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Book: “Heart-Shaped Lies” by Elizabeth Agyemang
Publishing Info: Delacorte Press, November 2024
Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from the author via NetGalley.
Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound
Book Description: John Tucker Must Die meets A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder in this tongue-in-cheek thriller about three feuding exes of a social media prank star who are forced to work together to solve the mystery of his death when his deactivated account resurfaces online with claims that one of them murdered him.
Kiara, Priscilla, and Nevaeh have nothing in common—except they just found out that they’re all dating Tommy Harding, the internet’s most famous teen prank star.
KIARA is the girlfriend who the cameras know and love, the academic star who Tommy parades around in public to keep his image in check.
PRISCILLA is Tommy’s co-star. As a beauty influencer and an accomplice to Tommy’s notorious antics, she’s always known that the two of them could be the Internet’s power couple—if only he would confess to his girlfriend what really goes on during their ‘rehearsals’.
And NEVAEH is the good girl, the pastor’s daughter who’d never dream of dating a boy who’s already taken.
When a viral post from Tommy’s social media account exposes his cheating ways during their high school class trip to Florida’s biggest theme park, the girls are crushed—and furious. Tommy claims his account was hacked. Now, Kiara, Priscilla, and Nevaeh want him out of their lives. Forever. After all, Tommy doesn’t just hold their hearts—he holds their secrets, too. But when Tommy’s body is found the next morning, their so-called wish becomes a twisted reality. Because Tommy may be gone, but the internet is forever. And the girls are about to go from strangers to suspects….
Review: Thank you to Elizabeth Agyemang for sending me an eARC of this novel!
I’m going to date myself a bit here, but as an Elder Millennial I kind of (very luckily) missed the bridge from the social media of my young adulthood (College only Facebook, Livejournal) to what we have today (TikTok, YouTube), and all the now defunct stuff in between (Vine!). So I haven’t really gotten sucked into YouTube personalities and influencers and the power that they can have over their audience and their narrative, sometimes enabling the very worst of people and giving them a lot of money. One that I think about a lot are the Paul Brothers, who got started on Vine doing provocative videos, moved to YouTube, and now have a HUGE cash cow of an audience and have made careers for themselves as a pro wrestler and a boxer, while being really TERRIBLE people (the list of their bullshit is endless). I really don’t get it, but hey, they’re worth millions so what the hell do I know? I kept thinking about the Paul Brothers as I read Elizabeth Agyemang’s new YA thriller “Heart-Shaped Lies” in which a wildly popular social media prank star is murdered, and his three lady friends are all suspects. Because man, Tommy Harding is the absolute WORST, and reading about his murder and the fallout proved to be VERY entertaining.
As a mystery thriller, I found this book to be well crafted and engaging. We have three perspectives that we are getting our information from, all three of them being teenage girls who have been involved with the narcissistic social media prank king Tommy Harding. The first is Kiara, Tommy’s official girlfriend who is driven, clever, and the perfect girlfriend to counter balance his ‘boys will be boys’ image. The second is Priscilla, a wannabe beauty influencer who is Tommy’s on camera collaborator, who he has been having an affair with off screen. And the third is Neveah, a somewhat sheltered girl who is has been having a long distance and text/picture relationship with Tommy and thinks it’s true love. They all are betrayed by Tommy in one way or another, and they all have reasons to possibly want him dead after his account is hacked and various damning things about each of them are leaked. I really liked how Agyemang lets us get into each of their heads while also keeping a bit of plausibility that any of them COULD have been the killer. It’s a device that can be hard to juggle, especially with multiple characters, but in this case their perspectives and the other clues that we get as the story goes on through their eyes separately made for a solid mystery at the sum of its parts, and I was left guessing about who the perpetrator could be up until the reveal!
And on top of the well thought out mystery that kept me guessing, I really do love a soapy story, especially in a thriller, and ESPECIALLY if it makes the characters more complicated. And man was the soap really bubbling in this book, which was a plus to be sure. You have a love quadrangle (but the center of the triangle is TERRIBLE so you don’t really have to pick a ‘team’), you have sneaky teenagers doing sneaky things, you have enemies turned allies, you have requited love and secrets and oh so much more! I really enjoyed the ongoing drama and tension going on between Kiara, Priscilla, and Neveah as they are trying to clear their names but don’t REALLY know if they can trust each other. And I enjoyed the way that I could just want to slap some of the characters for their choices and actions and yet was fully able to understand each of them to a degree (at least of the three main ladies. There’s no redemption for Tommy, and while he was two dimensional in some ways I’m going to allow it because as mentioned about, the Paul Brothers-ness of it all made it easy to hate him and is obviously realistic). I really love soap and I’ve been missing it lately, so this one really hit all the right notes for me.
All in all, I really enjoyed “Heart-Shaped Lies”. It had been awhile since I had scratched the particular itch of sudsy thrillers, and this gave me everything I needed and more in that department.
Rating 8: A compelling mystery, some nice soapy elements, and some interesting characters made this a fun thriller and a wild ride!
Reader’s Advisory:
“Heart-Shaped Lies” is included on the Goodreads list “YA Novels of 2024”.
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