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Count My Lies by Sophie Stava

Thriller

Count My Lies

Debut

by Sophie Stava

Excellent choice

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Quick take

You’ll lose count of all the lies told in this suspenseful story about a woman who infiltrates a wealthy couple’s home.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Fast_Read

    Fast read

  • Illustrated icon, Psychological

    Psychological

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Unreliable_Narrator

    Unreliable narrator

Synopsis

Sloane Caraway is a liar.

Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.

So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can’t help herself—she tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl’s foot.

With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island. But maybe Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and all that’s picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth.

Careful what you lie for.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Count My Lies.

Count My Lies

1

“I’m a nurse.” The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop myself from saying them, loud and clanging like a pair of tin cans tied to a back bumper. If I could reach out, catch them by the tail, and reel them back in, I would, but it’s too late. They’ve been heard; two heads turn.

I should walk away. Or laugh, say I was just kidding. But when the dad and little girl look up at me from the park bench, his eyes shining with hope, her eyes shining with tears, I feel such a rush that I don’t do either. Instead, I kneel beside the girl and smile broadly, first at her, then at him.

“You need to ice it,” I say to the man, my voice clear and steady, the slightest air of authority that I assume someone in the medical field would naturally possess.

The thing is, I’m not a nurse. I never have been. What I am is a liar.

I had heard the little girl’s wails from across the playground, long drawn-out sobs that drew me toward her. I’ve always been nosy, leaning in to hear strangers’ conversations, taking a step closer to read over someone’s shoulder, glancing at the person next to me on the subway, straining to see the text messages on their phone. It’s another bad habit of mine. Add it to the list, okay?

“Let me see,” the dad was saying to the little girl as I walked up, holding her bare foot in his hand. “Where’d it sting you? Here? Or here?”

I’d wanted to help; he’d seemed so flustered, so unnerved by it, that, almost without thinking, I’d opened my mouth and the lie had dropped out. Clunk, onto the sidewalk, startling them both. I meant well, really, I did. I know, the road to hell, right?

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Why I love it

I always love stories told by unreliable narrators. The way that they transform your role as a reader from passive listener to detective—or, in this case, truth-seeker—immediately draws me in. Count My Lies takes this concept to a whole new level with sweat-inducing suspense, unexpected twists, and lots of deception.

Sloane is a pathological liar. She has no control over when she slips into a harmless fib, a simple embellishment, or an elaborate fabrication. After Sloane lies to Jay, the patriarch of the affluent Lockhart family, she ends up landing a job as a nanny for his daughter and things take a very dark turn. Sloane gets a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of the wealthy and learns that everyone is upholding some kind of facade. As Sloane’s lies pile up and the Lockharts’ secrets are revealed, a wild and dangerous unraveling occurs.

Trust me (if you can), you’ll love this book. This rollercoaster of a thriller will have you on the edge of your seat, turning the pages of your book faster than you would think is possible. Don’t lie to yourself—just add Count My Lies to your box!

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Debut authors
View all
Wedding Dashers
Definitely Better Now
Shark Heart
Lessons in Chemistry
Homeseeking
The Wishing Game
Spitting Gold
The Maid
The Road of Bones
Deep Cuts
River Sing Me Home
Penitence
Weyward
Honey
All We Were Promised
The House of My Mother
Count My Lies
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Dinner for Vampires
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
You Between the Lines
Liquid
Crying in H Mart
A Thousand Times Before
Ariadne
Lunar Love
The Collected Regrets of Clover
The Days I Loved You Most
The Wives
Adelaide
Here After
The Ministry of Time
Did I Ever Tell You?
Middletide
The Teller of Small Fortunes
Northwoods
A Flicker in the Dark
This Spells Love
A Short Walk Through a Wide World
The Storm We Made
Dirty Diana
Neighbors and Other Stories
More
You, Again
The Love Hypothesis
Red, White & Royal Blue
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Maame
The Circus Train
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
Thistlefoot
The Other Black Girl
The Push
Age of Vice
The Lost Apothecary
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
One Day in December
Paper Names
We Are the Brennans
Black Cake
The Last Russian Doll
Olga Dies Dreaming
She Started It
Bringing Down the Duke
Somebody's Daughter
The Hacienda
Beautiful Country
Dearest
Kaikeyi
Love & Other Disasters
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
Sign Here
The Stranger Upstairs
Damnation Spring
The Verifiers
A Little Hope
In Every Mirror She's Black
Taste Makers
Fiona and Jane
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Camp Zero
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The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
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Honey Girl
Vladimir
Big Friendship
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White Ivy
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Behold the Dreamers
The Mothers
The Animators
Marlena
Sharp Objects
The Girl Who Smiled Beads
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All That You Leave Behind
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Again, But Better
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Leaving the Witness
On The Clock
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Frankly in Love
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