In Sophie Stava's stylish debut thriller, Count My Lies, truthfulness can be limiting, and for the two women at the center of the story, it's really not necessary.
In an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood populated with beautiful people, fancy private schools, and covetable brownstones, Sloane Caraway knows she is an outlier. She and her disabled mother live in a tiny rent-controlled apartment, the reality of their quiet, isolated existence wholly unsatisfying to the 30-something narrator. To make ends meet, Sloane works as a spa nail technician servicing the pampered matrons of Brooklyn. It's bad enough that this is her reality, but does she have to bore others with it?
While spending her lunch break reading in the local park, Sloane has the good fortune to cross paths with handsome Jay Lockhart and his adorable young daughter, Harper. Sloane's boundless capacity for inventing falsehoods surprises even herself, and before she knows it she has seamlessly insinuated herself into the Lockhart family and a friendship with Jay's gorgeous wife, Violet. Soon Sloane is a regular visitor to the Lockhart home, a nanny to Harper and a confidante to Violet. She is deeply attracted to Jay, flattered by his attention, but her loyalties remain with Violet. Sloane begins to copy Violet's style, her imitation made easier by the gifts her friend showers on her.
Stava's ingenious plot takes an unexpected turn when the story turns inside out. Whatever conclusions readers may have reached thus far, when it comes to falsehoods, Sloane is a mere amateur. Count My Lies features thrilling detours, idyllic settings and deeply flawed yet attractive personalities for whom telling the truth is strictly optional. --Shahina Piyarali