It takes a lot to really surprise me when it comes to thrillers. Amy Tintera’s novel Listen for the Lie did not surprise me, but it was an okay diversion from the shitstorm of the world in which we are currently living.

Lucy Chase returns to Plumpton, Texas for her grandmother’s– the feisty Beverly– 80th birthday. Lucy hasn’t been home in five years. Lucy’s life is pretty much off the rails: she’s just been fired and her boyfriend, Nathan, is on the precipice of kicking her to the curb. (Literally, since they live together.) Lucy really, really doesn’t want to go home.

When she left Texas for L.A., it was to escape the side-eye she was getting from everyone after the death of her best friend Savvy. Why all the suspicion? Well, no one knows quite how Savvy died, but what everyone does know is that she and Lucy were seen fighting and then Lucy was found covered in blood with no memory of what happened. No charges were ever brought against her, but that doesn’t really matter. Everyone thinks she killed Savvy. Geesh, even Lucy herself isn’t convinced that she’s not guilty.

Enter Ben Owens, host of the popular true crime podcast Listen for the Lie.

Is it true that no one believes Lucy Chase? Is she hiding something, or have the people of Plumpton accused an innocent woman of murder for five years?

Let’s find out.

Ben sets about interviewing all the people who know Lucy: her mother, her high school besties Maya and Emmett, Savvy’s ‘boyfriend’ du jour Colin, Savvy’s family and Lucy’s ex-husband, Matt. Eventually, Lucy agrees to talk on the record. I am sure that if you’d listened to this novel on audio you would have had an interesting reading experience, but I am not an audio reader.

It’s hard to say why this book wasn’t a winner for me. Maybe it was because I didn’t really like any of these characters, including Lucy herself (who spends a lot of time fantasizing about how to kill the various people she encounters.) The podcast scripts in novels has certainly been done before (Sadie, None of This is True) and here it is used to offer up potential explanations, and perhaps to incriminate other people.

When Lucy does finally start to remember what happened, it’s just a bit over-the-top. For me, I would slot Listen for the Lie in the okay category. The writing, the mystery, the reading experience were all okay.

I suspect others will like like it a lot more than I did.