Tuesday, June 01, 2021

Every Single Lie, by Rachel Vincent

Things have been tough since Beckett's father died from an overdose of the OxyContin he was taking to numb his battle injuries.  In the aftermath, Mom spends too much time down at the station focusing on her job as a police detective.  Beckett's little sister Landry obsesses over cooking healthy meals and her older brother Penn is getting pumped up for her West Point application. Beckett herself has grown tired of the looks and the rumors at school.  Her boyfriend is hiding things from her and she's had enough of all the deception and secrets.

All of this pales in comparison to what happens when Beckett discovers a dead baby in the girls' locker room.  Within hours people are claiming it was hers!  There is no way it could be, but in her small town, there is nothing people like more than a juicy rumor and Beckett's family is already in the crosshairs of the town's gossips.

The rumors don't just stay local.  Thanks to the attention drawn to the dead baby by an anonymous Twitter account, the story goes viral and the crazies start coming out, threatening Beckett's life.  There's little she can do to change the things that people want to believe, but she's left wondering whose baby it actually was, especially since all the evidence does actually point her direction.

A suspenseful page turner that explores the way people like to talk and make up stuff.  Sometimes brutally, Vincent puts her heroine through the paces of being a small town pariah.  It will make you mad and sad to read about, yet it felt very realistically portrayed.  Some of the twists of the plot (and especially the ending) stretched credulity, but none of that diminishes a well-written story.  It's not deep and it won't teach you new things about addiction, teen pregnancy, or the corrosive impact of secrets and gossip, but it tells a good story well.

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