First Lie Wins – Ashley Elston

Summary

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…

Review

Oh my god, Reese, finally a book that I can see why you chose it.

After The House in the Pines, I felt so betrayed by Reese’s Book Club picks that every time I see that as the main advertising aspect of a book, I make a point of staying away from it. Even so, I saw that this book was making quite a buzz even before release, so after a couple of days (I think it was literally 2 days after publication), I thought ‘What the hell‘ and succumbed to FOMO and bought it. BEST DECISION EVER.

I honestly love morally grey characters, LOVE THEM. I’ll confess, sometimes in books I root for people that could be seen as the ‘villains’ or that just had to do bad things to survive; sue me.

I loved Evie, I loved George, I loved Ryan, I loved EVERYONE. Every single character was amazing for me, I honestly don’t have anything else to say. Although, if I loved this book so much, why not 5 stars? Simple answer: I don’t see myself reading it again. I feel truly satisfied with where the characters are, and I don’t really think I will feel the necessity to get back to this journey again. Even so, with that ending, I can totally see the author perhaps making this book the first in its series, à la Finlay Donovan; however, I wouldn’t mind at all if it stays as a standalone.

Final thoughts: GO READ THIS BOOK. MAKE THIS A MOVIE TOO.

Click for spoilers!

Evie’s real name was Lucca Marino. She was assigned to Ryan because, behind the scenes, he illegally moved stolen goods.

Her last target before Ryan was Amy, a woman who also worked for Mr. Smith, and Evie was sent to kill her because she found out Mr. Smith’s identity and that he was stealing from a crime family. Here is when Evie teams up with Amy to double-cross Mr. Smith. They set up a plan and fake Amy’s death.

George was Mr. Smith all along! He was also testing everyone that worked for him (like Evie and Amy), and the ones that didn’t make the cut were killed.

Evie and Amy set up George to be handed over to the crime family he was stealing from, and Evie and Ryan end up together.