The Lies We Tell

Katie Zhao — 2022

All Anna Xu wants to do as she starts freshman year at the local prestigious Brookings University is keep up her stellar academic performance, break out of her shell, be more social ... and investigate the unsolved on-campus murder of her former babysitter six years ago. And if that wasn't difficult enough, it seems that Chris Lu, whose family are the Xu's business rivals, is attending Brookings too. There's no way they can be friends. Until a vandal attacks the Lu's bakery and Anna puts the perpetrator's call sign together with a clue from her investigation into the cold-case murder. When a very specific threat is made to Anna, she is forced to team up with Chris to undertake a dangerous search into the hate crimes happening around campus. Can they root out the current threat or will the town's ugly history take them down?

Reviews

rhi@paedynsgf

Feb 1, 2025

౨ৎ | “then what is your ulterior motive?” “you’re so dense. use your head and figure it out on your own time.”

— ★ 3/5

i truly felt myself in each and everyone of these characters. i feel like the glossed over the plot a little bit and kind of just rushed the end. like there wasn’t really any investigation it was just kind of handed to the fmc.

chris lu the man you are 🧎🏽‍♀️‍➡️🧎🏽‍♀️‍➡️ from the first time he was introduced all the way to the end i was giggling and kicking my feet at everything he said to anna.

this book dealt with real life problems and the way the characters spoke about it was so empowering and you could tell the author has experienced or seen it happen too many times.

the writing was beautifully written and flowed so well. it only lacked in plot otherwise it would have been five stars. but i will read more of this author in the future.

Holly@hollyck

Mar 23, 2023

i found this one lackluster. I really liked How We Fall Apart, and was for this one as well. But while there were important discussions on issues that affect the Asian American community, some parts of it just fell flat. It would've been better had it stuck to one genre i.e., murder-mystery or contemporary, because inevitably one (contemporary) overshadowed the other (murder-mystery) and since it's advertised as a mystery, it was a let down when that was more of a subplot. The whole secret society wasn't very fleshed out either, and it was overall underwhelming.

Mel@mls_c13

Feb 1, 2023

Great representation and very educational. The reveal was not entirely unexpected for me but the mystery aspect of the novel is simpler, the focus was different.

Sanja.@sanja

Aug 20, 2023

Julia Krauß@julia_kr

Jul 11, 2023