Trust Me, I'm Lying

Mary Elizabeth Summer's Trust Me, I'm Lying is the first book of her Trust Me series.

Julep Dupree tells lies.  A lot of them.  She's a con artist, a master of disguise and a sophomore at Chicago's swanky St. Agatha High, where her father, an old-school grifter with a weakness for the ponies sends her to so she can learn to mingle with the upper crust.  For extra spending money, Julep doesn't rely on her dad- she runs petty scams for her classmates while dodging the dean of students and maintaining an A+ (okay, A-) average.

But when she comes home one day to a ransacked apartment and her father gone, Julep's carefully laid plans for an expenses-paid golden ticket to Yale start to unravel.  Even with help from St. Agatha's resident Prince Charming, Tyler Richland, and her loyal hacker sidekick, Sam, Julep struggles to trace her dad's trail of clues through a maze of creepy stalkers, hit attempts, family secrets, and worse, the threat of foster care.  With everything she has at stake, Julep's in way over her head... but that's not going to stop her from using every trick in the book to find her dad before his mark finds her.  Because that would be criminal.

The Breakdown:
1. I love a good con, and this book definitely had that going on.  Summer kept me guessing on the end game, and who exactly was running what games.  She managed to throw in some pretty terrific surprises along the way.  This book kept me engaged beginning to end, and was hard to put down because I was dying to know what happens next.

2. Julep is an excellent grifter, but she is not always excellent at reading those closest to her.  She is completely clueless to Sam's deeper feelings toward her, but it makes her a little enduring.  I love that at the end, she proves she really is a good person despite her criminal tendencies.

3. Summer sets up an interesting love triangle between Julep, Tyler, and Sam, which does not turn out the way I expected.  She actually shocks me with the outcome.  I know YA love triangles are overdone, but this is definitely unique for how things play out.

4. Wow, that ending!  It really does pull some shockers, and at times makes me get a little teary eyed. Then there is the mystery of Julep's long absent mother that I am dying to know more about.  Summer dropped some serious hints about her, including that she may not be as long gone as Julep thought.  I am interested to see in that plays into the next book.

To Read or Not to Read:
Read, especially if you're a fan of Ocean's 11, White Collar, or Leverage.