Audiobook Review: First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

First Lie Wins
Author: Ashley Elston

Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld        
Published: January 2, 2024
Audiobook: 9 hours 16 minutes

Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: March 5-11, 2024
Jessica’s Rating: 3 stars      

Book Description:

Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job will be different. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Because the one thing she’s worked her entire life to keep clean, the one identity she could always go back to—her real identity—just walked right into this town. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge… 

Jessica’s Review:

First Lie Wins came out at the beginning of the year to a lot of positive feedback, but this is just one that did not work for me.

We have a female con artist who has seemingly met her match with someone pretending to be her actual self! And we have the creepy “Mr. Smith” that lurks.  The ending had a big twist for me that I actually liked.

The narrator did a good job for me portraying our con woman. We have chapters that take place in the past with her former jobs, which I just wasn’t interested in. But these chapters ended up being necessary to the story.

This one just wasn’t for me, but maybe you will like it! It’s a debut novel, so I would be willing to give the author another try in the future. 

Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK