by Sophie Stava
First published 2025
Sloane Caraway tells lies to make her ordinary life more interesting. When she sees a crying girl at a park, she tells the child's attractive father that she's a nurse. She removes a bee stinger from the girl's foot. This small deception leads to a job as nanny for Jay and Violet Lockhart, a wealthy New York couple with a brownstone and a daughter in private school. They spend summers on Block Island and seem to live the perfect life. Sloane enjoys their privileged world, but she discovers that the Lockharts have their own secrets. Their picture-perfect marriage hides dangerous truths. As Sloane's lies multiply, they create their own twisted reality. She must navigate the gap between appearance and truth while the stakes grow higher. The story explores how deception traps both the liar and those around them.
Genres: domestic-fiction, contemporary, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller, deception
Vibes: dark, morally-complex, suspenseful, tense, thought-provoking
Tropes: appearance-vs-reality, outsider-infiltration, secrets-and-lies, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New York, Block Island
336 pages · Paperback · Gallery/Scout Press
Content warnings: domestic-violence, gaslighting