Count My Lies

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, anti-gay bias, suicidal ideation, self-harm, sexual content, cursing, illness, death, emotional abuse, violence, and bullying.

Sloane Caraway narrates Chapters 1-18. She’s a 33-year-old nail technician at an affluent day spa, Rose & Honey, and lives with her mother in Brooklyn. While at Quailwood Park, she helps a five-year-old girl, Harper, remove a bee sting from her foot. Sloane tells the father, the handsome Jay Lockhart, that her name is Caitlin. Harper reminds Sloane of a girl she took ballet with when she was little. The girl was well-off and her name was either Caitlin or Carly.

Jay makes Sloane think of Jay Gatsby—the wealthy, elusive man from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Jay Lockhart notices Sloane’s copy of Agatha Christie’s murder mystery Murder on the Orient Express. The Christie novel prompts him to declare, “Everyone’s a liar.” Sloane mentions her favorite Christie novel, And Then There Were None. Sloane offers to bring him a copy. She imagines she’s in the romantic comedy Jersey Girl (2004). She’s the female lead, played by Liv Tyler, and Jay is the widowed male lead, played by Ben Affleck.