First Lie Wins
Finished: May 2024
Book Source: Library
Book Publication Date: January 2024
Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.
The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.
Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job will be different. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.
Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to—her real identity—just walked right into this town. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge…
Trigger Warnings:
Death of a parent, cancer, murder
Characters
- Ryan – current assignment, dating him and just moving in
- Luca – her real identity
- George – the person that she gets all of her assignments from
- Rachel – friends of Ryan’s, a prying lawyer
My Review
Ashley Elston’s “First Lie Wins” is a thrilling blend of suspense and clever plot maneuvers that successfully intertwines the main character’s past with their present lie. The story unravels in an engaging, twisty fashion. What stands out is how Elston intricately weaves each thread of the narrative, culminating into a Nic, cohesive ending that ties up all previous strings masterfully.
One of my highlights of this book is Devon, Evie’s tech genius friend. Devon’s sharp skills and timely interventions really make the story – without him, Evie would not be successful. Devon character stands out for his intelligence, resourcefulness, and the pivotal role he plays in navigating through the web of lies and deceit.
I highly recommend this read for those who enjoy a mystery that smartly integrates elements of characters’ histories into a gripping, contemporary plot.
Spoilers/Summary
SPOILERS BELOW. Stop here if you do not want to read spoilers.
One of her first cases, she is undercover has Mia Bianci, as a political advisor with Andrew Marshall. He is set to become a senator. She saves him from being ruined and has him in her back pocket along with others at the party.. which she uses as leverage to call him to get her out of jail in the present time.
After this assignment she is in Florida, and has a job to get the local football coach, Mitch Cameron. He needs to get let go but still get paid out and not ruin his reputation. She blackmails boosters. She goes to give the star recruit advice but then finds out he had known about it a week before — likely Mitch Cameron had paid her boss to get him out of his contract but still paid for the contract.
She moves in with Ryan, knows he is a bad guy.
Rachel one of the family friends grills her on her last, she is a lawyer, She ends up being Evie’s lawyer later.
At a party, she meets Luca and James – but Luca is her name!! Evie confronts her. That night they die in a car crash
The cops come and question her and it turns out she is being set up by Mr Smith. He thinks she hid something at her last job and he wants it so he is making sure she is going to be questioned in Atlanta about it. A building burned down while she was having words with someone during that job
Devon is the tech guy she has always work with in her jobs and they have gotten close and become each other’s go to.
The person that had been delivering her all of her assignments name, George, turns out to be Mr. Smith.
At the take job where they all had to break into a house to find a painting, and she won, one other person finished just behind her. Devon was able to figure out who that was and she was the only one out of the others that was still alive and hadn’t died of some fluke accident – so she knew it was time to get out.
When she is questioned by the police about Amy’s death and the videos that show up, she blames it on Luca, therefore abandoning her old identity because Mr. Smith had picked someone to play her that looks so much like her, it passed. The police is sniff test. She also used the football player as an alibi. When she’s cleared from the police, she does find out that Ryan was working with Mr. Smith, but it turns out Mr. Smith was telling Ryan that she was selling a secrets, but he didn’t believe her. Amy was able to find some dirt on Mr. Smith about how he had been double crossing one of his biggest clients. Amy and Abby turn it in and are therefore released from Mr. Smith’s jobs. Evie ends up going back to be with Ryan.