The Book:
A Lovely Lie by Jaime Lynn Hendricks
Published May 28, 2024 by Scarlet
Date read: May 31, 2024
Find more June 2024 new releases here.
A Lovely Lie spoilers can be found below, but they’re hidden under a spoiler tag so you’re safe to keep scrolling if you’d just like to read my review.
The Characters:
Scarlett and Pepper
Zoey
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
1999: The night of their senior picnic, Scarlett Russo and her best friend Pepper were involved in a car accident that left two of their classmates dead. Afterward, they lied to the police, protecting each other from the consequences. Then Pepper left town and Scarlett never heard from her again…
Now: Twenty-two years later, Scarlett has buried that deadly incident deep in her mind and built a comfortable life for herself, working in a hotel on the west coast of Florida and raising her teenage son with her husband Vince. Her peace is disrupted, however, when Pepper’s daughter shows up with news of Pepper’s death. Zoey is twenty-one and studying to be an investigative journalist. She has a cryptic letter from Pepper addressed to Scarlett that alludes to the events of that fateful night and Pepper’s initial intentions to get an abortion. Now Zoey wants answers about her mother’s past. Who is Zoey’s father? And what really happened after the senior picnic? As Zoey continues to dig into the past, all of Scarlett’s buried secrets threaten to rise to the surface.
A Lovely Lie Spoilers
The Reveal:
Pepper wasn’t dead–Zoey just said that to give her mom some privacy when she went poking around in her hometown. The reader learns this just after Scarlett and Vince get the paternity test back that says Vince isn’t Zoey’s father. The POV changes to Pepper, and the reader learns a little more about what happened the night of the senior picnic.
There’s more lies and back and forth, but eventually the truth comes out: Pepper was in love with Julian Ackers, the boy who died the night of the senior picnic. She’d been cheating on Vince with him and fell in love. Julian was also Zoey’s father. She thought Julian would come to New York with her after high school, but he broke up with her. Pepper was angry and told everyone that Julian assaulted her to cover up her real feelings for him. Then she found out that Julian was leaving her for Chloe and lost it.
Pepper was always an actress, and convinced Scarlett to blindly follow her plan. She punched out a light on Chloe’s car so that she could identify it in the dark, and then got Chloe to give Pepper and Scarlett a ride (Scarlett’s car wouldn’t start). When they saw Julian, Pepper took the wheel and steered the car into him. Pepper and Scarlett left the scene, making it look like Chloe got drunk and hit Julian. Both Chloe and Julian died.
When Pepper got home, though, she discovered she left her house keys in Chloe’s car. She called Vince, who would do anything for her, and asked him to go back and get the keys. Vince found Julian still alive, killed him, and put his body back in front of the car. He had thought Julian had raped Pepper. He also didn’t know Pepper was pregnant.
The Ending:
The whole story came out in Scarlett and Vince’s kitchen, with Luke “asleep” upstairs. Everyone agreed not to call the cops until they had slept on it, but Luke had recorded the conversation. He sent it to Chris (Vince’s best friend, and Luke’s confidant), who turned Vince and Pepper in.
Vince went to prison but Pepper pled down and served no time. She got pregnant again by Vince and had the baby and named her Faith. Zoey cut off contact with Pepper. Zoey miscarried her baby, but got to know her aunt Juliet and stayed friends with Luke and Scarlett. Scarlett and Chris ended up together.
I hope these A Lovely Lie spoilers were helpful.
The Review:
Review coming soon, just wanted to get these spoilers out to y’all asap.
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