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Spoilers Beyond This Point

Characters:

• Lucy: our protagonist 
• Savannah/Savvy: Lucy’s dead best friend
• Nathan: Lucy’s current boyfriend
• Ben: Podcaster
• Beverly: Lucy’s grandmother
• Don: Lucy’s dad
• Kathleen: Lucy’s mom
• Nina: Lucy’s high school best friend
• Emmett: Lucy’s other high school best friend
• Matt: Lucy’s ex-husband
• Colin: Savvy’s boyfriend 
• Kyle: Lucy’s affair partner
• Julia: Matt’s second wife

Summary (with Spoilers)

“A podcaster has decided to ruin my life, so I’m buying a chicken. It’s like that engagement chicken. The one women make to persuade their boyfriends to propose? Except this is a ‘sorry I didn’t tell you I’m the prime suspect in my friend’s murder’ chicken.”

Listen for the Lie,  Amy Tintera

The book starts with Ben’s first podcast episode being released, which brings Lucy back into the spotlight for the first time in 5 years. Even in the aftermath of Savvy’s death, Lucy had been infamous locally, but the story had never reached a national level. But Ben’s podcast is on its second season, and the first episode is getting more attention than ever. Within 24 hours, Lucy is fired from her job, and is gearing up for her boyfriend Nathan to break up with her.

“‘A lot of people pretend to think I didn’t do it,’ I say. ‘They act like they want to hear my side, like they haven’t already made up their mind.’ ‘Oh. I, uh, I do want to hear your side…’”

Listen for the Lie,  Amy Tintera

Lucy describes Nathan as the most self-absorbed man she’s ever met, and makes it clear that it’s part of the appeal for her. Nathan is so conflict-avoidant and spineless that he doesn’t break up with Lucy. Not even when she plays with a knife and jokes about stuffing a body in a suitcase. They even have discussions about how clear it is that Nathan’s terrified of her, but nevertheless, he stays apathetic. 

Then Lucy’s grandmother calls, begging her to come home for an 80th birthday party. It’s clear that Lucy’s favorite person is her grandmother, Beverly, and she quickly became my favorite too. Beverly buys her a plane ticket and Lucy leaves for Texas, not at all ready to confront the people in her hometown. 

“I recently admitted to my latest therapist that trying to avoid murdering people in my head has just resulted in me murdering even more people in my head. She was very supportive of my idea to just let the thoughts fly and see what happens. So, I imagine Dad’s brains splattering across the couch again and head upstairs to see Mom.”

Listen for the Lie,  Amy Tintera

We’re almost immediately introduced to Lucy’s *~qUiRkY~* little habit of imagining killing everyone around her. It’s a consistent part of her thoughts, mulling over all the different methods and weapons. And at times there’s also a voice, urging her to actually go through with her plans. This sets her up as an unreliable narrator from the start, but also (somehow) makes her more believable.

This quirk is more prevalent as Lucy returns home and settles into the one place where 99% of people hate her. It’s quickly revealed that Ben, the podcaster, is also in town. Beverly proudly announces that she planned the whole thing, inviting Ben to town and making up birthday plans to get Lucy back. She then arranged a spontaneous meeting between them and heavily encouraged Lucy to talk with Ben and share her side of the story.

“Mom enjoys being the best at everything, and I’ve denied her the opportunity to be the best mother of a murderer. You can’t be the best mother of a woman suspected of murder. That just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

Listen for the Lie,  Amy Tintera

After meeting with Ben the first time, Lucy is easily convinced to continue working with him. In exchange for her interview time, she gets an unbiased listener for maybe the first time in her life. And while it’s clear they’re both holding some information back, their alliance is important to both of them. This leads to them sleeping together multiple times, and Lucy starts to acknowledge that while she may not trust him, she does feel comfortable around him.

Ben’s assistant Paige is a huge asset, going through all of Ben’s interviews and pulling out information that he had missed. Between Ben and Paige, they’d already put more together than Lucy anticipated. They know about her life in high school, her marriage right after college that ended in divorce, and her two high school best friends, Nina and Emmett. 

Ben continues to release an episode almost every day, revealing new bombshells at every turn. It’s revealed that Savvy’s then boyfriend Colin has a solid alibi. He was having sex with Kathleen, Lucy’s mom. Matt, Lucy’s ex-husband, had always claimed to be at home, but Ben reveals that he wasn’t home alone. Instead, he was having an argument with one of his affair partners and Lucy’s friend, Nina. Eventually, Matt’s second wife (and soon to be ex) agrees to be interviewed and reveals that he physically abused her on a regular basis. She also strongly suggests he was abusing Lucy before their divorce. 

“‘The truth doesn’t matter.’ Savvy’s words sound gentle this time. Less angry. I shift my attention back to Ben. ‘The truth is whatever you say it is.’”

Listen for the Lie,  Amy Tintera

I’ll get into the details about the night of Savvy’s death below, but Ben’s final episode names the true killer. He had been unsure if Lucy was the killer in the beginning, and had encouraged her to visit all the key areas from that night in an effort to regain some of her memories. That tactic, combined with the general environment and Lucy’s desire to finally remember, helped unlock that night for her. One of the biggest reveals is that the voice in Lucy’s head telling her to kill people has always been Savvy’s voice, not Lucy’s. Savvy had confessed to killing a man who tried to hurt her when she was a freshman in college. She’d then told Lucy she knew Matt was abusing her, and offered to help kill him, and Lucy was starting to consider it. Even though Lucy had no memories of that night, she was certain she didn’t kill Savvy because she remembered planning to kill Matt instead.

Even with her holding back some of her memories, Ben is able to get a version of the truth that convicted the true killer. Here’s the list of events: 

• Lucy moves back to town with her husband, both fresh out of college. They physically fight, with Matt initiating it all but gaslighting Lucy into believing she’s the aggressive one.
• Lucy and Savvy reconnect at the hotel bar where Savvy works as a bartender since moving home. They become best friends, and this is when Savvy proposes killing Matt.
• The night of Savvy’s death, they were all at a local wedding. Matt and Lucy had been in a fight-make up-fight cycle, and Savvy fully removed Lucy from the situation.
• While drunk, Lucy ran into her high school best friend, Emmett. Emmett immediately started aggressively making out with her until Savvy told him to stop. Lucy told him she just wanted to be friends.
• Savvy gets Lucy into her car, and they drive away. They park in the woods and have a heart-to-heart, making a plan to sneakily leave town and move to LA together. Then Emmett appears out of nowhere, asking to talk with Lucy.
• He’s very aggressive with her and won’t let her go. Savvy starts yelling at him, and pushing him away. At some point he gets a hammer and starts hitting both girls. He hits Lucy squarely in the back of the head at one point, keeping her fully off-balance for the rest of the attack. There’s a final blow that he’s aimed at Lucy, but Savvy pushes her out of the way and is immediately killed.
• Lucy grabs a huge tree branch for protection and starts screaming. At this point, Matt appears in the woods. Emmett instantly starts saying that Lucy killed Savvy and that she was also trying to kill him. Lucy is (OBVIOUSLY) in shock and not saying anything, but is covered in blood. So Matt just believes him. He takes the branch from Lucy, wanting to hide the evidence. She slips away from the men, and is discovered by a local man later that morning.
• Matt went to Lucy’s parents immediately and told them everything. That’s why they’d always believed Lucy had done it, and were hoping she’d never fully remember.
• When Lucy finally remembers and confronts Emmett, he tries to kill her a second time. This time, Ben is the one who comes to save the day, and backs up Lucy’s side of the story instead of Emmett’s.

Lucy clearly had brain injuries from the hammer injuries that explained her amnesia, along with a general trauma response. The scratches on her arms from Savvy’s fingernails were from Savvy trying to pull her to safety. Savvy’s blood was from the moment Savvy was killed by Emmett. Emmett was charged with Savvy’s death, and Matt, along with Lucy’s parents, were charged with obstruction of justice to varying degrees. 

I’ve read my fair share of memory-loss/unreliable narrator thrillers where the big reveal is that the protagonist was the killer all along. And while those are a fun twist on the genre, there’s something so much more eerie about the killer being your best friend who believes he deserves everything from you because he acted like a decent human being. There’s also something unsettling about the fact that the men who witnessed the events were always believed, while Lucy was not.