Sloane Caraway is a liar.
They are harmless lies, she tells herself, to make her own life a bit more interesting.
So when she sees a child in tears in a playground one afternoon, she tells the girl’s (very attractive) dad she’s a nurse and helps him pull a bee sting from his daughter’s foot.
With this lie and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for Jay and Violet Lockhart who have everything: a beautiful brownstone house, a daughter in private nursery school, and long summers on an idyllic island just off the coast of New York.
Sloane wants to be just like them. She wants their life and she’s prepared to lie about almost
everything to get it.
But Sloane isn’t the only one lying, and soon she begins to realise that all that’s picture-perfect about her employers hides a much more dangerous truth . . .
Book Info: Print length: 326 pages. Publisher: Penguin. Publication Date: 4 March 2025
My Thoughts:
OOOH.. I saw this book is being made into a TV drama series through Hulu featuring Lindsay Lohan, Shailene Woodley and Kit Harrington next year, so I knew I had to read it first, because we all know that the book is always better than the TV adaptation.
Count My Lies is the debut novel by Sophie Stava and was published in March 2025, and it actually had been sitting on my kindle shelf waiting patiently to be read, but unfortunately slipped off my radar until recently and I am kicking myself for not reading it sooner.
Read in almost one sitting (got to eat, sleep and work unfortunately), but easily one of the most fun books I’ve read in a while and reaffirmed my love for dark, domestic thrillers and contains EVERYTHING I need in a twisted psychological thriller.
Unreliable narrator – tick. Pathological liars – tick. Cringe-worthy scenarios – tick. Unexpected twists – tick.
The main character is Sloane Caraway. She’s a compulsive liar and she’s relentless. I don’t think she’s able to tell the truth about anything, her name, age, job, home, parents and even her medical qualifications. She’s been lying all her life and now in her early 30’s, living with her mother, she escapes her dreary reality by harmlessly lying to strangers. However a chance encounter with a man and his 5 year old daughter in the local park results in an opportunity that Sloane can’t turn down.
Fast-paced, fascinating and flawed characters, this is the story of obsession, twisty tales of lies and withholding dangerous secrets that could have deadly consequences for everyone involved.
