A LOVELY LIE 📖💭
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A celebratory senior picnic goes wrong, resulting in the death of two students where secrets were buried for 22 years and meant to stay.

@jaimelynnhendricksauthor is pretty awesome. Whenever I'm in the mood for a juicy popcorn thriller with all the suspense, I always know where to turn. I love getting lost in the DRAMA that she creates for readers.

This book—A spiders dream web. We hop between multiple narrators and dual timelines. Hendricks made it easy to differentiate each character fairly early on so there is no confusion, which is something I appreciate in a story, especially right from the jump.

🥴👏🏻 Pepper, Pepper, Pepper! Girlfriend is the definition of a narcissist, I couldn't help but love her pov! As a whole, the characters were intricately flawed yet realistic. Loads of betrayals and lies with selfish and manipulative mc's taking turns, stirring the pot. JLH's special secret sauce. Bottle it up for me!

Thank you @netgalley and @penzlerpub for sending over this E-arc. Out on 5/28/24. 📕🎉

🩷🧡𝗔 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗟𝗬 𝗟𝗜𝗘🩷🧡
𝙶𝚎𝚗𝚛𝚎: 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚛/𝚜𝚞𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚜𝚎
𝙿𝚞𝚋 𝚍𝚊𝚝𝚎: 𝙼𝚊𝚢 𝟸𝟾, 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟺 (save the date)
𝙼𝚢 𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐: 𝟻 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚜 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🤏𝚃𝚎𝚎𝚗𝚢 𝚝𝚒𝚍𝚋𝚒𝚝…1999 two bffs are involved in an accident where two classmates are left dead. These friends part ways & never speak of this again, but something comes stirring it back up decades later & things get cray!

🩷🧡🩷🧡🩷🧡🩷🧡🩷🧡

💭𝙼𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚜...So flippin bingeable! I loved how this was set when I graduated high school & it was all about these kids high school graduation too. 🎓The flashbacks, the drama, the mystery and omg, the secrets…it was all so well done! It starts with a bang & the twists continue on and then the ending is all wrapped up in the nicest bow. 👌 I can guarantee you won’t guess all of these twists too! So.much.fun!! This was the 5th book with the word “Lie” in the title I have read in 2024 & all of them have been 5 stars! Crazy! I can’t wait to go back & read some backlist on this author. Thinking Finding Tessa is gonna be the one I choose, but yall hit me up If have suggestions too.

🩷🧡Thanks to @thrillerbookloverspromotions @scarletsuspense & @jaimelynnhendricksauthor for my advanced copy! 🩷🧡

This one hooked me in from the start!

Best friends Scarlett and Pepper are involved in a deadly accident and lie about their involvement. Pepper leaves town and Scarlett moves on with her life, getting married and having a son. 22 years later Pepper's daughter finds a letter from Pepper to Scarlett and stirs up all kinds of questions about their past and their involvement in the accident.

This was a fast paced story and had many twists keeping me on my toes the whole time I read.

Jaime Lynn Hendricks does it again! A Lovely Lie goes back and forth between the past and present. In high school, a terrible accident leaves two teenagers dead. But who caused the accident? What exactly happened that night? I was so invested in this book and what was going to happen next. Loved it!

A Lovely Lie
4⭐️

No one knew that best friends Scarlett and Pepper were in the car the night of the accident that left two classmates dead. As far as the class of 1999 knew, Chloe had been driving drunk following their senior picnic and had tragically hit Julian, killing them both. Only Scarlett and Pepper know what happened that night and stuck to their story through all the police interviews. Shortly after the accident, Pepper took off for NYC and Scarlett never saw her again.

That is until twenty-two years later when Pepper's daughter, Zoey, shows up at Scarlett's job at a hotel in Florida stating that Pepper had died. Zoey was looking for answers both about the accident and who her father was. And the night that Scarlett had buried years ago comes back to haunt her.

There were so many unexpected twists in this that I more or less finished it in one sitting. This was action packed all the way up until the end. This had two major tropes that I love--unreliable narrator(s) and a group of friends reuniting years after a crime and both were done so well! It's impressive to hate a character before they ever physically show on the page but this book managed to pull that off.

I liked the police interviews and flashbacks to the time around the accident. The flashbacks seemed to be a more omniscient point of view so I would spend the chapter breaks trying to figure out what was true and what Scarlett had convinced herself was true for so many years. I also liked how this showed the pattern of relationships with narcissists. After so many years of living in Peppers shadow (1/11 birthday to 2/22 birthday so Pepper was always first) it made total since to me that Scarlett went on to marry Pepper's high school boyfriend and stayed with him after at least one affair.

I really enjoy the way Jamie Lynn Hendricks does twists and reveals!

Thank you Netgalley and Penzler Publishers for providing this ARC to me!

I really enjoyed A Lovely Lie. I liked the characters and the plot of the story. It was a fast read that kept me guessing from the beginning. I liked reading the different characters' points of view as well as getting the flashbacks from the past. I am a big fan of Jaime Lynn Hendricks's novels and would definitely recommend this book.

Imagine just living your life thinking you’ve kept your past in the past…then in a blink of an eye your world is flipped upside down and you are catapulted back to that night….

A lovely lie turns into several lies. You are left wondering who you can trust, who is telling the truth and if you can trust a stranger.

What a fun and twisted read this was! I was hooked! Such a mystery as to what really happened that night of the senior picnic! There were some shocking twists that I didn’t see coming, and I would love nothing more to lay it all out, but I won’t spoil it.
Alternating timelines are what really made this a page turner for me. From past to present and back to the past. This is one book you won’t be able to put down so grab it asap when it comes out!

A lovely lie

I’m not sure how she does it but Jaime Lynn Hendricks keeps me on my TOES! This book is so twisty and chock full of secrets, I read the entire thing in one sitting. It’s been a while since I’ve finished a book in one day without the assistance of audio but this one downright demanded it!

With multiple points of view, flashbacks to 1999, and a few unlikeable characters, 𝘼 𝙇𝙊𝙑𝙀𝙇𝙔 𝙇𝙄𝙀 is perfect to binge with friends because I promise, you’re going to want to talk it through! Thankfully, I had the pleasure of reading with a few friends and we all had our jaws on the floor. Gather up your book buddies, preorder this book, and schedule a reading date because this is one you’ll be sad to miss!

Over the past few years, Jaime Lynn Hendricks has been one of my go-to authors for thrillers and suspense. Her latest novel, A Lovely Lie, is perfect for fans of Mean Girls, Heathers, and Jawbreaker.

This story reads mostly as a domestic suspense. It's about a woman, Scarlett, who is covering up a lie about a possible murder that she and her best friend were involved in when they were teenagers. She didn't give much thought to the situation until the friend's daughter sought her out to inquire about it and said she'd be doing more research soon. That leads to fights, family drama, and some flashback scenes. Scarlett's marriage is already rocky and the emergence of her former best friend's daughter leads to more questions and marital strife.

Overall it was an interesting novel that kept me turning the pages. I could guess at some parts of it, but I was definitely surprised by everything else. I liked seeing different perspectives, which led to more clues about what actually happened on the night of the accident. I already look forward to Jaime's next novel!

Movie casting suggestions:
Scarlett: Gillian Jacobs
Vince: Alan Ritchson
Zoey: Alisha Newton
Chris: Matt Lanter
Lucas: Jack Champion

When I say I DEVOURED this book, I mean I sat down and didn't get up until I was done!

Based on the summary, I was really expecting kind of a standard thriller and I've never been more wrong! This book kept me on the edge of my seat with little twists and turns throughout!

There were a couple tiny twists I guessed but most of them shocked me in the BEST way! This was my first book by this author and it certainly won't be my last! Absolutely 5 stars and one I'll be thinking about for a long time!

4.5 ⭐️

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A book full of unlikeable characters I loved hating … and a ton of twists that gave me whiplash ( in a good way) … this one moved at lightening speed and was hard to put down

This was such a wild ride full of twists and turns! Hendricks has such a great writing style and I knew I had to read this after loving I DIDN’T DO IT. This has a fun cast of characters, all full of their own secrets and wants. There was so much jealousy throughout this and I loved seeing certain characters get what was coming for them. The 90s setting was very nostalgic and the teens were portrayed so realistically. This will have you guessing until the last page!

I freaking loved this book! So much drama and so many lies. I really never knew what to believe. Jaw dropping twists all the way through. Fantastic book!

ARC was received via NetGalley and Thriller Booklovers Promo group. All opinions are my own.

This book started off great and didn't stop! It had shocking twists all the way through. It was so fun to read all the different perspectives and what all the lies unfold. I could not put this one down!

3.5/5

This started off slow, and I could see where the story was going pretty early on. But as I got to know the characters better, I became more interested in their lives and secrets. The writing was good, with vivid descriptions and realistic dialogue. But the story took a while to get going, and I wish it had picked up the pace sooner. Once things started moving, though, it got more exciting.

Overall, while it wasn't my favorite book, I'm still curious to read more from Hendricks in the future. My rating is mostly based on the second half of the book, which was more engaging than the beginning.

CONFUSION DOES NOT EQUAL SUSPENSE. Of course, readers are shocked and awed while reading - there are 10 people, 4 lies, 3 reveals, 2 twists, and a partridge in a pear tree in every scene. You can't help but be surprised because you have no idea what's going on.

Okay - I'm being dramatic, but seriously, this book defines "10 lbs of s*** in a 5lb bag".

A Lovely Lie had my head spinning while trying to keep the storyline straight. The book has too many main characters, most of whom readers get a POV. In addition to jumping between narrators, the story follows three different timelines. Everyone is hiding a secret in both the past and present. But their elaborate web of relationships and lies culminate in a somewhat satisfying conclusion, so for that 👏🏻. I didn't predict the final twist, but was the minefield of tangents, time hopping, and enmeshments worth the trouble?

Eh. I'm not disappointed I read it, but I don't think it will be on my list to recommend. In my opinion, the author was trying too hard to compete in the unofficial election for "The Queen of Twists." The base storyline was excellent - it didn't need all the extra weird surprises piled on top.

A lovely lie is a book full of dark and dirty secrets. I won't say too much but this is a book you need to RUN to get when it releases on May 28th 2024

I promise you this will be a book on a list of Best Books of Summer for 2024
So so so so good and well written with twists and turns I never see coming.

A Lovely Lie by Jaime Lynn Hendricks is for anyone who loves an unreliable narrator and multiple twists. Jaime does such a great job in getting the reader completely invested with both timelines and I had a hard time putting this one down. It was interesting to find that while I didn’t really like these characters, I was completely on board with spending this whole book reading about their drama (not me totally enjoying the troubles they had). Another winner from Hendricks!

I loved this! Jaime Lynn Hendricks is a fantastic story teller. It’s entertaining and fast paced. I’ll never miss one from her!