Tell Me No Lies

May 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Nerdy Lizzy, a senior in high school, and a year younger than all her friends, blossoms when enigmatic and secretive new student Claire takes her under her wing. She starts dating Matt, the boy she has had a crush on for years, attending parties, going to Philadelphia night clubs, and paying much less attention to school work, her old friends, and college applications. Despite her delight with her new friends and life, she finds that secrets and deceptions abound. While the plot has appeal with its in-and-out of friendships, first love plot, and fairly well-drawn characters, the overall impression is marred by pedestrian writing and the predictable plot. While allusions to band; movies; tape cassettes; and a few events, such as homophobia and the AIDS crisis, fill the pages, most of these details about the 1980s setting might be unfamiliar to current teens. The reason for setting the book during this historical time period becomes clear when one of the characters admits to being gay, but the reveal feels contrived and unnecessary. VERDICT The surface level exploration of fairly common tropes in YA makes it an additional purchase for romance shelves.-Janet Hilbun, University of North Texas, Denton

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
Sometimes secrets twist and turn, leading to mistrust and pain.Lizzy Swift has epilepsy. She never speaks of it, even to those who know of her condition. She is always worried that she will have a full-blown seizure or that others will notice her petit mal lapses. She and her best friends, Gage and Mimi, are the nerds of the senior class at their all-girls school near Philadelphia. Claire is a new girl, eccentric and with her own mysterious secrets, who draws Lizzy into a different, sometimes-uncomfortable sphere, and Lizzy never knows how Claire will behave toward her. Her longtime secret crush, Matt, is now her boyfriend, and his secrets are even more subtle and hard for her to fathom. Confusing her further is her strong reaction to Mimi's brother, Theo, who appears when he is needed. Divided into the three seasons of the 1988-89 school year, there are many references to the pop culture and musical groups of the era that modern readers might not recognize. Everything is told in Lizzy's voice with her own flawed insights and limitations. Characters and events seem to float in and out of the plot, and a seemingly pat conclusion leaves one very important unanswered question. Major characters are white apart from Mimi and Theo, who are Korean-American.Readers will relate to compassionate, confused Lizzy but might find the overloaded plot hard going. (Fiction. 14-18)

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June 4, 2018
Lizzy has never lived down the shame of her first epileptic seizure, which occurred during eighth-grade chorus (“I know girls still whisper about it. How crazy I looked. How freaky I seemed,” she says). Since then, she’s remained closed-lipped about her condition and made little effort to make new friends. But during her senior year, she becomes more courageous after rebellious and sophisticated new student Claire chooses her for a friend, and Matt, Lizzy’s crush from another school, shows sudden interest. Lizzy is thrilled to finally have a boyfriend and to spend time with Claire, but neither her budding romance nor her new friendship is perfect. Lizzy suspects that both Claire and Matt are hiding something from her, and she’s determined to find out what. In a story containing as many secrets as main characters, Griffin (Be True to Me) delivers a universal message about openness and honesty. Ages 14–up. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management.

March 15, 2018
Grades 9-12 Perpetual wallflower and excellent student Lizzy Smith's senior year suddenly seems full of possibility when the mysterious new girl, Claire, takes her under her wing. The transfer from an elite boarding school raises more than a few eyebrows?why would anyone transfer their senior year, after all? Claire's holding back a secret, Lizzy knows that much, but then again, she's been holding back a secret of her own ever since eighth grade, when she had her first grand mal seizure. It's 1988, and in this upper crust Philadelphia enclave, plenty are holding something back?even Lizzy's new boyfriend, popular, dreamy Matt Ashley. But do true friends keep huge secrets from each other? Griffin makes the most of a conservative era in American culture in this contemplatively paced coming-of-age story. Claire's true reason for switching schools?a relationship with a teacher?is unfortunately not a relic from the past. While fans of Stranger Things are likely to appreciate the 1980s cultural references, themes of being true to yourself and honest with your friends are timeless.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2019
Lizzie, a timid, studious class-of-1989 senior at a private school outside Philadelphia, is suddenly drawn into new, life-changing relationships: a romance with her longtime crush, Matt; and a friendship with mysterious, aloof new girl Claire, who's rumored to have a troubled past. Griffin packs this historical coming-of-age novel with entertaining eighties references, rad details of the Philly art scene, and almost too many plot elements.

(Copyright 2019 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)