Book of the Month is a monthly book subscription box. Each month, five curators pick out their favorite new hardcover books, and you can choose which one you want to receive on the first of the month for $17.99/month. You can also add up to two additional books for only $9.99 each. (This box was named one of the best subscriptions for avid readers in the 2024 Subscription Box Awards.)
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My BOTM Pick for March: Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera, Hardcover Retail Value $17.37
Back of Book Summary:
What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn’t matter?
After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.
But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast “Listen for the Lie,” and its too-good-looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.
My Summary
Five years ago Lucy Chase was found wandering along the roadway of Plumpton, Texas, coated in her best friend's blood hours after the two were seen arguing at a wedding. Lucy was seriously injured at the time, but no one seems to care. And despite the half a decade that's gone by, Lucy still can't remember what happened the night Savannah Harper — Savvy to her friends — was found dead or how Savvy's DNA ended up underneath her fingernails.
The case has all the threads we've come to expect will be teased in our most bingeable podcasts: the popular cheerleader bludgeoned to death, the family who is sure they know who did it and willing to announce it on mic, the suspect who was never charged even though everyone knows she was the kind of girl who used to punch innocent guys in high school and the suspect's failed marriage to one of the most well-liked restaurateurs in town.
When podcaster cum investigator Ben Owens turns his eyes on Plumpton for the newest season of Listen for the Lie, he also turns Lucy Chase into a household name and forces her to revisit a night she's worked particularly hard to continue forgetting.
If you've ever wondered what happens to all the people at the heart of a cold case when a true crime podcast goes viral, get ready. First Lucy loses her job. It turns out no one wants a possible murderer talking to their clients.
Then she goes to pick up a chicken. Even maybe murdering main characters have to eat, you know.
In the ensuing story, Lucy is convinced to return to Plumpton — the small town where everyone, possibly even her own parents, think she's responsible for the brutal murder of her best friend. It's hard to say no to your grandmother when she's sending you an airplane ticket to attend her 80th birthday party. Throw in the fact that she might be the only person who doesn't believe you're a murderer, and you're on a plane from Los Angeles to Texas, where you're about to find the podcaster who just got you fired has set up camp.
Some — maybe even most — people would hit the party and get out of town, but Lucy already knows she can't escape her past. She's spent the past five years imagining murdering everyone she meets, a morbid coping mechanism that Tintera manages to make more endearing than it is creepy. So Lucy does what any woman who doesn't have a job but does have a hometown full of people who think she murdered her best friend. She joins forces with Ben to solve Savvy's murder, slowly unraveling lies that have been allowed to survive as fact for the past five years.
The Verdict
I knew I'd done the right thing in picking Listen for the Lie — middle grade author Amy Tintera's first adult novel — from the two thriller options offered up by Book of the Month Club for March when I read its opening sentence.
"A podcaster has decided to ruin my life, so I'm buying a chicken." It's the kind of first line that should be added to one of those Buzzfeed lists of best opening lines in book history.
Even better? The rest of the book lives up to its first line. Tintera chose to tackle one of the meatiest topics in the zeitgeist in true crime podcasts, and she does so masterfully, carefully balancing her prose so you finish the book not quite sure where she lands on the format. Meanwhile she weaves a tale that offers a sobering look at the way society treats the opinions of men vs. those of women and a hilarious novelization of our obsession with true crime podcasting.
Listen to the Lie was that sort of un-put-downable novel I finished in a day, and not simply for the laughs (although there were plenty). I just had to know where Tintera would take the mystery next.
One warning I would offer up to anyone looking to add this book to their next BOTM box — there are themes of domestic violence in Listen to the Lie that may be triggering to some.
Value — Was This Box Worth It?
From a pure cost perspective, the March 2024 Book of the Month Club pick falls a little short — BOTM Club starts at $17.99, depending on your chosen subscription, and this book is currently discounted to $17.23.
That said, if this is your very first book, you still come out ahead as the first month of a subscription is $9.99 with free shipping.
For me, the true value comes in finding this novel, one that I might not have picked up otherwise, especially as Tintera is brand-new to writing adult fiction.
The Cost: $9.99 + free shipping (This price is only for your first month).
Value Breakdown: This box costs $9.99, but the book I chose will retail as hardcover for $21.23, which works out to a discount of about $11. (Remember...this is first month only). Even if you are looking at the $17.99 cost for one of the later months of your overall subscription, you're still saving $3.
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To Wrap Up:
Can you still get this book if you sign up today? Yes! But you will need to order it as an add-on.
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