In First Lie Wins, by Ashley Elston, Evie Porter is moving in with her handsome new boyfriend Ryan. Ryan’s the catch of the city, with a huge inheritance and a thriving family business, and his friends secretly wonder if Ryan and Evie’s chance meeting might not have been a random meet-cute, and maybe pretty girl from some small town no one’s ever heard of is a gold-digger. They’re right to doubt the magical insta-romance, but a bit more complicated, since Evie Parker doesn’t really exist.

Evie’s not a gold-digger at all, but a professional con artist completing lucrative assignments for a “Mr. Smith,” and Ryan’s just her newest target to investigate. Long ago, she started as a low-stakes scammer just trying to support herself, but after being “recruited” for this special service, her projects now include carefully constructed back stories and identities, and earn high payouts if she completes the job well and doesn’t ask too many questions.  She’s starting to ask questions, though, after a previous botched assigned and a high-stakes job that was really a contest, with terrible results for the losers.

First Line Wins is a page-turning suspense novel where the overall question keeps changing. I liked this a lot, at first I thought, oh, it’s a thriller about a con artist developing feelings for her mark. No, it’s about Lucca. No, it’s really about Amy’s death, or about what Ryan’s really doing on Thursdays, or about any number of reveals. The story kept unfolding and the surprises kept coming.

I usually don’t love multiple-timeline suspense because the jumps can be jarring and annoying, but here, the flashbacks show Evie’s personal background unfolding, so it works. We can see how Evie developed her skills, too.  I always love cloak-and-dagger mysteries, so I enjoyed this one, and I particularly liked how much of Evie’s thriving con business was just being non-threatening and observant.

Overall, First Lie Wins is a twisty, gore-free suspense novel. (I worried there would be a gross scene because there’s a body, but anything icky happens off-camera.)

Thanks to Penguin Random House for the review copy!