Kate’s Review: “Everyone Is Lying To You”

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Book: “Everyone Is Lying To You” by Jo Piazza

Publishing Info: Dutton, July 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an ARC at ALAAC25.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Lizzie and Bex were best friends in college. After graduation, Bex vanished, leaving Lizzie confused and devastated.

Fifteen years later, Bex is now Rebecca Sommers, a “traditional” Instagram influencer with millions of followers who salivate over her perfect life on her ranch with her five children and handsome husband, Gray. Lizzie is a struggling magazine writer, watching reels while her young children demand her attention.

One night out of the blue, Bex calls Lizzie with a career-making proposition—an exclusive interview with her about her multimillion-dollar business venture and an invitation to MomBomb, the high-profile influencing conference.

At the conference, Bex goes missing and Gray is found brutally murdered on their ranch. Lizzie finds herself plunged into the dark side of the cutthroat world of social media that includes jealousy, sordid affairs, swingers, and backstabbing. She must learn who her old friend has become and who she has double-crossed to try to find her, clear her name, and maybe even save her life.

Piazza’s master storytelling and razor-sharp insight into the world of social media brings us a pulpy, juicy, and cleverly plotted read that will have you guessing all the way through and leave you gasping for more.

Review: Thank you to Dutton for giving me an ARC at ALAAC25!

In recent years we have seen an uptick in ‘tradwife’ content online. For those unaware, tradwife influencers generally create content surrounding traditional family values, homemaking, motherhood, and pushing a conservative (and oftentimes far-right) agenda. It’s interesting seeing it play out as our societal Overton Window in the U.S. has shifted further right, making these influencers centerpieces of aspirational ‘and you can be an ideal traditional housewife and mother too!’ content, even though by being incredibly successful (and certainly monetized) influencers they are already not following the ‘be a submissive homemaker’ ideal they are pushing but being the actual breadwinner who supports their families with their content creation more than many of their husbands do. This kind of stuff fascinates and unsettles me, and when I heard that Jo Piazza had a tradwife centered murder mystery coming out called “Everyone Is Lying To You” I knew that I HAD to read it. And man, it was great.

At the heart of “Everyone Is Lying To You” are two women, who are both wives and mothers and who were best friends in college but lost touch for years. We have Lizzie, a determined journalist who works for a women’s publication, but has been struggling to adjust to working passion and becoming a mother to two children with a newly unemployed husband (who is supportive and great but a little aimless). The other is Rebecca, formerly Bex, who is a very popular family influencer who shows off her perfect marriage on a sprawling ranch while she raises six kids and homesteads with her traditional and conservative husband Gray. Rebecca reaches out to Lizzie promising her a juicy story if she attends the biggest female/family centered influencer convention, and while they are there Bex disappears and Gray is murdered on the ranch. We follow Lizzie’s perspective as she tries to figure out if her friend is a murderer whilst also fending off gossipy and perhaps cutthroat influencers, finding pieces of the puzzle and hoping to clear Bex while also wondering if she is actually a murderer. Piazza has some solid pacing, some really well done reveals and twists, and has so many misdirects and suspects that I really was kept guessing for most of the story. Hell, it was so well done that I didn’t even roll my eyes at any of the more out there reveals, as the story itself was so strong that it was easily forgivable.

The mystery of a murder and tradwife influencers is great, and I was already fully in, but it’s the two women we are following that really made this story a true knockout for me. I found Lizzie to be incredibly relatable, as a woman who never really took to the motherly instincts that we are told we all have, and who feels frazzled and sometimes overwhelmed by her family and the expectations that come with being a mom even if she really really loves every bit of her kids and her husband. But it was Rebecca/Bex that really shined, as we slowly learn her story through her perspective chapters and how she has ended up incredibly famous, while hiding so many of the darker aspects of her life because it would hurt the brand she has built around herself, and because she doesn’t want the world to know what her husband is really like. It was pretty clear to me that a lot of the inspiration for her was from Hannah Neeleman, aka Ballerina Farm (if you want a summary of the really insidious undertones of Hannah and her creepy husband’s vision, Jordan and McKay have a GREAT breakdown as former Mormons who have a lot of insight, or a REALLY deep dive from Fundie Fridays that postulates it’s pure Christian Nationalist propaganda), and Piazza makes Rebecca incredibly easy to root for while also making it hard to know if she could be capable of murder. I loved Rebecca’s chapters and wanted the best for her, even when I didn’t know if she was a killer or not.

And finally, Piazza clearly knows her stuff when it comes to influencers and tradwife Internet/media content, because she knows all the ins, outs, controversies, and hypocrisies and finds ways to showcase them front and center. Whether it’s women who peddle wellness lifestyles while doing not so healthy things off camera, or mommy influencers who hide their nannies from the camera, or women who feel like they have to promote really exploitative things, usually at their children’s expense, for clicks and engagement, this book tackles a LOT and makes it snappy, cutting, and incredibly engaging. It’s such a great deconstruction of all the hypocritical and damaging things that tradwife content promotes as ideal, and I savored every bit of it.

“Everyone Is Lying To You” is a fast and addictive thriller with a bit of satirical bite to it. It’s a surefire winner for summer reading, and I really, really loved it.

Rating 9: I mean this book was basically written for me and all of my special interests and I was totally absorbed by all of it. PERFECT summer reading.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Everyone Is Lying To You” is included on the Goodreads list “Fiction About Influencers”.