Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, emotional abuse, violence, and bullying.

Sophie Stava makes allusions to several novels in Count My Lies, especially F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). When Sloane learns Jay’s name, she compares Jay to Jay Gatsby—the wealthy, mysterious protagonist of Fitzgerald’s novel. In The Great Gatsby, Gatsby has risen from poverty to wealth by engaging in shady business practices, intent on winning the love of Daisy, who has already married the rich, “old money” Tom Buchanan instead. The Great Gatsby’s themes of how wealth and class influence personal relationships also appear in Count My Lies, with Sloane, like Gatsby, attempting to improve her socioeconomic position through lies and social-climbing. Violet, like Daisy, appears to have an idyllic life but is actually trapped in an unhappy marriage, with her husband Jay’s infidelity mirroring the chronic infidelity of Tom Buchanan in Gatsby.

Before Sloane meets Harper and Violet for the first time, she reads Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel Rebecca (1938), which also contains important themes of class and attempted social-climbing. The novel is narrated by a nameless, impoverished young woman who initially works as a companion to a rich lady. The young woman meets and quickly marries Maxim de Winter, a rich widower. Once the new bride moves to de Winter’s estate of Manderley, she becomes obsessed with the memory of de Winter’s glamorous first wife, Rebecca. In Count My Lies, Sloane’s fixation on wealthier women with seemingly idyllic lives echoes the obsessions and insecurities of Rebecca’s narrator.

The allusions to Rebecca also highlight Count My Lies’s thematic interest in the complexities of lying and manipulation. Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper who adored Rebecca, toys with the second wife out of spite. Their dynamic hints at how Violet will manipulate Sloane. Some of Violet’s tactics are also similar to Mrs. Danvers’s. For example, Mrs. Danvers embarrasses the second wife by tricking her into attending a party with a dress and hair style that make her closely resemble Rebecca. Similarly, Violet compels Sloane to wear specific clothes to increase their resemblance to one another, while plotting to frame Jay for murder.

Sloane and Jay also read Agatha Christie. Sloane reads Murder on the Orient Express (1934) when she meets Jay and Harper for the first time. Her favorite Christie novel is And Then There Were None (1939). The Christie titles hint at deception and danger beyond Sloane’s lies. As with Christie’s murder mysteries, Stava’s plot is complex and centers on ostensible death. As Jay says after he notices Sloane reading Christie, “Everyone’s a liar.” The slogan applies to Stava’s characters as well, as Violet, Jay, and Sloane all engage in various forms of lying and manipulation. Violet alludes to the Christe phrase and the mass dishonesty when she quips, “We’ve all been lying to each other, haven’t we?” (451).