Publishers Weekly
06/04/2018
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. (June)
From the Publisher
What’s most refreshing about Tell Me No Lies is its 80s Philly setting. Missing from the narrative are social media snafus; instead, three teens long to create genuine personal relationships . . . Soon hell breaks loose when secrets are kept and lies are told. This is not the 80's of John Hughes movies.”—W Magazine “In a story containing as many secrets as main characters, Griffin delivers a universal message about openness and honesty.”—Publishers Weekly “A contemplatively paced coming-of-age story . . . 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.” —Booklist
School Library Journal
05/01/2018
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
Kirkus Reviews
2018-04-10
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)
