Am I a murderer? You tell me . . .

You probably already know about me. Lucy Chase, the woman who doesn’t remember murdering her best friend.

You all think I did it. That’s OK, I get it. Being found wandering the streets covered in her blood wasn’t a great look.

Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you are. I’d love to know if I’m a murderer – it’s the sort of thing you really should know about yourself, isn’t it?

And now, thanks to true-crime podcast Listen for the Lie, I finally have the chance to find out. But will I be able to live with myself if it turns out it was me?

And if it wasn’t, will digging into the secrets of the night I forgot make me the next target of whoever did?

Listen for the Lie is the first adult novel by YA author Amy Tintera. Lucy Chase has no memory of the night her best friend Savvy was killed. Despite being discovered near to the crime scene, cloaked in both her and Savvy’s blood, suspicion of her involvement in the murder remains unsubstantiated due to her lack of memory.

Without enough evidence and Lucy having no memory of the attack she was not convicted for the murder but that didn’t stop tongues wagging and so she left her home state of Texas and moved to California. Now five years on a true-crime podcaster has brought everything up again.

I have to say my first impressions of the book weren’t particularly favourable in that I found the writing to be quite young and basic, almost younger YA style, oh and I hated Lucy with a passion and her weird sense of humour that every time she met someone she visualised killing them. However, this is a book that grew on me as the story progressed, Lucy very definitely didn’t though.

I enjoyed that the plot contained podcast chapters in which podcaster Ben travels to Texas and Lucy’s hometown to interview people to try to discover the truth.

The story is refreshing, amusing, and thrilling. It is also quite far-fetched and makes you wonder how the police force caught anyone in Texas as it would seem everything was staring them in the face all along and so many people lied.

Overall, Listen for the Lie is an intriguing, entertaining, and quick read that makes you wonder throughout if Lucy really is the killer and leaves you as blind as she is for most of the way through the book.

Amy Tintera started writing novels as a kid during her middle school science classes, which probably explains why she has always been very bad at science. She is now the author of several novels for young adults, including Reboot, a Kids Indie Next pick and YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, the Ruined series, The Q, and All These Monsters, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection.

She has degrees in journalism and film, and worked as a talent agency assistant in Hollywood before becoming an author. Raised in Austin, Texas, she frequently sets her novels in the Lone Star state, but she now lives in Los Angeles, where there’s far less humidity, but not nearly enough Tex-Mex.

Listen for the Lie, her first novel for adults