Synopsis:
Everything he knows about his life is. . . a lie.
Blindsided by the sudden death of his mother, 21-year-old Will Lockhart can no longer afford the rent or bear the haunting memories of their shared Massachusetts apartment. While packing up his mother’s belongings, he discovers his long-dead father’s deed to a house in upstate New York. With nowhere else to go, he settles there, intent on making a fresh start. But odd things happen as soon as Will moves in. He’s unnerved by evidence of fire damage in the cottage, and alarmed by the seizure his elderly next-door neighbor suffers upon meeting him. Most shocking of all are the rumors of a long-ago murder in his house. Now, trapped in a town full of strangers, unsure of whether local murmurings are true or simply small-town gossip, he’s determined to discover what really happened all those years ago, and how he’s connected to the chaos. The truth will set him free. Or get him killed.
Praise for Maybe You Lied:
“Sadera has done it again! Maybe You Lied is an evocative and compelling tale of family trauma, betrayal, and the chilling truth that the most dangerous secrets are those buried by the people closest to us.”
~ Lisa Malice, bestselling author of Lest She Forget, winner of the 2023 IBPA Best New Voice in Fiction Award
“MAYBE YOU LIED is a spectacular thriller that instantly grips you and refuses to let go. With great emotional depth, this novel plunges you inside Will Lockhart’s mind, soul, and angst. He’s a down on his luck, grief and guilt-ridden young man stuck in a hopeless rut. When he discovers a deed to a house he believes he’s inherited, it seems like his luck just might change. Page by page, he uncovers hidden layers of a past he could never have imagined. But when nothing is as it seems and everything you knew about your family and your past is a lie, be careful of digging up the truth. It might set you free…unless it kills you first. This darkly suspenseful, romantic journey knits a cast of intriguing, deeply unreliable characters into a clever, twisty narrative. You won’t want to put down this edgy story of loss, love, identity, and family truths as you hurtle towards its surprising end.”
~ Zelly Ruskin, award-winning author of Not Yours to Keep and the forthcoming One of Us Must Die
“Maybe You Lied is a twisty, emotionally charged domestic suspense that ramps up to a jaw-dropping, visceral finale. Don’t miss it!”
~ Bonnie Traymore, Author of The Rich Guy’s Wife
“Family ties? Or family lies? Will Lockhart is coming home to a woodland cottage he never knew existed, his life in shreds and fragments. In a novel as intricately woven as a web, Jennifer Sadera explores sociopathy, nature versus nurture, and the one thing that can never die–a chance at love and redemption.”
~ Jenny Milchman, Mary Higgins Clark award winning author of the Arles Shepherd thrillers
“A young man’s attempt to piece together his family’s dark history propels this gripping mystery, which moves with an electric speed through secrets twistier than the branches of a mangled family tree. Combining thrills, romance, and a moving exploration of grief, MAYBE YOU LIED is perfect for fans of sinister family dynamics who want to devour a thriller in one breathless go.”
~ Ashley Winstead, national bestselling author of This Book Will Bury Me
Book Details:
Genre: Psychological Suspense, Domestic Suspense
Published by: Creative James Media
Publication Date: September 22, 2026
Number of Pages: 344
Shop The Book: Maybe You Lied
Shop My Stack: 2026 Books Read
Read an excerpt:
Landlords don’t rent apartments to zombies.
I scratched the four-day stubble on my jawline and parked my mom’s Camry behind the brown brick walk-up. Home-Not-So-Sweet Home.
As I stepped into the cramped apartment lobby Sergei was waiting.
“The rent,” he said, his guttural Russian accent turning his words into a nonsensical de-REN. I paused, reluctantly meeting the bushy brows lowered ominously over his steely slitted eyes. Easy to translate.
I nodded and darted my own eyes to the stairway. One of these days my landlord would surely raise a heavily muscled arm and crash his ham hock fist into my face. Emitting my zombie grunt, I pivoted to the stairwell and rushed up, expecting Sergei to follow. Relieved when he didn’t.
It would be a brief reprieve. When my mom lived here Sergei only showed up once a month, but in the three years since she died, he’d pounded his frustration with my spotty payments onto my apartment door with increasing frequency, not budging until I opened the creaky steel barrier. Saying nothing, he’d hold out a meaty palm that looked like it could strangle me all by itself.
Back when I still had cash, I’d offer a wad of fifties and hundreds that he’d snatch up like grabbing cash from an ATM. Only the Will Lockhart machine was now empty, and Sergei looked as though he wanted to kick it into compliance. Kick me. Face flushed with fury, he’d study me with those hard gray pebbles, taking in my disheveled hair and sagging clothes. A gaze that told me exactly what he thought about me—a twenty-one-year-old slacker who clearly cared about nothing. A deadbeat. A zombie. And this was mostly true except for the one thing I cared deeply about: those last seconds with Mom. I relived them daily, the guilt as fresh and dangerously addictive as a drunk’s bleary-eyed yearning for a Bloody Mary the morning after a bender.
I deserved the memories. If not for me, Mom would still be alive.
I closed my eyes against the inevitable scene rolling through my mind. The flash of headlights slicing through my Honda’s dusky interior like a white-hot comet, too fast to stop, too bright to blink away; a violent force whirling me into its vortex. My neck twisting painfully, head hitting something hard. The car’s interior exploding into a slow-motion kaleidoscope. How I’d instinctively thrust my arm out to protect my mom, instant pain bolting from fingers to shoulder; glass shattering and raining down upon us like the stinging embers of trailing fireworks.
And then, the stillness. The church-like quiet.
I’d blinked into the silence as the noises trickled in—the hissing of the steaming engine, and a tinny song coming through the radio from somewhere under the car’s hood. A far-off voice belted out a twangy country tune. “Put on the bacon and the eggs, darlin’ . . .”
Mom and her country music. Mom and her . . . Mom. Head throbbing, I’d scanned the smoke-choked twilight. She was right where she was supposed to be, still hooked in place by her seatbelt, staring straight ahead, like she was listening for something.
“Mom? Are you all right?”
Beyond the jagged glass edges of her blown-out window I saw the lines of the truck through the smoky haze, the words “Barclay’s Bread” written in fancy red letters on its wide, boxy side. Mom said nothing.
Painfully bolted into our twisted metal cage, waiting for the Jaws of Life to extract us, I’d reached out, trying to touch her with my other hand, the one that still worked. If I could just shake her out of her trance.
But in those final precious seconds our bodies existed in the same world, I knew. She was already gone.
I shook my head, forcing me back to the present, wishing my mind could be like the Etch-a-Sketch Mom bought me when I was six. One harsh shake in each direction and the contents of the screen disappeared. But my mind retained in painful detail the truck driver’s distinctive profile, the beak of a nose angled down, a squinted eye and bulbous cheekbone lit up by his cell-phone screen.
As a kid, the thought of Mom dying had set waves of terror rolling through me. Not just because I loved her, but because a part of me always dreaded the day she’d be taken from me. Convinced it would happen but unsure of when, I’d spent a good four years waking up each night and tiptoeing to her bedroom door, peeking through the crack between the edge of the flimsy wood and the wall to ensure she was still in bed, alive. Ridiculous as it seemed, even then, it was understandable, given our track record. I mean, not long before my dad left us, just after my fifth birthday, we’d been a family of four.
***
Excerpt from MAYBE YOU LIED by Jennifer Sadera. Copyright 2026 by Jennifer Sadera. Reproduced with permission from Jennifer Sadera. All rights reserved.
This book was riveting. I felt completely absorbed into it from the moment I opened the pages. I love when a book lets you sink in and forget the outside world while you’re reading it.
The Story
Blindsided by the sudden death of his mother, 21 year old Will Lockhart can no longer afford the rent or bear the haunting memories of their shared Massachusetts apartment. While packing up her belongings, he discovers his long dead father’s deed to a house in upstate New York, and with nowhere else to go, he settles there for a fresh start. But odd things start happening almost immediately, evidence of fire damage in the cottage, a seizure his elderly next door neighbor suffers upon meeting him, and rumors of a long ago murder in his own house. Now trapped in a town full of strangers, unsure whether the local murmurings are true or just small town gossip, Will is determined to find out what really happened, and how he’s connected to it all. The truth will set him free. Or get him killed.
Reading Experience
The title implies, before you even get into it, that there are lies, secrets, half-truths, things we don’t know, and that was certainly the experience. There is so much potential for unreliable narration in this story. As the reader, I genuinely couldn’t tell when I was getting someone’s skewed perspective, a clouded memory, or the truth itself.
There were flashback moments, foggy memories, stories that were told, and outright lies. Throughout the entire story, I was never quite sure what was truth, what was a misconception, or what was a lie that simply hadn’t been uncovered yet. A huge part of that comes from these secrets being hidden by characters who are no longer living, a thread that runs through the entire book. So many of the characters had lost somebody, or multiple people, significant to them, and with those deaths went the true stories behind what had actually happened, whether about their deaths or their family relationships. The pieces our characters were left to assemble often felt like fragments with no explanation attached.
Much of the book had me trying to anticipate where the mystery was headed and what the twists might be. I had a couple of theories, one I was especially hoping wouldn’t come true, and thankfully it didn’t, though I could easily see the story heading that direction. I also managed to accurately predict a few things, which I’ll admit I’m rather proud of, and there were still a couple of moments that caught me completely off guard.
Writing Style
The writing style was, in my opinion, fantastic, because it made the unreliability of it all feel completely believable. When you suddenly lose somebody, they simply aren’t there anymore to answer your questions or offer their side of the story. The author didn’t need to invent convoluted reasons for why the characters were left in the dark, it was simply that the people who held the truth were no longer able to tell it. What’s left is a generation of young adults piecing together what really happened, entirely on their own.
Characters
Will is such a sweet, sensitive soul. He’s young and has experienced so much loss that he’s grown cautious, shy, and tentative, for good reason. He doesn’t like getting close to people because in his experience, they leave or die and you never see them again. The one person he had a truly secure bond with was his mother, so navigating everything alone, without her guidance, makes this journey feel even harder for him.
It was genuinely heartwarming watching Will figure out who to be now that he’s on his own. With no one left to lean on, he had to find his own inner strength, place his trust in new people, and build a kind of found family. He’s human and flawed and makes mistakes, but he genuinely tries to grow into someone his mother would be proud of.
Then there’s Penelope, the neighbor girl, whom I loved. She’s Will’s opposite in every way, vibrant, outgoing, fast, spontaneous, and she wears her emotions on her sleeve, blurting things out without thinking. She isn’t afraid to say what’s on her mind, even when it puts her foot in her mouth, but she’s just as quick to apologize, which makes her instantly likable. That same impulsive energy also makes her feel a little untrustworthy at times, and it kept me second guessing her right up until the end.
There are a few side characters worth mentioning too. In Will’s life, there’s Alan, his lawyer, who he’d known on and off through his mother, Tabitha, his new therapist, and Dottie, who becomes an important authority figure. None of them are people Will knows well enough yet to fully trust, so much of his arc is figuring out who he can lean on while also chasing down the answers about his mother and his family.
In Penelope’s life, aside from her Aunt Dottie, most of the people around her leave a great deal to be desired. Her family is wealthy, owns a lot of property in town, and she’s surrounded by people who care more about status and appearances than anything real, which isn’t who she is at all. She has a big heart and has suffered plenty of loss herself, so she’s constantly searching for the kind of love these cold, status obsessed people in her life simply don’t offer. Aunt Dottie is the one person she truly connects with, becoming a kind of go-between for her and Will, everybody’s Aunt Dottie, supporting and caring for them both.
Heartbeat
Underneath everything, this story is ultimately about death, secrets, and family lies coming to the surface as the mystery unravels. But beneath all of that, there’s a steady theme about figuring out who you are and finding enough confidence in yourself that your family’s story, or its reputation, doesn’t define you. You can still be a loving, compassionate, warm hearted person even if you didn’t come from a family like that, or even if secrets from your past completely reshape who you thought you were. You can still have integrity and be an honorable person, no matter what.
Final Thoughts
It was just such a good book. I wish I could go back and read it again knowing everything I know now, all the lies and the secrets, and watch it all unfold from the beginning, catching the clues I might have missed. It’s not a flat-out murder mystery, it’s more of a family mystery, what don’t you know about your own family, what did your parents leave out, or tell you in a way that wasn’t the whole truth? How are you connected to people you’ve never met who had relationships with the people you love? And what do you do when those people are gone and you can’t ask them anything at all, leaving you to figure it all out on your own?
Don’t forget to enter the author giveaway below!
Thank you to Partners In Crime Tours for letting me read and review this book.
Author Bio:
Jennifer Sadera first worked in the publishing industry as a junior copywriter for NAL/Penguin. She has written and edited for newspapers and magazines as a freelancer and on the staffs of major women’s publications, Woman’s World and Redbook.
Catch Up With Jennifer Sadera:
JenniferSadera.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub – @jennifersadera
Instagram – @jensaderaauthor
X – @jennifersadera
Facebook – @jennifer.sadera
LinkedIn
YouTube – @AuthorJenniferSadera
Tour Participants:
Visit these other great hosts on this tour for more great reviews, interviews, guest posts, and opportunities to WIN in the giveaway!
Click here to view the Tour Schedule
This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Toursfor Jennifer Sadera. See the link for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.
The giveaway is for: $25 Amazon.com gift card
This Cozy Chaos 
Leave a comment