves me wondering who I am actually rooting for! I don’t love books that incorporate 9/11, but it did make sense in this one. It’s one of those things that just still feels too close, even though it was has been 20+ years. I loved the art school/NYC art scene aspect of the book! Having gone to art school myself I know how cut throat it can be, and this book depicted it pretty perfectly! Overall I really enjoyed this one!

Thank you to @hyperionavebooks for my gifted copy of this book!

3⭐

I'm a bit mixed on this one.

I hated every single character, but I think that was the point. They were toxic AF. It gave me flashbacks to high school and how certain "friends" acted. Wills specifically. Gave me anxiety reading it haha.

The story is decent. It was intriguing and well done. The twist at the end was good and unexpected. Definitely keeps you guessing the entire time.

Thriller set in the aftermath of September 11th, amongst a group of New York art school graduates and friends who may hate each other. The main character of the group disappears and the other members of the group may be responsible. Great sense of place which is key in books like this. The Strokes and LCD Soundsystem era of New York is one of my favorites and Leffler captures the cocaine in the bathroom vibe of kids with more money than talent and sense.

There was a lot of push and pull in this book for me. First, the two main characters are not likeable at all. Second, the dual timelines made the story a little difficult to follow at times. I thought that the backdrop of 9/11 to kind of facilitate the mystery or thriller element was interesting. It was really beautifully written. I also think that the author did a great job at keeping the story entertaining while using two characters who didn't have any redeeming qualities.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I found the first half to be way too slowly paced for a mystery, and the character elements were very reminiscent of multiple other books in the genre (most obviously Gone Girl).

This picked up a lot at the halfway point, and I read the entire latter half in one sitting. And though I was definitely satisfied by the ending, I did find it to be pretty tasteless that 9/11 was used as a backdrop and, essentially, a red herring in a girl's disappearance. I understood what Leffler was doing in having everyone be in a state of disarray and loss and confusion in setting the atmosphere for Anna's search for her friend, but when the event ultimately had nothing to do with the story, itself, or with any kind of growth for the characters? It felt very, very manipulative and pretty cringe.

I finished the book still not knowing how I felt about it. My initial thought is that I hated the book but I must not have if I stuck through til the end?

In reality the book is really good and it's the characters I hate. Everyone feels like they're lying or manipulating someone. No one is reliable and their personalities felt gross. Which makes perfect sense for the book.

I did want to get to the end. I wanted to know what happened, but I'm not sure if I enjoyed the journey. I think the 9/11 backdrop was unnecessary but I can see how it added a little bit of seasoning to the plot.

I'm giving it four stars, I may change my mind about this. I've sat on this for a few hours now and I'm still confused on how I feel about it. So she must have done something right.

The thing that drew me to this book was the 90s setting, and tbh I would not have been interested if it was a present day story. But I'm a sucker for anything about being young in the late 90s. The story is told in a dual timeline, the flashback sequence (with a third person narrator) starting in 1997 and the present timeline (with a first person narrator speaking directly to her roommate as "you", which I thought was a bit of an odd choice) taking place mainly on 9/11 in New York. The mystery and the hidden secrets here were interesting and suspenseful enough to keep me reading, but there wasn't quite as much 90s/Y2K ambience as I had hoped for, but again, just enough to keep me going.

There is a lot here about art, what it means to make art and be an artist, what it takes to be successful, explorations of the relationship between gender and art/the art world. None of that is really my thing, so I don't know if I really got everything the author intended out of that subject matter. I would recommend this book more highly to people who are interested in those topics, maybe not as much to those just looking for a mystery/thriller.

I couldn’t put this down, which is few and far between these days. A constant scrunching up and unraveling of characters and plot. Thanks to Netgalley for the free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review, book publishes 5/26

This book is an insidious spiral of art and academia and twisted friendships. Following Anna, Willow, and an ever expanding cast of characters through college studying art and endeavoring to become art in the process as well as Anna in the aftermath of 9/11 NYC while Willow is missing, Tell Them You Lied is complex and infuriating and just genuinely very good.

The relationship between artist and muse, the way that the artistic process has a habit of breaking the women it claims to love, all of it comes together in the story of Anna and Willow. I cannot tell you the rage I felt for some of these characters and how they treated each other. Genuinely, I wouldn’t want to be friends with any of them. None of them were villain caricatures, though, they had their own issues and lives moving within the story and often very murky motives from Anna’s perspective. I have a lot of feelings about all of this, but I’m refraining from spoilers to the best of my ability.

If I were to pick out one problem with this book, it’s that the pacing at the start is incredibly slow. It didn’t hook me nearly as quickly as it could have, especially for how invested I was by the end. It felt like it was trying to be mysterious and a thriller and it wanted me to be at the edge of my seat, but I genuinely didn’t care for far longer than I’d like to admit. If I wasn’t given an ARC, I might have DNF’d it, which would have been a massive shame because somewhere around the 50% mark it fully picked up into an absolute whirlwind.

This book reminds me of Bunny, but less mind bending, and The Secret History, but less pretentious. It’s straightforward despite being told in two time lines and the plot itself being very twisty and turny. If you’re into stories about art or academia or complex and often infuriating relationships, this one’s for you.

Thank you to Hyperion and NetGalley for this eARC given in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feelings here are my own.

This gave me flashbacks to My Year of Rest and Relaxation which probably would have been fine if I'd enjoyed that book in the first place. Capitalizing on similar themes of privilege, identity, and of course, 9/11 era New York Citiy, Leffler attempts a stirring commentary on the art world that doesn't fully land. I have weirdly specific beef with 9/11 narratives in edgy women's fiction because they always end up being steeped in naval-gazing cynicism masking as commentary on class and self and alternative lifestyles a la Girls without the dry self-awareness. This novel is perhaps toying with a similar concept - playing up character's insufferable traits in the service of a meta-narrative - but it is so inconstantly executed that all the characters just come across as obnoxious and self-absorbed.

In a fast paced story of toxic friendships, pretentious characters Anna and Willow meet. Competiting artists, freshman in school, and giving early on vibes of real frenemies. Willow didn't come across as any cooler but Anna was immediately obsessed and jealous. Told in dual timelines, when a prank goes wrong, the reader gets flashbacks on what this “friendship” really is. This book is for people who are wanting similar vibes to “the girls are all so nice here” or “a simple favor”

As someone who can get tired of reading stories of bad female friendships, how badly women can treat each other, this was pretty enjoyable. The fast pacing was a good choice and kept things intriguing. Willow never really have a reason to be so revered, she just had that aura, she just was. We all know that girl.

The character set up was great - the feeling of that friend group you’re stuck in, as you had all known each other since freshman year, the how did we get here feeling, why are we still here?

The present timeline, set September 11 2001, was a good idea to keep the reader guessing and Anna at the edge of her seat but those chapters tended to drag a little more and feel repetitive as we are in Anna’s guilty mind at first. It would benefit from being edited down some. The ending did fall a little flat, as the story didn't quite reach the depths it could have. The story doesn’t give itself enough credit for it’s dark academia vibes.

Wow! Truly had no idea what was coming with this one. Very suspenseful and not at all predictable. The ending was a bit of a letdown, but otherwise really enjoyed this one!

(Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.)

I really enjoy novels set in the dark underbelly of the art world, so when I read the premise of Tell Them You Lied, I knew I had to read it. There’s just something addictive and dark about the ruthless ambition between art students and teachers alike. Set against the backdrop of 9/11, this novel surprised me in ways I didn’t expect. A solid debut filled with secrets and lies!

The dual timeline added so much tension to both the plot and character relationships, especially between Willow and Anna. The past answering all the questions in the present. Their friendship felt so complex and relatable, especially for two teenagers who are desperate to fit in, while also being fiercely competitive with each other. The plot developed so organically, unfolding steadily with each reveal. And when the end crime was finally revealed, it still came as a surprise. I devoured this book in two days! The characters weren’t all likable, but that’s an element in the genre I love. The tension gripped me immediately, pulling me through to a very satisfying ending. There were so many scenes that stuck with me, but if I had to pick one it would be of Anna and Prof. Kape at the party hosted by Lizzie’s parents at their house. It was so shocking.

For readers who enjoy stories about unlikely friendships, dark secrets, and missing persons.

I was a little unsure how to feel about 9/11 being used as a backdrop for a psychological thriller. But at the same time, we use all sorts of tragedies for different storytelling purposes so I guess.. why not.

Anyway, the story itself was dark and kind of twisted and I couldn’t put it down. Willow is pretty hard to root for, she was pretty awful, and at times, so was Anna. But I felt a certain empathy for her.

Usually when I read books set in the past, they go back further than I can remember/was alive for. So this one was a little nostalgic in that I was only a few years younger than the characters in the time the story takes place. It certainly makes me feel a little old, but there’s something about being in on it, having been there too, that felt kind of nice.

While a definite slow burn, Tell Them you Lied was a well paced story about two toxic women as they go back and forth hurting each other until we reach the final climax.
I was a little disappointed by the ending (I had hoped it would go the way that it teased that it would) but over all I enjoyed this story and i'll look forward to reading more from this author in the future.