If you have been following us, you would’ve seen that in our bookhaul, we both got this book for a project. While we’re not describing the project yet we wanted to let everyone know what we think of this book. In January the idea of what we are exactly doing will be made clear, so just a little more patience. But first it’s time to let you all know what we thought about this book.

Trust Me, I’m Lying is the first book in this duology. Julep Dupree tells lies. A lot of them. She’s a con artist, a master of disguise, and a sophomore at Chicago’s swanky St. Agatha High, where her father, an old-school grifter with a weakness for the ponies, sends her to so she can learn to mingle with the upper crust. For extra spending money Julep doesn’t rely on her dad—she runs petty scams for her classmates while dodging the dean of students and maintaining an A+ (okay, A-) average.

But when she comes home one day to a ransacked apartment and her father gone, Julep’s carefully laid plans for an expenses-paid golden ticket to Yale start to unravel. Even with help from St. Agatha’s resident Prince Charming, Tyler Richland, and her loyal hacker sidekick, Sam, Julep struggles to trace her dad’s trail of clues through a maze of creepy stalkers, hit attempts, family secrets, and worse, the threat of foster care. With everything she has at stake, Julep’s in way over her head . . . but that’s not going to stop her from using every trick in the book to find her dad before his mark finds her. Because that would be criminal.

Cover

Candyce: I am not a big fan of people on the covers of books. I do like that she has a gun on her necklace. It made me wonder if it will have something to do with the story.

Isabelle: I don’t really like people on covers either, like I mentioned before. I do like the look on her face though!

“Coincidences are like unicorns.you can believe in them all you want,but that doesn’t make them real”

Plot

Candyce: The description of this book kind of made me expect a completely different book than we got, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Julep and her father are both grifters and that’s how they earn money. When Julep comes home one day to find her father missing and their apartment trashed, she thinks it will all be okay. Her father has disappeared before, so she’s not worried right away. Julep then notices she’s being followed and that makes her worried. On top of finding what she thinks are clues from her father, she starts searching. I think this had a lot of potential, but for me at times the story was too slow. It took a long while for actual things to happen and for a grifter she wasn’t very smart at times. The minor characters were at times more fun than Julep, haha. This was an entertaining story, just not the best book I’ve ever read. It is interesting enough that I do want to read the second book.

Isabelle: I had read the synopsis ages ago and somehow thought this book was about something completely different haha. I took me a couple of pages to realise it was a YA novel and that it was not what I was expecting. I completely agree with Candyce on this one, for such a great grifter Julep made such stupid decisions and she was totally oblivious to some things around here. I did like the overall story and I didn’t guess every twist, although I didn’t really like every twist either haha. Some twists where really far fetched and didn’t bring anything to the story in my opinion. The book did get me interested in the second one though. There are some things mentioned in this first one that make me wonder about the sequel.

“I’ll never understand how really bad guys can communicate with just a series of small signals like that. I always have to explain everything in agonizing detail to get my minions to do my bidding. Maybe I have faulty minions.”

Characters

Candyce: Julep was interesting, but weird at the same time, haha. If you know the type of family she grew up in, I guess that’s really expected. Her father has been raising her to follow in his footsteps even though she’s realizing it’s not what she really wants. I think at times all the characters she plays makes her lose her true self. For a grifter she can be rather impulsive and does things she really shouldn’t. And as we said before she can be really clueless when it comes to her own life. I wanted to smack her at times and tell her to wake up, haha.

Sam was the sweetest. He’s her best friend and basically does anything for her (even really illegal things). You know that there are more feelings there, but he kind of holds back on this. I hope to see him more in the second book.

Tyler was a character I didn’t really trust from the beginning. He just gave me this creepy feeling. For someone to be so interested in someone all of a sudden and wanting to do everything for them in an instant was something I found very odd. He doesn’t have the nicest family either, so I’m sure he has his issues as well.

Murphy didn’t play a really big part in this book, but he’s the typical “geek” who wants to get the girl. Julep helps him out and that creates some funny moments. I’m hoping to see more of his as well!

Isabelle: Julep has the most stupid name I have ever read, I just had to get that of my chest haha. I liked her, but like we said, for a grifter she wasn’t all that bright at times. Also, the title made me think she would be lying to us, the readers and that got me super excited. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, the title is just about all the lies she tells during this story.

I liked Sam and Tyler more than I did Julep although I could a bit annoyed by their willingness to go along with every stupid thing she wanted to do. There were some really great side characters, I’d loved to see them in the sequel. Even though they didn’t get that much ‘screentime’ they made sure I wouldn’t forget about them.

“You can love an illusion, but the illusion can’t love you back.”

Even though this wasn’t the greatest book written, it was entertaining. We definitely want to read the second book eventually. Have any of you read this book?