The Lies I Tell
The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark is a psychological thriller novel that follows two women Kat, a journalist, meets Meg Williams, a con artist who shattered her life, during a political fundraiser. Meg has a secret connection to real estate magnate Ron Ashton, whom she intends to pursue for his money laundering operation. Ten years ago, Meg started a con that Kat claims destroyed her life, prompting her to pursue a connection with high school principal Cory Dempsey. However, an anonymous tip leads to Nate, Cory’s best friend, raping her, causing Kat significant trauma and jeopardizing her job.
Meg goes to Los Angeles to take on Ron Ashton, the real estate billionaire who took her family’s home. She grows into a powerful and capable lady after defrauding wealthy men such as Phillip Montgomery and Scott. Meg plays a real estate agent, and Kat plots revenge on Meg.
Kat understands Meg’s motives and supports her, as her research and experience demonstrate that she is a good person working to assist other women receive justice and hold dishonest men accountable. She kicks Scott out of the house and continues on with her life, concentrating on fiction writing and becoming a con artist like Meg. Ron’s campaign is undone by a generous donation to a homeless shelter, and Meg loses the house he thought he had.
Chapter 1 Summary
The first two chapters of the story begin in medias res and then jump back ten years to explain the events leading up to this point. These chapters are structured in a somewhat non-linear manner to establish the concept of Girl Code: The Need for Women to Help Women, develop strong characterization prior to the main events, and set up the central conflict between the two characters, Kat and Meg.
The structure illuminates this topic by explicitly juxtaposing Kat’s present-day acts, which seek to degrade another woman, Meg, with the past, in which both women fight to deliver justice to and elevate other women. It also directly introduces the concept of “Girl Code” by telling Kristen’s narrative about how the word first appeared in Meg’s life. Kristen’s benevolence teaches Meg that women must watch out for one another, and this basic memory inspires Meg to pursue justice for women through her profession as a con artist. If the opening was not constructed in this manner, this theme would be less obvious, as starting with the present scenario without flashbacks would make the themes feel more based on competitiveness amongst women. In contrast, eliminating the in medias res initial chapters would make the theme appear flat or without consequence. Because both timelines exist in close proximity to each other, this idea becomes clear and has substance as it is challenged by guys like Nate.
The flashbacks allow Clark to describe Kat and Meg based on their separate past experiences and lives—they are neither villains nor victims. Kat looks to be a bright, unhappy woman bent on vengeance in the present, but a glance back provides a more intimate grasp of her personality and motivations. She hasn’t always been an unhappy journalist; instead, she has worked extremely hard to establish herself as a wonderful writer and impress her mother. She gave up her dream of becoming an author to work for the Los Angeles Times. She also defied her boss’s advise, as she believes a guy would, in order to capture a terrific viewpoint on the subject. This demonstrates that young Kat was concerned about other people’s opinions while being ambitious and bold. Meg also has a more relatable history. She wasn’t always this ruthless con artist with her sights set on the prize; she was a wounded girl attempting to assist other injured females. She did what she had to do to survive, and seeing her live in her car and do her washing at the gym where she worked the front desk puts her 10-year growth in perspective.
The format also establishes the key issues between Meg and Kat early on. While the present-day passages suggest that Meg will be Kat’s enemy, the flashbacks point to other antagonists, such as her fiancé Scott and even her mother, who had a profoundly negative influence on her life. Kat’s primary battle will be reestablishing her internal locus of control. Meg’s primary fight will be combating Ron Ashton.
Chapter 2 summary
The novel foreshadows Kat’s incapacity to see the genuine motivations of those around her, heightening the suspense in her story arc. Clark does this primarily through Kat’s conversation with Scott. Scott states, “You have no idea how these people operate […].” They shake your right hand and reach into your left pocket.” (116), it may be easy to believe Scott is looking out for Kat, but because the novel’s perspective is first-person looking back on events that have happened with an attempted limited view of what’s going through the characters’ minds at the time, there are hints of an imbalance in the relationship in the details, such as how Scott watches sports while Kat writes a mind-numbingly boring article to pay off his gambling debts. These small moments change the perspective on discourse. Scott blames Kat, claiming that if she had allowed him to pay payments online like everyone else, this would not have happened. Because I knew you’d transform it into something it wasn’t. (165), this deflective wording foreshadows how he has treated their relationship and Kat: he has been lying behind her back and refuses to accept responsibility for his actions. This lays the framework for Scott’s descent into gambling addiction, which is less surprising than Kat’s reaction. The conflict between how the reader can observe the events in Kat’s relationship and how Kat perceives them in the moment heightens the drama in the novel and raises the stakes of how vital it is that Kat recognizes what’s in front of her and makes a decision to pursue justice vs retribution.
Narrative voice is also important in raising the stakes and highlighting thematic elements in the story. Meg breaks the fourth wall in her narration, beginning with “Let’s talk about Kat for a moment” (138). Meg feels certain Kat is lying, but it is not a very traumatic moment for her. She figures it out, deals with it appropriately (by investigation), and moves on. Meg’s matter-of-fact tone indicates that she does not consider Kat to be a threat, and this is due to her understanding of Kat’s motivations, at least in part. She understands Kat’s desire for a tale and to expose a con artist. This makes perfect sense to Meg, but she has no desire to use Kat’s ignorance of Meg’s awareness, reinforcing the impression that Meg does not take advantage of people merely because she can or for retribution. If she wanted to get revenge on Kat for attempting to undo her, she could have done so, but instead, Meg focuses on leveraging The Ignorance of the Rich and Powerful to undo them while obeying the Girl Code. She is more interested in justice than vengeance. Even when Kat’s actions upset her, Meg’s narrative voice remains focused on her purpose. This portion not only increases the tension between them, but it also demonstrates how the themes work as their relationships with each other and others change.
Chapter 3 Summary
In this section of the story, Meg’s skill as a con artist is contrasted with Kat’s inexperience. Meg, a con artist, believes in Girl Code and wants to deliver justice to those who have abused the system to disenfranchise others. She employs The Ignorance of the Rich and Powerful to carry out her plan, but her route to achievement is not easy or uncomplicated. Meg utilizes an analogy to describe the nature of her work, emphasizing how difficult it is to maintain trust while manipulating others.
Kat’s naivety is conveyed using figurative language, with words like “My breath hitches in my chest as my eyes scan the list,” revealing Scott’s deception regarding her identity. The use of terms with negative meanings, such as “hitch,” “haunted,” and “darker,” along with the personification of Kat’s nightmares, illustrates how significant this time is for Kat. She rejects her instincts so much that she gets herself into a horrible situation. She chooses to be naive, prioritizing her personal worldview over recognizing what is in front of her: Scott is lying and Meg is correct.
This metaphorical language juxtaposition of Meg and Kat sets the setting for the following section, in which they begin to undergo role shifts as they progress through their arcs. This time, Kat struggles to contact Meg until Meg relents, and most significantly, this is the start of the final touches required to make their switches at the end plausible. Meg is now at a crossroads in her quest for justice, and she will not be deterred. Kat, on the other hand, recognizes she can’t keep writing pulp stories to get out of the hole Scott dug for her; she needs closure with Meg to go on.
This last act completes the characters’ arcs, with Kat starting a new life based on her ideals and Meg retiring to a life of supposed quiet now that she has brought Ron Ashton justice. Even secondary characters, such as Scott and Ron, are affected by the winds of change, with Scott focusing on recovery from his addiction and Ron left to pick up the pieces following Meg’s plan against him. There are also clues that Nate will face his comeuppance. These arcs reflect the characters’ development as Kat and Meg come to recognize each other—and themselves—for who they truly are, and bring the concept of Girl Code: The Need for Women to Help Women to a close that reflects its richness, complexity, and importance.
The subtlety occurs in how Girl Code is implemented to different situations, particularly those involving men. While the story takes a strong stand against males who misuse their power and highlights how women must look out for one another because no one else would, there are exceptions for antagonists such as Scott, whom Kat recognizes is not like the men Meg attacked. Instead, they both put their feet down (Meg by damaging his car, Kat by turning him away) and pushed him in the right path to heal. This indicates that the notion of Girl Code is more than just standing up to men’s authority; it’s also about behaving with integrity in the pursuit of justice and supporting one another.
Girl Code’s topic is complicated, and grasping it can be difficult. Meg appreciates Kat’s acceptance of her as one of those people who will never settle, as well as her ability to comprehend how her actions are indirectly harming Kat. This complexities allows the theme’s relevance to be fully realized in the conclusion of Kat’s character journey at the end of the novel, when she sees that blaming Meg for the deception that led her to Nate’s route was really a coincidence.
This added layer to the theme’s relevance addresses a larger societal issue: ladies should not only aid one another, but they should also not blame one another for men’s wicked conduct. Girl Code is about ending the cycle of abuse, and Meg did so in honor of Kristen. Now that Kat is free of her belief that Meg is to blame, she is ready to take on a larger challenge: bringing down Nate, who is genuinely responsible for her pain and trauma. The way various components of the theme are scaffolded throughout the final section to provide nuance and complexity leads in this huge development that completes both Kat and Meg’s separate character arcs while bringing this theme into resonance with the rest of the work.
Meg faces various challenges on her way to this reversal, which she avoids by seeking to preserve tunnel vision. She chooses to overlook her words at the start of this section since she cannot afford to make a mistake right now. This tunnel vision heightens the emotional tension between Meg and Kat, as both need to tell the truth to each other in order to finish their own journeys.
Meg also uses language manipulation to overcome these limitations. She retools her ability to fit perfectly into the views of others into a linguistic variety that gets her out of a tight spot when Scott is following her, and she purposely rear-ends him. The intentional choice of the word “hysterical” to characterize her tone illustrates how she is contributing to sexist posturing by perpetuating the notion that women are overly “emotional.”
Similarly, Kat is forced into a new role because she cannot continue to pay for Scott’s mistakes or live the life her mother created. She is devastated by all that has happened, including the loss of her novel and the breakdown of her relationship. The fact that she turns to Meg at this point indicates that she is beginning to see how mistaken her perception of Meg has always been. This understanding not only reinforces the thesis of Girl Code: The Need for Women to Help Women—that women must defend women in a culture that will deceive them wherever possible—but also demonstrates that women are more than their stereotypes. Meg is neither a femme fatale nor a damsel in distress, but a formidable player in a game she did not invent. Kat, who has been unintentionally playing the game, is recognizing her role and embarking on a mission to claim her authority in the game.
