I loved this book and read it in under 24 hours! Party of Liars is an absolute page-turner, with short, gripping chapters that made it impossible to put down. The multiple POVs were well-executed and easy to follow, adding layers of suspense to the story. Every twist had me hooked, and the ending was just perfect! If you’re looking for a fast-paced, unputdownable mystery, this is it. Highly recommend this debut!

Sophie's Sweet Sixteen was really her parent's party both her dad's and Dani's (his new wife) and her mother, Kim's. Something was "off" from the start, and the rumors of the home being haunted started to feel like they may actually be true. As the party derailed from alcohol, both on the adults and kids sides, secrets and connections are revealed and the book jumps from the Party to After the Party where we know someone died.

Great thriller - I didn't figure out all the pieces until close to the end. The ending and epilogue were still surprising with one character where the loose ends never really got tied up. This was a good one, though, and I will be reading more of Kelsey Cox.

Now this is how you do a slow burn. The characters had depth. The atmosphere and setting was creepy and set the scene perfectly. And the writing was so unique, with the story being told in such an intricate way that you have no idea of who the victim or the perp is until the very end. It felt like an adult game of Clue. Overall, I really enjoyed the ride and highly recommend!

Thank you to the author and St Martin's Press for the ARC copy of Party of Liars. This was my first read by Kelsey Cox and I loved it. It was a locked room mystery with plenty of suspects. Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party is being held at her dad's renovated mansion that is said to be haunted by The Mother. Teenagers and adults are all excited to see this house they refer to as the Dollhouse
We don't know until the very end of the book who won't make it. It was a very delightful fast read.
Publishing date is July 1st 2025.

Thank you to NetGalley and Minotaur for the arc in exchange for an honest review!

I really enjoyed this. The many different POVs were actually so wild. They were all unreliable, but especially the 2 moms. I pretty much predicted everything that happened, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment, and just showed that everything was laid out really well.

Sophie Matthews is turning 16. Her dad and his new wife are throwing her a big birthday party at the house they’ve been renovating forever. But someone isn’t making out of this party alive.

We follow several people. Dani, who’s married to Sophie’s dad Ethan. She’s recently had a baby and is having a hard time. Kim, Ethan’s ex wife and Sophie’s mother, who’s definitely an alcoholic, which makes her unreliable, but not necessarily wrong. Mikayla, who’s a long time friend of Sophie. And Orlaith, the nanny Ethan hired to take care of the baby.

The whole book takes place over the course of the party with plenty of flashbacks. Memory plays an important role, and nothing is as it seems. I enjoyed seeing it all come together, and I recommend this for fans of locked room thrillers and books where the mystery is who died and not who did it.

Better than I expected! Told from various points of view, it keeps the book moving along. The ending was not expected and done well. Fun read!

As soon as I received the invitation to read “Party of Liars” through NetGalley, I was almost certain I’d be setting aside the five or so other books I’m currently reading in pursuit of this new gem. The cover is beautiful, and how can you not like that title? I’m a sucker for any thriller set around a huge party, and the party featured in this book did not disappoint.
“Party of Liars”, by Kelsey Cox, is a fast-paced read full of, obviously, liars, and other all-around terrible people, but also some likable, or at least sympathetic, characters. I like that there is a mixture of generations featured in the book, from the teenagers that make up Sophie’s friend group to Charlotte’s grandmotherly nanny, Órlaith.
This book was engaging and I would highly recommend it; the only potential downside is that the twists felt a little predictable, and a more seasoned thriller reader probably would have pieced everything together early on.
Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this eARC!

Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox is a thrilling ride that kept me hooked from start to finish. The story revolves around Sophie Matthews' extravagant Sweet Sixteen party at her dad's renovated mansion in Texas Hill Country. The mansion, rumored to be haunted, sets the perfect eerie backdrop for the drama that unfolds.​

The characters are well-developed and relatable. Sophie is a typical teenager dealing with family dynamics, including her new stepmom, Dani, and her best friend, Mikayla, who’s feeling the strain of their changing friendship. The tension between the guests is palpable, and when a body suddenly falls from the balcony during the party, the suspense skyrockets.​

Cox does a fantastic job weaving together multiple perspectives, allowing readers to piece together the mystery alongside the characters. The "locked-room" aspect of the whodunnit adds to the intrigue, making it hard to put the book down. The setting is vividly described, and the haunted house rumors add an extra layer of spookiness that keeps you on edge.​

Overall, "Party of Liars" is a gripping mystery with unexpected twists and a cast of characters that feel real. If you're into suspenseful stories with a hint of the supernatural, this book is definitely worth a read

Ethan and his current wife Dani life in a historical mansion on a Texas hilltop. They throw Ethan’s daughter an extravagant sweet 16 and invite the entire town, including the ex wife. Everyone in town is curious about seeing the upgrades the family has done to the supposedly haunted mansion. The guests are all drinking, including the teens, and that brings out the worst in everyone’s character.
This story has multiple POV’s which I do enjoy but all the characters are awful people so I struggled to get through any of their chapters.
The pacing was very slow for a story that almost all takes place in a few hours at the party. The ending left me with more questions than a resolution.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

This had a little bit of a slow start for me but by the end it made sense because all the information was necessary for the plot. I loved the multiple povs and it was a really fun mystery!

Mystery and thriller readers keep an eye open for Party of Liars by Kelsey Cox, which publishes this summer. It was a great read.

This was a fun read and I read about 75% of it in one day! This book is based at Sophie’s lavish sweet sixteen party hosted at her dad’s house, with everyone they know and then some in attendance — including her mom (the ex wife), stepmom, best friend, and ex boyfriend.

The house is known as haunted because 100 years or so prior, a woman fell to her death from the balcony. And in the very beginning you learn that someone falls to their death at the party, but you don’t find out who until the very end. The entire book is set at this one party with some flashbacks.

I really enjoyed this book and will definitely recommend it! There are a lot of characters but they were easy to differentiate, and some of the twists really got me.

Read if you love:
-family/friend drama
-baking
-multiple POV
-minor paranormal aspect
-Carola Lovering books

Give me a locked room mystery where everyone is wildly suspicious and I’m immediately in. It just so happens that Cox wrote an actual phenomenal book on top of it being my fav sub category of literature. So bravo, I would gladly reread this in a year when the details get fuzzier with time so I can re-surprise myself :)

Thank you NetGalley and Minotaur Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Today is set up to be the Sweet 16 birthday party all teen girls dream of. A pool party at your father’s mansion complete with DJ, all your friends, and a beautiful cake your stepmother made just for you. But there’s one thing that could potentially ruin your special day – the drama that comes with having divorced parents, an alcoholic mother, and adults who always seem more interested in competing to have more and be more than the rest of the community. It doesn’t help that the entire town thinks your home is haunted, too, after a series of mysterious events over the years. Will the party be a success, or will the adults’ drama end in tragedy?

Kelsey Cox brings readers on a Texas-sized thriller in her debut release Party of Liars. Set in her native Texas hill country, this book features multiple points of view through which Cox weaves a disturbing, yet all too realistic, tale of the pressure we experience to fit in with our community. Compromised values, substance abuse, and mental health struggles – all typical taboo topics and all tackled in novel as consequences of that pressure. This is a fantastic thriller that will keep readers on the edge of their seat until the final pages!

I give Party of Liars 5 out of 5 stars. I was blown away by the way Cox wove together so many different points of view in a cohesive manner almost as if this was written like a deconstructed screenplay, not a novel. With short chapters, this was an easy read with beautifully built characters and vivid descriptions. While reading this novel, the one thought that kept recurring for me was that book gave me Agatha Christie vibes in such a beautiful way – the beautiful interpersonal stories and peer pressure Cox builds between the characters, the social constructs that provide underlying motivations, and the setting that is as much a character as the people. If this is a debut release, I can’t wait to see what comes next from Kelsey Cox!

With themes of underage drinking and sex, alcoholism, mental health struggles, and professional abuse by a medical professional, this may not be the best book for all readers and should be directed to more mature audiences over 16 years old. However, if you enjoyed thrillers we’ve read previously like Melissa Larsen’s The Lost House or books by Lisa Unger or Julie Clark, this is the book for you! I also think this would make a great mystery or thriller book club selection, too!

I was approached by the publisher with the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book through Netgalley. While Thrillers are not my normal genre, I am so glad I got this opportunity to read this great book by a new author. You won’t be disappointed by this book either!

This book was hard to put down. It grabbed me from the beginning and kept me up way past my bedtime because I needed to finish it. This is definitely one of the best thrillers I've read in a long time. The characters were developed, and the twists and turns were truly surprising. Kim was probably the character I was rooting for the most. So happy to have found another author to support!

Thanks to Netgalley for the book to review.

This book centers around a sweet sixteen party that goes terribly wrong. The plot was complexly woven and it was a slow burn read as the book centers mainly on a single event. It was a compelling story with lots of drama.

A guick and easy suspenseful read. I liked that it didn't give away who was murdered in the beginning so as the story went on I kept changing my mind about who the victim would be. At some point, I imagined it could be any of the characters. I also thought it did a good job at giving away the murderer- it also could have been any of the characters.

Only three stars- I felt that a few of the story lines weren't really wrapped up, like the dislike of the nanny and Sophi and Mikayla's friendship. A good read but nothing out of the ordinary.

Wowza! A perfectly crafted multiple-POV psychological suspense story, rich with sizzling characters (all of them hiding something) and a setting as lip-smackingly luscious as it is creepy and sinister.

With a plot that builds, and winds, and re-winds, gleefully delighting in tricking the reader, several times, into what feels like complacency, as the rug is pulled again, and again, until finally, all at once the denouement is revealed — and is nothing at all like what has been imagined.

A first-rate thriller, with an ending only partially guessed by this reader, this is a story not be missed if rascally “whodunnits” are your thing. (And even if they aren’t!)

The story centers on the first-person experiences of four women.

Dani Matthews is a gorgeous new mother, married to the very rich (and handsome) Ethan, who just doesn’t seem to realize she is living the good life with new baby Charlotte and a recently restored glittery mansion high on the hills of Texas.

Ethan’s ex-wife Kim, a bitter, addicted and thoroughly messed-up ex-veterinarian (and the mother to sixteen year old Sophie, a child she shares with Ethan) can only watch from the side-lines as the life she had struggled for is lived by a younger, prettier, other.

Orlaith is a short, talkative and somewhat mysterious Irish nanny, quickly invaluable to the Matthews, yet definitely carrying secrets along with her bushload of stories — each of them more chilling than the next.

Mikayla, best friend to beautiful sixteen-year old Sophie, is used to playing second-fiddle, — a role that comes with its own set of secrets (most of which are now bursting to be told).

As the Matthews prepare for Sophie’s over-the-top and extravagant sixteenth birthday celebration, a perfect storm is brewing. This “Party of Liars” promises to be spectacular, — in ways none of the attendees (and including the reader) could ever imagine.

A great big thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC of this book All thoughts presented are my own.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc. This is a thriller. It's Sophie's 16th birthday and her dad spend a lot of money on her party. They decide to have the party at his cliffside mansion, which to most was thought to be haunted. So many guests are invited, but not everyone makes it out alive.

I felt very "meh" about Party of Liars. I don't want to harp on it being bad, because it's not, but I felt like it didn't really have a clear genre. Maybe the fact that it's set at a Sweet 16, it seemed silly that all these adults are getting drunk, or honestly. even attending the party. There was like 8 teens and like 50 adult, it seemed like. I think there were two directions Kelsey Cox could have gone in: 1) make it YA - Have the attendees be mostly kids and a murder happens, or B) dive into the thriller genre and make it darker. It sat completely in the middle and I don't see who this book was written for. At the same time, as I wrote in my Goodreads review, I didn't struggle reading this. I just thought it would have a little more personality based on the cover.

Thanks so much for the advance copy!

Full Goodreads review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7386856437