Every Word a Lie by Sue Wallman

Title:  Every Word a Lie

Author: Sue Wallman

Genre: Crime

Publisher: Scholastic UK

Published: 1^st November 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: Someone is catfishing … to kill. Award-winning author Sue Wallman tells a nail-biting story of a catfishing prank that gets out of control … and gets deadly. Two friends, Amy and Stan, plan revenge on their prankster friend Hollie by catfishing her as her crush. They only mean to do it for a day or two – but then Hollie ends up dead. As the catfish continues to strike others, Amy needs to find out: who is really in control of the catfish? Can she trust anyone? And is she the killer’s next target?

~*~

Amy, Hollie, and Stan are getting towards the end of high school, and they love playing pranks on each other. But when Hollie signs Stan and Amy up to clean the schoolyard, they decide to get revenge. They know Hollie has a crush on a local tennis player – and decide to send her messages as him for a few days. But once Hollie ends up dead, Amy and Stan are embroiled in the case – the last people to potentially contact Hollie. Soon, more people start dying who were also targeted after Stan and Amy stopped their prank. It’s unclear who it could be – everyone is a suspect, and soon, Amy doesn’t know who she can trust, and feels like she could be the killer’s next target.

Social media and teens collide in this book, and not in a great way. In other books I’ve read about teenagers using social media or solving crimes, it’s almost used as a tool to help find the killer. Yet in Sue Wallman’s new book, the main characters, who use social media a lot, are scared. The world they use to communicate is tainted, and the adults in their lives are protective and determined to shield them from the horrors. The sinister theme of the book examines the dangers of social media, but also shows that we don’t always know who people really are – even if we know them in real life. It examines friendship and family through the eyes of teenagers grappling with the end of high school and their plans for the future.

The novel gets into the mind of teens faced with losing friends and not feeling safe – things we have all felt at some stage in our lives though perhaps not in the way that these characters are losing friends – the brutality and finality of the deaths is sombre, making the novel dark and uncertain. As a reader, you’re always on edge, and I think I would be, however the stalker was communicating with the main character. It shows that someone will use any medium to trick people or stalk them, to scare them and eventually, kill them. And like any good novel, Sue sets up everything effectively, from the prank to the range of red herrings and suspects, and the way people respond to what has happened and who they blame. I think it shows a sense of reality that people will often blame the people they see as easy targets even when the real killer is caught, because they will already have preconceived beliefs about people. I felt for Amy and Stan throughout the book – who were not guilty for Hollie’s death, and they showed remorse for what they had done. I felt that should have counted for something, even if some of the other characters didn’t.

It is the kind of novel where you know there will be a resolution, but not everything will have a happy ending, which is very much what I often see in crime fiction, and I think this reflects reality. There are some things that can’t be repaired, and some relationships that will be altered forever, and be difficult to fix. But in the end, there will be people who will stand by your side – and friendships that will form from tragedy, and it was these friendships at the end of this novel that I felt were going to last beyond the story for Amy and Stan.

Another intriguing crime novel for young adults dealing with a world that they know, coupled with the timeless fears and acts that worry all generations.