Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

 

Summary (from the publisher): What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.

Review: Lucy is in a lackluster relationship and her career as a writer under a pen name is finally taking off, but she's never truly moved on from the murder of her best friend several years before, largely because she was a suspect. Now, attention to the case is climbing again because a true crime podcast called "Listen for the Lie" is investigating the murder. When Lucy travels home, she must confront where the murder took place. In revisiting the scene of the crime and in talking to the podcast host Ben Owens, she slowly starts to piece together her fractured and missing memories from the night of the murder. 

I really liked the premise of the podcast investigating the crime Lucy was involved in. It was socially relevant and plausible and made sense that a podcast would increase public increase and attention to a crime years later. However, I just wasn't particularly interested in the crime. I tend to shy away from thrillers most of the time because they typically lack character development and plausibility and this book ultimately fell prey to these issues. For instance, Lucy's boyfriend was not in any way necessary to the plot, barely appeared on screen, and lacked any depth. I don't know why he was included in the book. I will say Tintera does do a credible job giving most of the other characters more of a back story than many thrillers, which I appreciated. I just never felt that invested in justice for Savannah and I also never felt that Lucy actually could be the murderer, so I wasn't riveted to this one. 

I will say one element of the book that I felt was unnecessary and off-putting were the intrusive thoughts that Lucy "hears" throughout the book. It seemed like the only purpose is to cast doubt on Lucy's innocence, but I found them obnoxious and not really needed. 

I listened to the audio version of this book and this novel is ideally suited to audio. It was really fun that they had one narrator for Lucy's perspective and another narrator serve as Ben Owen and included clips from his fictional podcast at the end of many chapters. The audio even includes a brief little podcast jingle as it switches over to the podcast clips. It was really fun to listen to and felt very relevant, given the popularity of true crime podcasts currently. 

Stars: 3