It took me about a month to get into this book. The beginning is very slow as it is dragged out a bit to get to know the characters more. There's a ton of POV's from different people so I feel that is why it took me so long because there were so many story lines to follow but once you read more you understand them more I guess. I feel like there were a lot of plots that didn't play out or they were just unnecessary.

I also have a ton of unanswered questions - such as why is Sophie the one in the hospital when she wasn't involved in the accident. Also why does the story line allude to some haunted house with this creepy haunting figure when that story line didn't play out.

I will say this book is okay. Would I recommend it... sure. It's alright.

Kelsey Cox's "Party of Liars" is an absolutely fantastic summer read, perfect for a beach chair or sun-soaked towel on the sand. This novel delivers on all fronts, serving up a generous helping of domestic drama intertwined with thrilling suspense.

Set against the vivid backdrop of the Texas Hill Country – which, having lived in Austin, made me immediately crave tamales and a trip back – the story unfolds like an onion, each chapter peeling back another layer of secrets. Just when you think you have it figured out, Cox delivers another shocking revelation, keeping you constantly on your toes. If you're a fan of authors like Liane Moriarty, Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware, or Lucy Foley, you'll undoubtedly devour this compelling and twisty tale. 4 stars.

Thank you St.Martin's Press and Minotaur Books for this one! Excellent debut by Kelsey!

9/10

This is Kelsey Cox’s debut novel. It almost didn’t happen. She apparently tried writing a book for years and then came to the harsh realization that maybe she isn’t a novelist after all.

Shortly thereafter, on a whim of an idea and a push from some friends, she whipped out Party of Liars. And thank god she did.

It is one helluva debut.

Kelsey has a talent for story construction where the tension builds like a tidal wave and just as the wave is about to crash over you, you get hit by a bus you never saw coming.

Party of Liars takes place on Sophie’s 16th birthday and, specifically, the party she has at her dad’s amazingly beautiful and slightly creepy house. The one with the huge glass wall on the top of the mountain.

Her dad, Ethan, is a psychiatrist who is trying to juggle all the personalities, including his ex-wife Kim and her drinking problem, he new and very young wife Dani who is coming off a mental breakdown, their newborn baby Charlotte, the nanny, the business partner and the cast of friends.

The way this all unfolds is brilliant. Honestly, reading Kelsey Cox has kicked me in the pants to get my book done.

#netgalley #partyofliars

What a FUN fun ride… at first I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of character to keep track of (5 in total POVs - I believe) but they aren’t hard to differentiate from. I didn’t find one in particular didn’t add too much o the storyline, but can’t say it took away from the overall plot

Main pointers:
- fast paced
- primarily one setting (birthday party)
- divorced parents causing chaos on their child’s bday
- father remarried to a young wife and has a new baby
- young wife might have postpartum depression (or psychosis)
- alcoholic parent

But there’s SO much more than just this… as the reader you start second guessing what you might believe as true and false

I have to say that ending was PHEW sooo good!! (I mean minus the extra POV I didn’t feel was necessary)

A luxurious Texas mansion, an over the top sweet sixteen party, and rich people doing rich people stuff set the stage for this locked room mystery. Kelsey Cox was a new to me author, and I really enjoyed how she made my perception of many of the characters shift around throughout the book. Both the Texas Hill Country setting and the quick pacing made Party of Liars engrossing enough for me to read in one long plane flight.

This book had all the right pieces but it didn’t fit for me. There was also a paranormal aspect that she tried to deliver with “mother” but it didn’t land for me. I wish there was more consequences for the husband and Mikayla. I felt like we got so much info throughout the book for the end to be rushed.

The way I loved PARTY OF LIARS by KELSEY COX 💫

It’s a party to die for + a book that is right in my sweet spot.

▫️Rich people behaving badly
▫️Dual timelines
▫️Multiple POVs
▫️Setting as character (this time a cliffside mansion!)
▫️Complicated female relationships
▫️A gothic vibe thanks to house with a haunting history
▫️Deliciously dark + messed up people doing all the delicious dark + messed up things

Sophie Matthew’s lavish Sweet Sixteen party brings together her friends and family for one truly unforgettable party — and someone won’t make it out alive.

Told over the course of one party in the present and through the pieced together past, we try to puzzle out whose body falls from the balcony of this cliffside mansion — and why.

Get ready for lots of secrets, some well-time creepiness and a cast of characters that have snark, sass, insecurities, doubts, grudges, resentment, resilience, loyalty and motives. And so many cocktails!

I absolutely devoured this book and loved everything about the story + the mystery. The writing hooked me from the start and I had so much fun try to figure out what was happening at the birthday bash set in Texas Hill Country.

I am so here for rich people being the absolute worst and for the four female POVs who led this story — Dani, Órlaith, Mikayla + Kim. Give me complicated + messy + relatability women wrapped inside an entertaining thriller.

As time ticks on and the cocktails flow, past secrets culminate in a party no one can forget.

Huge thanks to NetGalley + Minotaur Books + Macmillan Audio for the ARCs. I altered between the two and have to give a shoutout to the full cast audio who did a tremendous job bringing these characters to life.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wow! What an ending!
Spoilers ahead:




I absolutely did not see the twist coming at the end with the nanny’s daughter! It’s rare that a plot twist comes out of nowhere for me, but this one got me!
Overall, this was a quick read and I enjoyed it. I did feel a little unsatisfied with lingering questions: why was Sophie in the hospital? That wasn’t clear. I also felt there was not a satisfying conclusion to the Sophie/Mikayla storyline.

Party of Liars is an impressive debut novel. There are multiple narrators, each with their own voice, and multiple twists to keep you guessing. At first I wasn’t a fun of any of the characters but as I found out more I found my favorites. All of them are complex women (and girls) just trying to figure out life and the cards they have been dealt. If every Kelsey Cox novel has these kind of characters, count me in!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (4.5/5)

This was an incredible and outstanding debut novel, and one that will certainly be going on my re-read list! I really enjoy a well-written locked-room whodunnit murder mystery, and this one had all the elements of a twisty psychological domestic thriller. I also enjoy when there are multiple POVs, constantly altering the reader’s perception of reality. The second that I can figure out what’s going on with a whodunnit, I lose interest, but Party of Liars kept me guessing until the literal end (and even then, I was like, how did I not see this sooner?).

The 4 main FMCs in this novel are all impacted in different ways by seemingly innocent Ethan. Sweet, caring, innocent Ethan… not. Ethan’s character screams silent psychopath, and I love that Cox wrote this in such a twisted sense that there were moments as the reader that I admittedly felt guilty for thinking poorly of him! The ex-wife must be crazy. The current wife must be naive. The nanny must be a stalker. The friend must a murderer. Ethan could never be that way… wrong. Truthfully I had no inclination of who exactly committed the crime in this one, and how it all tied together the way it did, so it was a huge shocker at the end (Did I audibly gasp? Yes.)

𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎:
🎂 Multiple POVs
🎂 Locked-room whodunnits
🎂 Murder mysteries
🎂 Party of secrets
🎂 Strong FMCs
🎂 Flashbacks/dual timelines
🎂 Love triangles
🎂 Unexpected vengeance

𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒌 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒖𝒃𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒓, 𝑺𝒕. 𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒊𝒏’𝒔 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔, 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒕 𝑮𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒚 𝑨𝑹𝑪 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 𝒃𝒆𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆!

Thank you to the Macmillan Audio, St. Martins Press & Minotaur Books for providing me with advanced copies of Party of Liars. Here are my thoughts!

One extravagant Sweet Sixteen birthday party goes awry, leaving someone dead and the blood on someone’s hands. In this novel the reader gets some before, during and after Sophie’s birthday party. We read the perspectives of the stepmother, the nanny, the mother and the best friend. Each of these women will help the reader try to piece together exactly what happened at Sophie’s birthday.

I love a summer thriller, and this novel is perfect for summer. I listened to it for the most part and having the full cast made listening that much more engaging. I loved the way this story unfolded, and I genuinely didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t have any guesses on who the victim would be or the murderer. When I finally reached the end of the book, I was so happy with how everything tied together and played out.

The variety of characters was the best part of this book. I loved hearing all of the women’s experiences. It touched on the gossip and judgement that women sometimes face, and how their pasts can hang over them like a shadow, tainting everyone’s views of them and making people think the worst. And this happens at every age in this novel. It was such a powerful piece to include. Especially around topics such as addiction, pressures to fit in in high school, post-partum depression and class.

I can’t recommend this one enough to my fellow thriller lovers! And I’ll be keeping an eye out for other novels by Kelsey Cox, because I am hooked!

Instagram has made it possible to connect with so many people: fellow readers, publishers, PR companies, bookstores, and even authors. Connecting with an author, while reading their book is a different reading experience, one I will treasure. Kelsey Cox reached out to me on social media when I tagged her in a post about her debut Party of Liars, and I just have to say, she is the sweetest most down to earth person ever. I particularly love her authors bio and relate to her on a deep level. This connection made my reading experience so much more.

I devoured this book to the point that I had no listening time and went and bought the book from my local indie. The audio is tremendous and I highly recommend it. The full cast makes the amount of characters easy to follow and I heard their voices even when I was reading. I loved the character of Dani and completely empathized with her. I loved the twists and how each was revealed at just the perfect time. The twist at the end I didn’t see coming, and that doesn’t happen very often.

This thriller is worth the hype. Go pick it up. Go read it. You won’t be sorry.

I thought it was just a murder mystery but there are elements of a haunted house. I would say the haunted house only plays into it 10% but it is kind of up to the reader to decide how much the house has to do with the tragedies that occur. And how much is at the hands of men. This is a fun read, not scary. I do wish the author had played up the haunted house aspect a little more. Especially since one of the characters quotes from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier in the beginning. I ended up liking and disliking all of the characters at certain points of the book, making them feel complex and the story interesting. This is definitely a summer read, since the book takes place during the summer in the Texas heat.

The plot: The majority of the book takes place on the day of Sophie’s sixteenth birthday party. At the house where originally her mom and dad were to live until they got a divorce and her step mom moved in. Sophie adores her step mom, Dani, and her new baby sister even with all the complications that Dani has had post partum. The death happens at the beginning of the book, but we don’t find out who the victim is until the end when all of the stories come together. And everyone at the party questions whether the death was an accident or the doing of the ghost who lives in the house.

8/10 Would recommend.

A great debut novel with the classic Clue trope! It's a little hard to keep track of things in the beginning, but once you can keep the characters straight, it's a great whodunit!

What a salacious and twisty debut thriller.

I flew through this in one day!

If your looking for a multiple POV thriller that keeps you guessing than pick this up!

Let me pick my jaw up off the floor!
I don’t even know where to start with this but Kelsey Cox knocked her debut novel out of the park.

It reminded me of a game of clue or a giant murder mystery. Incredible.
I had no idea where the end was going and when it was revealed I was shocked. Superb book.

This couldn't really pull me in because there were so many people. It had a cool theme and atmosphere but would have been better with a smaller cast. It lost me at times.

Murder mystery that takes place in a mansion all in one day? Sign me up!

I love the atmospheric setting of this novel. Lists of drama, mystery, and unreliable narrators to keep me intrigued. I needed to know what was going on!

My two biggest qualms with the story was that there were sooo many characters that I needed to keep straight. Not sure if it was because of the switching back and forth between characters but it was difficult to keep up. I also craved more from the haunting within the mansion. I wish that was delved into more.

Overall, an intriguing story that had many depths that would be great discussions for a book club.

This fast-paced thriller doesn’t disappoint! I would label it as a locked room style scenario, not because the characters are trapped but because the action takes place during a short time period. Although we get lots of background information about the characters through flashbacks, the main story takes place during the sweet sixteen birthday party for Sophie, the daughter of Ethan and Kim who are divorced. The setting for the party is the home of Ethan, a psychiatrist, his new young wife, Dani, their infant daughter and the Irish nanny. This is Kim’s former dream home and this is just one of the many factors that could lead someone to murder. Among others are Dani’s postpartum depression and possible psychosis, Kim’s alcohol abuse, a superstitious nanny, gossipy friends and neighbors and teenage angst. As the story unfolds, more secrets are revealed and the complicated relationships just make the book more and more suspenseful.
This is such a cleverly written and enjoyable read! I liked the suspense of knowing that someone was going to fall from a balcony at the beginning of the book but not knowing who or why. The reveals were surprising and juicy but not over the top. There’s no way that I could have predicted the ending but it was very satisfying. I will definitely look forward to more from this author.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review. Opinions are my own.

This was an interesting read! It felt different and had a fresh take on the thriller genre. I absolutely love the locked room trope and think it just adds to the tension and suspense of reading a thriller. You don't know who to trust and that adds to the impending doom and sense of paranoia that keeps one at the edge of their seat. I liked the setting of this, too. A lavish 16th birthday party at a rumored-to-be haunted house? Yes please! I appreciate that the twists weren't outlandish. While I do appreciate a good gasping moment, sometimes twists can be too far fetched that it takes away from the story. This was a solid debut and will definitely be reading more from this author in the future.