First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
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- thriller
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- 3 stars
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Title: First Lie Wins
Author: Ashley Elston
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books 2024
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 340
Rating: 3/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Winter TBR; Cover Lover - Someone who is barefoot -
Where I Got It: Library
*Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.
The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.
Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.
Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge…*
Such a mediocre thriller. I was intrigued by the summary and the first few chapters. But very quickly, things slowed down and got very twisty to the point that I really lost the plot. I never warmed to Evie even after learning about her history. She was just way too one-dimensional. And then we get her supposed romance with Ryan. It never made any sense to me at all. I never bought that there was anything between them. And then we get all the flashbacks. I could not deal with all the flashbacks. They dragged down the story and just didn’t matter in the end. From that, the big twists were silly. By the end of the book, I really did not care anymore at all.



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