Jo Piazza’s 2025 thriller, Everyone Is Lying to You, depicts the deceptive world of social media influencing. The novel follows Lizzie Matthews, a journalist who is unexpectedly contacted by her estranged college friend, Rebecca “Bex” Sommers. Now a famous “tradwife” influencer, Rebecca offers Lizzie an exclusive profile of a secret new business venture. When Rebecca vanishes, and her husband is found brutally murdered at their ranch, Lizzie is drawn into a dark mystery of curated identities, jealousy, and long-buried secrets. The novel explores themes including The Pressures of Portraying an Idealized Life on Social Media, The Corrosive Effect of Rigid Gender Roles, and The Power of Female Community and Solidarity.

The novel draws on Piazza’s extensive journalistic work covering the influencer economy, most notably for her critically acclaimed podcast, Under the Influence. An established bestselling author of books like The Sicilian Inheritance and the Good Morning America Book Club pick We Are Not Like Them, Piazza uses the thriller genre to deconstruct the tradwife movement. The story interrogates how the romanticization of traditional gender roles can obscure and enable cycles of control and abuse.

This guide refers to the 2025 Dutton e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, substance use, sexual violence, sexual content, pregnancy loss, mental illness, cursing, death, and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Lizzie, a managing editor for Modern Woman magazine, lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her two young children and her husband, Peter (a recently laid-off editor working on a novel). Lizzie is obsessed with the Instagram account of her former best friend, Rebecca Sommers, who is now a famous “tradwife” influencer. After 15 years of silence, Rebecca sends Lizzie a direct message, asking Lizzie to meet her at the upcoming MomBomb influencer conference. Rebecca wants Lizzie to write an exclusive profile about a new, secret, multimillion-dollar business venture, and Lizzie agrees. 

Lizzie travels to the conference, where she is fascinated to observe the many influencers who have gathered. She reunites with Rebecca and quickly bonds with her again, although she remains confused as to why Rebecca abruptly ended their friendship. Rebecca confides that she is the main financial provider for her family and that she is about to announce a massive business deal that her husband, Grayson, will oppose. Lizzie is concerned by bruises on Rebecca’s face and a threatening text on Rebecca’s phone from someone labeled “G.” The next day, Lizzie is initially confused when she can’t find Rebecca or get a hold of her. Police arrive looking for Rebecca, and soon afterward, news breaks that Grayson has been found murdered at their ranch. 

Meanwhile, a narrative from Rebecca’s perspective has revealed her seemingly perfect life to be a sham. Years earlier, Rebecca fell in love with Grayson while working in San Francisco and struggling to save the funds to open a bakery (her true dream). Grayson, who came from a wealthy family, invested in the bakery and seemed to promise a lifetime of security and happiness, but he turned violent and jealous when Rebecca began to achieve significant success. The end of Rebecca and Lizzie’s friendship was precipitated after Grayson physically attacked Rebecca for the first time; because of her severe injuries, Rebecca was not able to respond to Lizzie, even though the latter had travelled cross-country to visit her. Unbeknownst to Rebecca until much later, Grayson also sent cruel texts from Rebecca’s phone at this time, leading Lizzie to mistakenly believe that Rebecca did not want to maintain the friendship. 

Despite the physical attack, Rebecca chose to stay with Grayson after he promised never to hurt her again. The two married and eventually moved to his family farm, where Rebecca immersed herself in homesteading life. After struggling with infertility, Rebecca conceived five children through IUI (in which sperm is inserted into the uterus during a medical procedure to increase the chances of conception), and a sixth child seemingly serendipitously. She started a blog about her experiences with her children and her farm, and this snowballed into a wildly successful career as a social media influencer. While Rebecca’s online brand relies on rustic simplicity and traditional family values, she carefully curates what is depicted in her content while relying on help from an entire team. Her marriage has also been unhappy for a long time, and Grayson has recently begun physically abusing her again.

After Grayson’s body is found, Lizzie is pressured by her boss to begin investigating the crime and providing coverage for the magazine. She meets Olivia Jackson, who introduces herself as Rebecca’s advisor and manager, and later reveals she is also her attorney. After receiving cryptic messages from Rebecca, Lizzie goes to Rebecca’s ranch to investigate. She finds photos depicting Rebecca’s injuries and confirming that Grayson was hurting her; the dates also reveal that Grayson hurt Rebecca just before Lizzie’s visit to San Francisco, and this explains why Rebecca avoided her and severed the friendship. 

When Lizzie encounters Katie (a young woman who works as Rebecca’s nanny), she pieces together details about Rebecca’s plan from both Katie and Olivia. Wanting to extract herself from her marriage, Rebecca sent her children into hiding with Katie and planned to break the news to Grayson about her forthcoming business deal. She knew he would be furious, but she believed this new venture would give her the financial freedom to live independently. Olivia and Katie both claim they don’t know how or why Grayson’s murder interrupted this plan; they are worried because they have not heard from Rebecca. 

Meanwhile, Rebecca has been hiding in a nearby motel. Her decision to leave Grayson was solidified a year earlier when she learned that he had conspired with her OB-GYN to inseminate her with his best friend Marsden’s sperm. Marsden is the biological father of five of her children (the sixth was conceived naturally due to an affair with a fellow influencer). Enraged, Rebecca began working with Olivia and solidifying her plan to stockpile money and leave. She attempted to secure confessions from the two men about their actions but was unsuccessful. Rebecca then staged a confrontation between the two men in the barn on her property: She revealed to Marsden that Grayson sent sexually explicit emails to Marsden’s wife, Veronica (who is also a successful influencer). 

Rebecca planted cameras in the barn, hoping to secure footage of the two men discussing what they had done to her. Instead, she ended up watching a live stream of Marsden brutally beating Grayson after the confrontation escalated. When Marsden noticed the camera and dismantled it (cutting off the live feed), Rebecca and Olivia went to the ranch together, where they found Grayson’s body. Assuming Marsden had murdered him, they decided not to go to the police. Instead, Rebecca went into hiding and left clues for Lizzie to investigate, hoping she would cover the story and create public sympathy by revealing what Rebecca has endured. 

Unexpectedly, Marsden turns up at the motel and abducts Rebecca, forcefully taking her to the ranch where he plans to kill her and make the death look like a suicide. Rebecca manages to alert Katie that she is in danger, and Katie tells Lizzie. Lizzie and Olivia rush to the ranch and arrive just in time to see both Rebecca and Marsden plummet from the hay loft in the barn. They are able to save Rebecca; Marsden is severely injured, and Olivia places a gun in his hand and forces his finger to pull the trigger, killing him. The official story, corroborated by Veronica in a police interview, is that Marsden killed Grayson in a jealous rage and then died by suicide.

A year later, all three women are thriving in their careers due to careful strategizing and interventions from Olivia. Rebecca marries Dan (the man with whom she was having an affair), is pregnant, and her media empire is thriving. Lizzie has written a bestselling true-crime book about the events and has renewed her friendship with Rebecca, though she remains suspicious of Olivia’s role as a manipulative “puppet master.” In a final chapter, Veronica reveals she was the true mastermind. She was sexually assaulted by both Marsden and Grayson as a child and forced to marry the former. She spied on her husband’s communications, so she was aware of what he had done to Rebecca and the orchestrated confrontation at the ranch. Unbeknownst to Rebecca, Veronica accompanied her husband to the ranch on the night of the murder. She waited outside while Marsden was beating Grayson, relishing the suffering of the man who had assaulted her. By the time Veronica entered the barn, the camera was no longer recording; when she saw that Grayson was badly injured but still alive, she killed him herself. 

Veronica knew that Marsden was planning to murder Rebecca. When Olivia told her that Marsden was dead (after Lizzie and Olivia intervened to save Rebecca), Veronica was relieved that her husband was gone and readily corroborated the story that made Marsden look guilty. No one except Veronica and Olivia knows that the former was the one who actually killed Grayson.