Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza

 

 Lizzie and Bex were best friends in college. After graduation, Bex vanished, leaving Lizzie confused and devastated.

Fifteen years later, Bex is now Rebecca Sommers, a “traditional” Instagram influencer with millions of followers who salivate over her perfect life on her ranch with her five children and handsome husband, Gray. Lizzie is a struggling magazine writer, watching reels while her young children demand her attention.

One night out of the blue, Bex calls Lizzie with a career-making proposition—an exclusive interview with her about her multimillion-dollar business venture and an invitation to MomBomb, the high-profile influencing conference.

At the conference, Bex goes missing and Gray is found brutally murdered on their ranch. Lizzie finds herself plunged into the dark side of the cutthroat world of social media that includes jealousy, sordid affairs, swingers, and backstabbing. She must learn who her old friend has become and who she has double-crossed to try to find her, clear her name, and maybe even save her life. -penguinrandomhouse.com

  

Despite some dark subject matter, this thriller was also a ton of fun with subtle digs and snark at “influencer culture” while also highlighting the huge financial and business opportunities it can provide.   I poured through this novel in just two days.   I literally laughed out loud when Lizzie compared one of the speakers at the MomBomb conference to Sally Struthers and the 90s ads she used to do for needy children.   This is also a great story of friendship and finding your true self.   Don’t miss this out on this feisty little thriller.

I got my copy of Everyone Here is Lying through my library.  You can find yours at your local library, favorite bookshop, or online store.  For more information, check out the publishers website linked above.

 

Dead of Summer by Jessa Maxwell

 

 Orla O’Connor hasn’t been to the isolated New England enclave of Hadley Island since she graduated from high school a decade ago. As a teenager, her best friend Alice disappeared from its shores without a trace—but with plenty of rumors.

Now, Orla returns to her family’s beachfront home to clean it out before her parents sell it. The island and her best friend’s house next door, abandoned after her family left in grief, are stirring up memories she would like to avoid. Then there are the locals, always gossiping and watching Orla’s every move. Worst of all, David, Orla’s childhood crush and son of a wealthy Manhattan family, is back for the summer with his new, impossibly pretty girlfriend, Faith.

Faith suspects that David is going to propose but as soon as she settles into his family’s sprawling Hadley Island estate, she feels out of place. She anticipated a luxurious summer of fun and romance, but David is never around—lured into business conversations with his entrepreneur father from dawn to dusk. With nothing else to do, Faith begins to investigate the island’s dark past, curious about what really happened to Alice all those years ago.

Meanwhile, local Henry hasn’t left his house since the young girl went missing, in an attempt to let the accusations against him die down. Except they never have. For years, Henry has had an endless supply of time to pursue his only hobby, watching the island from his telescope and recording the activities of its inhabitants. But Orla’s return has shaken him and lately he’s been seeing strange things: shadowy figures walking on the beach in the middle of the night and a light on in the upstairs window of the long-abandoned house of the missing girl.

When there’s another disappearance on the island, all three find themselves pulled into an eerie and twisty mystery that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. -Simon & Schuster 

 

I loved the last book I read by Jessa Maxwell, I Need You to Read This so I was delighted to receive a free digital ARC of her newest novel, Dead of Summer courtesy of Netgalley and the publisher, Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.

I also love books set in vacation resort communities that feature the charms of the island as well as the conflict between the locals and vacationers and the haves and the have-nots.  I also love a good mystery about a family with potentially dark secrets.  Dead of Summer featured a lot of my favorite thriller ingredients and while I was able to figure out one of the smaller plot twists early on, it didn’t spoil any of the story for me and I still had a great time trying to solve the main caper and what motives were at play.  Dead of Summer is the perfect mystery to read at the beach.  Definitely grab a copy at your local bookstore or library and consider checking out Maxwell’s earlier books as well. 

A quick aside, Faith’s drink of choice has me both curious and disgusted.  LOL  Read Dead of Summer to see what I mean then come back to this post and let me know what your thoughts are. 

 

 Thanks again to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

 

Say Everything by Ione Skye

 

In 1987, sixteen-year-old Ione Skye skyrocketed to fame with the breakout role of Diane Court, the dream girl who inspires John Cusack’s iconic boombox serenade in the hit Cameron Crowe film, Say Anything. While Skye seemed perfectly typecast as an aloof valedictorian, she was anything but.

Deserted by her dad, the folk singer legend Donovan, Skye dropped out of school in ninth grade and sought validation through her Hollywood career, working alongside iconic costars like Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix, Matthew Perry, John Cusack, and Robert Downey Jr. But like her sixties It Girl mom, Skye’s greatest weakness was musicians.

On the heels of a toxic relationship with Red Hot Chili Peppers’s frontman Anthony Kiedis, which began when she was just sixteen and he was twenty-four, the actress leapt into wedded bliss with her first great love, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz.

But marriage was not the magical hall pass to adulthood Skye had imagined. Awakening to her bisexuality and desperately insecure, she risked her fairytale marriage for a string of affairs with gorgeous nineties “bad girls.” The dream marriage imploded, and Skye’s trust in herself and her future went with it.

Set against the backdrop of rock royalty compounds, supermodel cliques, and classic late-century films like River’s Edge, Gas Food Lodging, and Wayne’s World, Say Everything is a wild ride of Hollywood thrills as well as lyrical reflection on ambition, intimacy, and a messy, sexy, unconventional life. -Simon & Schuster

 

“Please don’t tell me if it turns out John Cusack is a jerk,” was what my good friend Ann-Marie said to me when we were shopping at Barnes & Noble.  Ione Skye is famous for her many film roles but perhaps most notable is her role as Diane Court opposite John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything (1989).  My friend Ann-Marie has been crushing on Cusack since the 80s and fortunately for her, Ione spills a lot of tea on her past relationships and people she’s worked with but at least according to Ione, Cusack is a nice guy. 

I didn’t know too much about Ione going into her memoir.  I of course knew her as Diane Court, but I also loved her in a little indie film, Gas Food Lodging (1992).  I just always had the sense that she was a very cool talented woman that I could be friends with and wanted to know more about her.  It  turns out I was right, and she is even cooler than I thought, her memoir is very honest and self-reflective not just about her accomplishments but also her faults and her complicated relationship with her father.  Her memoir reads just like you’re sitting down with a good friend for drinks and sharing your life with them - both the good and bad parts. 

I got my copy of Say Everything at Barnes & Noble.  You can pick up a copy there, or at your favorite local bookstore, library or online shop.  You can also visit the publisher's website linked above for more information.