Jo Piazza Talks Womanhood and Influencer Culture in New Thriller, “Everyone Is Lying to You”

There is something about an ideal summer read that justifies bingeing. If you are in search of such a book — the one you can’t put down and can’t get out of your head — Everyone Is Lying to You, the latest thriller by Jo Piazza (The Sicilian Inheritance, We Are Not Like Them), does the trick. Expertly told in alternating narrations of Lizzie and Rebecca, Piazza takes us deep into the underside of social media and fan stardom.

As former best friends who shared some intense college days, Lizzie and Rebecca have taken different paths as adult women, and as the book opens, they are estranged. When they reunite after 15 years, Lizzie is a magazine writer with young children and a husband who, although she loves him, is presently out of work. Rebecca (once called “Bex” by Lizzie) has become a major influencer with millions of followers and a moneyed life. Rebecca exudes a rarified existence, an enviable family with her attractive husband, Gray, and six children. In reality, though, she is trapped, paying the price of perfection as a trad wife and the demands of the social media fast track. Then there is the unexpected, violent death of Gray. And so the mystery begins as Lizzie’s suspicions grow.

In her fast-paced, multilayered thriller, Piazza explores serious issues for women: the dicey world of celebrity culture, the price of a luxurious life, community as enemy, the pretense that women are in it together, the dangerous path of male supremacy, what motherhood entails, and what female agency and survival mean. The twists, turns and deceptions are all there, set against this backdrop.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Jo Piazza and I know each other from the iHeart podcast that she hosted in 2023 called She Wants More. As an admirer of her work, I welcomed the chance to read Everyone Is Lying To You and to ask her a few questions.

Q&A With Jo Piazza

Reading your new novel, I kept thinking of how strategic women need to be. Your female characters have done their best to choreograph their lives, making bargains if necessary. Do you believe it will ever change for us? 

I think this is a thing that has been happening since the beginning of humankind. Almost all of the female characters in my books have this in common: the need to strategically navigate the world. I don’t know if we see the labor of that enough in books, or the give and take required for ambitious women (and I mean ambitious about any of the things — working outside the home, being a mom, being a member of the community) to thrive. 

There has been enough time apart from their best-friendship for both Lizzie and Rebecca to be deep into their adult lives when they reconnect. They are genuinely pleased to see one another, yet remain guarded about their truths. Why is that? 

They had a major falling out right after college, and I am hearing from a lot of readers that they can really relate to the deep wounds caused by the ending of a female friendship and the gashes it leaves in their lives. When the two of them reunite 15 years later, they do fall back into a certain cadence; they almost can’t help it, but both of them are scared of being hurt again. It’s a really careful dance as they figure out how to be around one another and how to trust one another. 

Mean girls never disappear — whatever age or stage we’re at — and the food chain keeps it going. Yet this story goes beyond that. No spoiler, but Rebecca is at risk despite her fame and success. What is your message in this? 

Any woman who shares anything about her life on the Internet is a target, and it is often other women who are the most cruel online. The algorithms of social media perpetuate and reward this kind of cruelty, and it becomes a vicious cycle. I think that so much of women attacking other women is insecurity, because society has made us believe there isn’t room for all of us, and I think that is one of the major myths we need to blow the hell up. If one of us succeeds, we all succeed. Jealousy is bullshit and we are not competing for scarce resources. 

Challenges in the book include authenticity and trust among the women who feign to care about one another. This adds to the suspense as the story unfolds. How did you map out the plot, characters and themes, and in what order? 

I am not a plotter. I am a massive pantser, and in my case, that means I know my characters and I know what will happen at the end, and then I just go. I know this freaks a lot of writers out, but for me, this is where the magic of fiction unfolds and when the characters start to talk to me. 

But I have also been reporting on influencer culture and the business of influencing for the past 5 years, so I knew that I wanted the concept of authenticity and what it actually means both in real life and online to be a major part of the plot. The title also came to me very early on because I truly believe that in the digital space, everyone is lying to you about something, and as consumers of this content, we need to be hypervigilant about what we take in. 

I used this idea to move the suspense forward. I wanted the reader to feel unsure about who they could trust and when.

The readers are offered relatable characters. We see the ups and downs of career, children and husbands. You are married with a young family. Did personal experience inform the Lizzie/Bex dyad? 

Oh my god, of course it did. I have been breeding for 8 years, and I have three kids who are 8, 5 and 2. I am also the breadwinner in my family, juggling about seven different jobs from books to podcasts to consulting projects. The struggle is real, and my own challenges definitely informed all of the characters in this book.