Lying in Plainview
A twist-filled contemporary YA mystery (85,000 words), exploring the lies we tell to belong, the pressure to perform perfection, and what it costs to keep a secret that can destroy everything. It will appeal to readers of Karen M. McManus, Sara Shepard, Holly Jackson, and Diana Urban.
In the close-knit town of Plainview, everyone’s pretending. To be perfect. To be kind. To have it all under control. When an anonymous, mean-spirited list of “superlatives” appears in every junior’s locker Monday morning, quiet insecurities bubble to the surface for a group of five friends, spiraling them into a week of betrayal and tragedy, and forcing them to face the lies they told in plain view.
Ian Williams, Least Likely to Get a Girlfriend, wants to move out of the friend zone with sweet and trusting Emilia Desmond. Too bad she’s already dating the town heartthrob, arrogant star athlete Scott Buchanan.
Scott denies his title of Most Likely to Cheat on His Girlfriend, but Emilia is tired of being a pushover. She tries to stand up to Scott but takes things too far and accidentally hooks up with Scott’s best friend, the undeniably cute and effortlessly likeable Jordan Makris.
Jordan regrets the hook up, too, because he's really into Abby Archer, beautiful and calculating, but oblivious to Jordan’s advances. She wants to go back to the way things used to be when her older brother's best friend was her first kiss, first love, first everything… instead of her teacher. She leans on Emilia for help, even if Emilia doesn’t know it yet.
By Wednesday, Abby writes a copycat list as part of her plan to win over her off-limits crush, and the school drama explodes into a town-wide scandal, leading to a car chase and ending with a crash.
By Thursday morning, one of them is dead.
Grief and guilt consume the survivors, as they cover up the tangle of lies they told each other and themselves. Will their moral compasses set them on a path to redemption? Was the accident really an accident? And who wrote the first list, anyway?
