Tell Me Lies

The only thing that made sense was that I knew I had fallen in love with him—it was what had made these past months so horrific. People always talk about realizing they’re in love during the happy moments, but I think you realize it in the bad ones.

Tell Me Lies is not at all what I expected. The synopsis on Goodreads describes it as “thrilling.” It is anything but. Lucy and Stephen are essentially Friends’ Rachel and Ross with a little Fifty Shades of Grey’s Anastasia and Christian sprinkled in. There were points throughout Friends and Fifty Shades that I was pulling for each couple and hoped they could work it out and be together but I never once held the same hope for Lucy and Stephen. It’s a predictable, monotonous back and forth relationship and it lacked the entertainment value that can be found in Friends and Fifty Shades. I was incredibly annoyed by their relationship but it just Would. Not. End.

The most annoying part of the book isn’t even Lucy and Stephen’s twisted relationship but the immense failures of Lucy’s so-called friends. They knew what was happening to Lucy. They knew she was starving herself and constantly working out. They also knew about Stephen’s serial-cheating and how he constantly led Lucy on, only to devastate her time after time. Lucy’s friends “disapproved” of Stephen and they argued about it on several occasions but they were typically too drunk and/or high and preoccupied with their own boy dramas to offer Lucy the support she desperately needed.

I only pushed through to the end because I hoped something profound would happen. I hoped Lucy would get her act together, and not because I liked her but just because I wanted the exasperating saga of her relationship with Stephen to be over. I also looked forward to when Lucy would finally confront Stephen about an event that is slowly revealed as Lucy recalls more about the night her classmate died, but this fell short as well.