Let's Bust a Recap : Live Your Best Lie

Many moons ago when facebook was just a fledgling student networking site, I was attending a teeny tiny college where everybody knew everybody and we all gossiped—in person!—about everybody's business. One of my fellow coeds was Jessie Bell who is now Jessie Weaver, and exactly one month ago today, her debut novel was published. Live Your Best Lie is a young adult murder-mystery which will keep you guessing right up to the end. 

When Summer Cartwright, famous teen Instagram influencer, turns up dead at her own Halloween party, the suspect pool is immediately narrowed down to four of her so-called friends when a strange post shows up on her Instagram account shining the spotlight directly on them. As the story switches back and forth between their four different points of view, Instagram posts from Summer's page, and flashbacks to different interactions she shared with each of them, the reader is left wondering what dirt Summer had on all of them to give them motive to kill her. But they're not the only ones with reasons to want Summer dead. And when the four of them decide to work together to find more suspects to offer the police, tensions are high and the stakes even higher. 

First of all let me just say: I am a notoriously slow reader. But when I picked up Jessie's book late last Monday night, I could barely put it down until I finished it Wednesday morning. And while, yes, of course I wanted to know who the killer was, what really kept me turning the pages was finding out what secrets Summer was holding over the different people in her life. (And by the way, I did not figure out who the killer was before the actual reveal. And I was trying.)

Secondly, I'll comment on the genre. YA is not one I frequent very often, and this was my first YA murder-mystery. Never have I felt so completely ancient while simultaneously being profoundly grateful not to be growing up in our social media saturated world. When I was the age of the teens in this book, the extent of our internet savvy extended to dial-up, our new Juno email addresses, and chatting with strangers on AIM. Jessie managed to create teens in Live Your Best Lie that felt like real teenagers having real teenage reactions to being suspected of murder, and having those reactions under the very public pressure of social media scrutiny. The fraught, teenage hormones flying around were believable and it stressed me out. The influencer culture described in the book was spot-on and one of the reasons why I quit Instagram myself.

Lastly, would I recommend Live Your Best Lie?

In a heartbeat.

I liked the diverse cast in this book—characters of different ethnicities and characters with disabilities. I was glad to see adults represented well—single moms, blended families, involved and uninvolved parents. The teens in this book weren't little adults running around with total autonomy, and that was refreshing. I appreciated that we weren't subjected to any sexual scenarios. While the book wasn't completely devoid of romance, we didn't have to read about teens sleeping around, even though you could infer the different experience levels of certain characters. 

But I do have a caveat.

While the language in the book was pretty mild and definitely realistic to the way teens talk, there was just enough of it to make me hesitate to recommend this book to actual teenagers. I definitely would have read and loved this book as a teen, and I don't think any teen reading it today would find anything shocking in its pages, no matter how sheltered he or she may be. But the auntie in me wouldn't be able to recommend this book to a teen without a short diatribe against the normalization and perpetuation of using rude language, particularly the casual misuse of God's name. 

Other than that though, this is one to get your hands on and Jessie Weaver is an author to watch. When my turn rolls around in book club, Live Your Best Lie may be the book I end up choosing.