I read this book in one sitting, it was absolutely mesmerizing! Meg is someone that not a lot of people know, although they think they do. Then she runs into Kat, who wants to get Meg back for the wrong she did to her ten years ago. Little do they know, the story is never that simple. With twists and turns galore, I was not able to put this book down at all!

Thank you NetGalley and Source Books for the gifted digital ARC!

Read if you like:
*con artist plots
*Cover Story
*binge-able books

This book was intriguing from the start and I was eager to see how it played out. It’s not exactly a thriller, but is overall a slow burn drama/psychological suspense that definitely paid of in the end. There weren’t any major twists and turns, just a steady story that held my interest throughout. I liked the alternating POV and being inside the mind of the con artist! This novel had a different take on the con artist theme than Cover Story and some of the others out there and I really liked where the author took this one. Overall I really enjoyed this book and was satisfied by the ending! I definitely recommend picking it up this summer.

Meg Williams is a professional con artist seeking revenge from a man who has wronged her

Kat Roberts is a young journalist who has discovered Meg’s exploits and thinks this story could be her big break. 

🧩 The story shifts between both points of view, and creates its own mystery laying out each woman’s past piece by piece, uncovering lies of its own every step of the way. As you continue through this game of cat and mouse, you wonder, who is conning who? 

This checked all the boxes for me:

✔️ Strong Female Protagonist (you get two!) 
✔️ Multiple Points of View
✔️ Unreliable Narrator
✔️ Con with a dash of revenge
✔️ Epic ending 

💜 I was engaged and entertained throughout the entire book and highly recommend this quick and twisty read.

Quite the tale which is told from the perspective of Meg (the grifter/con artist) and Kat (the journalist).

Everything is not as it seems and the way to truly con someone is to know them better than they know themselves. Both Meg and Kat have someone that they want to take down for horrible treatment in the past. How they approach those events is very different. Kat is crippled by emotions and inaction. Meg is a doer and is always thinking 3 steps ahead (if not more).

I didn't want to like Meg, but she has more redeeming qualities than you might think. Kat needed to find her inner strength and it took her the whole book, but she does find it and I found it quite interesting the path she started down in order to right some wrongs in her life.

While the book is told mostly told in the present, there are some flashes to the past that help to round out the story and give us a deeper understanding of these women.

I think in the end that these two women might have actually formed a friendship, at least one of understanding that maybe they were more alike than they realized.

Worth the read.

Julie Clark is officially an autobuy author for me! I was a big fan of The Last Flight and I just binged The Lies I Tell. I loved the alternating perspectives between Meg and Kat. It was so easy to get wrapped up with Kat and not know what to believe. It was fast paced and “unputdownable.” I had a few guesses about what was going to happen but couldn’t wait to find out! I loved the ending too!

Meg and her mother were done wrong and that has stuck with Meg for decades. The bitterness turned her into a con-artist stealing from others. Kat is a reporter who is waiting to catch Meg in the act. She knows Meg changes her name in each new city she shows up in. Their paths finally cross and it leaves Kat asking even more questions. Who is Meg?
The Lies We Tell is a back and forth suspenseful story between Meg and Kat. You can never tell just who knows the truth and were the line is really drawn.
This is my first read by Julie Clark and it most certain will not be my last. Clark writes a fast paced, easy to read suspenseful novel. Her chapters go back and forth between Kat and Meg, each labelled so you know whose point of view the chapter is coming from. I will be recommending The Lies We Tell to others and will be looking for other works by Clark. Special Thanks to NetGalley, Julie Clark, and Sourcebooks Landmark books for the advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest opinion, 4 stars for me.
#theliesitell #NetGalley

If you read Julie Clark's last novel, The Last Flight, you might recognize a little easter egg in this one.

The Lies I Tell is a two perspective novel with Meg and Kat telling their stories.

Meg Williams is a con artist that has gone by many different names. She has moved home and is finally going by her actual name... but what is she up to?!?

Kat Roberts is a journalist that is researching Meg to put all her cons in one novel that she can sell for her first big break. How close is too close to get to a con artist?!

I loved this book! The novel shifts between Meg, the con artist, and Kat, the journalist, telling their sides of an ever evolving story. Kat believes that Meg ruined her life 10 years ago and has been waiting for the chance to expose her as a con artist. When Meg finally reappears in Kat's life she decides to get close enough to make the story worthwhile. The story is filled with twists and turns. Not your typical revenge story. I definitely want to read more by Clark.

The Lies I Tell was a high 4⭐️. This novel was driven by pain and revenge. Question, does two wrong make a right?
It had a true crime feel with a plot that was carefully carried out over years. The lines of moral decisions will be blurred and could possibly sway a person.
It was well written with clever and calculating people all the way around. I really liked this one and recommend it.
Thanks Sourcebooks Landmark via NetGalley.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

"The difference between justice and revenge comes down to who’s telling the story."

I really loved the previous book I read by Clark (The Last Flight), so I was very excited to read this one. I'm happy to say that it did deliver for me.

It's the story of two women: Kat, a journalist who has been searching for ten years for the woman she believes set her up for a terrible situation in order to expose her, and Meg, the con-artist who leaves ruined lives and empty bank accounts in her wake. But is everything as it appears on the surface? The more Kat investigates, the more she wonders if all of her beliefs about Meg are correct.

This is a slow burn of a story. Just as Meg takes time to craft her set-ups, the story gradually unfolds with information about both women in the past and the present. The author has a sneaky way of making the reader question presupposed beliefs about the characters' motivations. I had difficulty putting the book down because I wanted to know the end game, what was the ultimate goal here, and what were the reasons? I was very satisfied in the end with how things unfolded and were revealed.

If you're looking for a compulsively readable summer thriller, this one will definitely hit the spot.

Meg Williams wants revenge. At a young age she and her dying mother were conned out of their home by an unsympathetic con artist. This left Meg homeless, motherless and in debt trying to pay off her mother’s funeral. She swore that she would someday make him pay for what he did to them. She decides then and there to beat him at his own game someday when he least expects it.

Over the years she practiced the “con game” on unsuspecting targets carefully honing her “craft” by using aliases and becoming an expert at many technological and psychological practices. She was able to never leave a paper trail. One day, many years later, she finally sees a chance to ruin him and make him pay. She was able to put her plan together, a plan years in the making.

Unbeknownst to Meg, there is one person who has been waiting to see what her next move would be. And when Kat Roberts sees a google alert with the name Meg Williams, she can hardly believe it. As a young newspaper intern years ago, she was on Meg’s trail after she had conned a school principal out of money and then up and disappeared. But unfortunately for Kat, a phone call she took at the newspaper would forever change her life and end her career. But Kat always knew their paths would one day cross again.

Kat sees that Meg has become a real estate agent and is coming into town. Odd, that this is the first sign of life from Meg after so many years. Kat decides to put herself in the position to finally meet Meg, figure out her scam, catch her and expose her. She will con the con. Her plan is simple. Become friends with Meg and figure out who the target is, what the con is and why and stop the fraud. What Kat never imagined is that she would begin to really like Meg as a real friend. But are they really friends?

In this thrilling cat and mouse story, you start to not know who is really telling the truth or lying for the sake of their con. As you follow both of their complicated past and present lives you try to pinpoint who the hero will be. As the author Julie Clark writes so eloquently, “The difference between justice and revenge comes down to who’s telling the story.” As the reader begins to learn what is motivating both women, you can’t help but root for them both.

Thank you #NetGalley #Sourcebooks #JulieClark #TheLiesITell for the advanced copy.

Once I got into this story, it was hard to put down. Kat and Meg are circling each other, each with their own agenda. The story has many twists and turns and kept me guessing to the end.

That said, the whole book I kept thinking how much I hate characters that make dumb decisions and have bad things happen to them. So, the ending really surprised me. I was impressed and really kind of wish there was a follow up book for where the ending was heading. That book could be awesome!

Thanks to the publisher for a review copy via NetGalley.

𝙁𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙔𝙤𝙧𝙠 𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙗𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙇𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙁𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙖 𝙩𝙬𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙘𝙤𝙣-𝙬𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙧 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙩𝙬𝙤 𝙬𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙣 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙚―𝙤𝙧 𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙩 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙚?

This is my first book by this author but definitely won’t be my last. I was very entertained by this revenge story and really enjoyed where the story went.

I’m always fascinated by the idea of con artists, it’s such an interesting and unique take on a story. The whole book feels like a cat-and-mouse kind of game and I really enjoyed it. Meg was such a fascinating character and an awesome con artist.

I struggle with calling this a thriller, to me it didn’t seem like it was. Yes there were some twists here and there and a whole bunch of “lies” thrown around, but it didn’t seem like a thriller to me. However, I didn’t need this to be one because I still really enjoyed it and had a fun time reading it.

Although it did take me a bit to get into this, once I did I couldn’t put this down. I know Meg and Kat were different, but in a way, they were written very similar and it confused me at times. I found Meg more interesting.

I really enjoyed that ending. I think it wrapped up the whole story in such a great way. I keep thinking about the very ending and I think it was a perfect ending.

If you love revenge stories with well-developed female MCs then I highly suggest you check this one out!

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the digital review copy, all thoughts are my own.

The Lies I Tell was a quick, engrossing read. It kept my interest throughout, and somehow made a really unlikeable character somewhat likeable.

I would personally describe this book more as a domestic suspense than a domestic thriller. I kept waiting for the "thriller" part of the storyline to kick in, but it never really did. There were certain points where it felt as if it might lead to a darker, more thrilling plot, but then it would back off again. It was definitely never an "edge-of-your-seat" kind of book, at least in my opinion.

I also found some plot points to be somewhat far-fetched, but never so much that they impacted my enjoyment of the story. I genuinely did like it, I just think it's important to go in with the expectation of a suspense. I also loved seeing Reading, PA referenced in the book! That is my hometown and I've never before seen it referenced in a book, so that was a fun surprise.

I would recommend this book to anyone that is a fan of suspense or anyone that enjoyed Julie Clark's first novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

I started reading this book in the late evening and finished by the next day. It just blew me away and was so good that I just did not want to stop reading. I did not know what to make of Meg Williams but for being the con artist that she was, I ended up liking her. I also liked Kat, the other female protagonist in this book. I was completely engrossed in both Kat and Meg’s stories. This was so brilliantly written with so many twists that it will leave your head spinning. It is a fast-paced mystery that will have you staying up way too late reading. The Lies I tell is going on my Favorite Reads for 2022 list. Do not miss this one.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for the review copy.

So many lies are told in this enthralling story. The two main characters are both hiding their true nature, and for good reason. Kat is an investigative journalist who has a personal reason for digging into the life of Meg, a career con artist. The story is well-paced and interesting. And as Meg’s motivation and actions are revealed, this reader was rooting for her. Both characters are multi-layered and complex. I definitely recommend this book. Thank you to NetGalley for a digital ARC.

A con artist. A journalist. A phone call. A family wronged out of their estate. These are all the makings of The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark, a fun cat and mouse game where you can't tell who to trust when everyone is lying.

Told from alternating POVs, we are introduced to Meg, the big-hearted grifter who is seeking revenge against the man who conned her family out of their home, and Kat, the investigative journalist who has been tracking her for years.

This is such a fun, well-written book full of twists and smart female characters. I got sucked un right from the get-go and found myself rooting for both Meg and Kat to each get their own revenge. And that ending .... so masteful!! This will be one of the best reads of the season

Thank you to Julie Clark, NetGalley and Sourcebools Landmark for an advance copy.

Perfect book for a rainy day! Two women out for revenge for different reasons. Meg is a con artist. She has spent the past ten years working her craft before she goes after Ron Ashton who cheated her mom out of her family home. Her mom had no money and terminal cancer which forced both of them to spend Meg’s senior year in high school living in a car. Something bad happened to Kat. She is a journalist and has been gathering information about Meg and her cons for many years so she can write about her.

The story moves back and forth in time and is told by both Meg and Kat, Julie Clark had me guessing several times about what would happen. I enjoyed the story and look forward to the next Julie Clark book. My thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for an ARC of this book. The opinions in this review are my own.

After her mother is conned out of their beautiful estate, Meg becomes a con artist herself. Her latest mark is the very person who stole her family’s house. She is being tracked by disgraced reporter, Kat, in The Lies I Tell.

This book is a fun cat and mouse tale! I loved all the details about how a con is set up. However, the book’s main twist was too obvious and the conclusion relatively unbelievable. 4 stars!

Thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

This book was AMAZING! I loved the storytelling and the intertwining of two women who seemed like very different characters, but in reality, maybe not that different. Great writing and plot twist! Would highly recommend!