A review by stories_of_the_soul27
Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.25

So the good thing about this book is that the chapters are short and in the audiobook most of the chapters were 4-6 mins long. 
I liked the performance of the narrators. The narration was good and both the narrators did a good job in keeping the interest of the listeners going. 
However, even if the chapters were short, I didn’t really think to be a fast story. This was very slow in that nothing actually was happening. We only have one murder that happened five years ago, and after that the story was just about this podcast trying to find out what happened to Savvy, but I didn’t really like the direction of the podcast.  The podcast felt more about trying to establish that Lucy is innocent and hey who cares who killed Savvy. Ben (the podcaster) was just going asking people to establish their alibis and through that we just come to know that a lot of people lied and were actually out and about on the day of the murder. But so what! There’s no proof and no motive. So what’s the point of this podcast? 
Next we come to our protagonist Lucy. I liked her in the beginning. She was funny and snarky and I liked how she used sarcasm to get over this tragedy that had befallen her. But after the second part of the story I stopped liking her. Because - 
  1. She stopped being interesting. I couldn’t find any new development she was bringing to the story. She was just having sex with Ben. Or we keep learning about how she was sleeping with someone else 5 years ago. 
  2. I couldn’t figure out who Lucy was. What kind of woman was she. It felt that her being a suspected murderer is the only thing she has going in her life. We get to know she had an abusive relationship with her 1st husband. That didn’t bring anything to the story or to her character. Her & this supposed best friendship she had with Savvy was also not explored. 
  3. Lucy & Ben - them having sex and cute moments didn’t really add points to the story. Instead this could have been used to show how Ben was putting the work in trying to solve the murder. 
We also don’t get to know Savvy. How are we supposed to care for this murder if neither the victim nor the alleged perpetrator inspire any kind of feeling in us? 
“I will never be a perfect victim” or “The truth doesn’t matter” - these phrases were thrown around a lot by Lucy and I get the idea of what the author was trying to establish but it didn’t turn out to be cohesive. 

Lastly what totally threw me off was Lucy and Emmett’s relationship. It was initially shown that Lucy likes Emmett and always wondered what her life could be if she had hooked up with him. But she thought that only when she saw Emmett or was asked about Emmett. And then the moment when Emmett is out of her sight or out of the conversation, she forgets about the guy she was supposed to care for her. There are so many moments of her and Emmett shown which kept clashing that as a reader you are left wondering of whether to actually care for the guy and this friendship or not. And so when the big reveal happens, you just don’t care. So it’s Emmett huh! So what! And this is a pretty shit reaction to a climatic moment. Over here I also want to mention that Lucy’s indecision regarding to how to feel about Emmett is valid but her letting kiss Emmett when she didn’t feel it and not fighting or taking a stand is what felt weird. Her personality is not shaped properly. We know she is not the confrontational type but she doesn’t keep quiet when the topic of her allegedly murdering her best friend comes up. She has started hitting Matt back so she is bold but why does she let Emmett kiss her when in reality she hates that? These are little things but they bothered me. It is not her fault that Emmett is a bastard who killed Savvy. Even if she didn’t let Emmett kiss her, still the guy would have ended up somehow attacking her. The author shouldn’t have brought all these abusive male characters and used them without adding any depth to Lucy’s character when she is the one dealing with them in various capacity. Matt was briefly given a redemption arc. Like hell he deserves that. This pissed me off like anything!


I get the moral of the story - truth matters less when it is said by the women victims, much less when they are less than perfect. Men trust men’s words more than the women in their lives. A woman needs to be backed by a man in order to get more traction. I commend the author for showcasing this to us. It would have hit home had the women of this story had more depth to their characters. 

P.S : I loved Lucy’s grandmother.