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Count My Lies
400 pages
A razor-sharp descent into a glamorous world where every smile hides a secret and every lie tightens the noose.
What it feels like
Reading this psychological thriller feels like stepping into a beautifully furnished trap. The narrative moves at a breakneck, propulsive pace, pulling you deeper into a glittering world of New York brownstones and summer estates that slowly reveals its rotting core. The tone is bitingly sharp and deeply cynical, anchored by an unreliable narrator whose compulsive deceptions mirror the terrifying secrets of the wealthy family she infiltrates. As the lies compound, the mood shifts from voyeuristic curiosity to suffocating paranoia. The prose is sleek and addictive, designed to keep you turning pages late into the night. It is a perfect match for readers who devour domestic suspense, twisty power dynamics, and stories where absolutely no one can be trusted.
- Mood
- claustrophobic
- paranoid
- glamorous-yet-sinister
- suspenseful
- Tone
- cynical
- sharp
- deceptive
- tense
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- class envy · the facade of wealth · compulsive lying · hidden identities · consequences of deception
- The writing
- Sharp, fast-paced, and laced with biting observations about wealth and privilege.
- The arc
- Starts with a seemingly harmless deception that spirals into a suffocating web of paranoia and high-stakes danger.
- Who it's for
- Fans of domestic thrillers and unreliable narrators who love watching a perfectly curated wealthy lifestyle unravel.
Content notes
- manipulation
- gaslighting
- psychological abuse
- child endangerment
About the book
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. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.
The thing about lies is that they add up, form their own truth and a twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins a breakneck, unputdownable thriller about the secrets we keep, and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the images we spend so much time trying to maintain.
Careful what you lie for.
Description from Open Library.
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