Kiki Coleman never expected that one moment—skinny-dipping in an outdoor pool when Nate Marks runs out of gas—would change everything. She is attracted to this stranger: tall, dark, handsome. But as she gets to know him, she realizes he has built a world of lies. His stories are false; his identity is a mask. When Kiki’s mother and stepfather disappear while abroad, Nate vanishes, too. What started as attraction becomes fear. She must choose: trust or self-preservation.
In The Lies That He Told, Marguerite Mooers turns deception into a central character. Nate’s untruths are not just plot devices; they ripple, affecting every bond Kiki forms. As the truth peels back, the foundations of identity, reality, love show their fragility. What does authenticity cost? What price is paid when someone you care for is built on falsehood?
The novel’s pacing is taut. Each lie Nate tells becomes a stone in the growing wall between hearts. The atmosphere shifts from dreamy attraction to distrust, from possibility to betrayal. Mooers is adept at shifting tone so that the reader never quite knows: is Nate dangerous, or deeply flawed? Is Kiki in danger, or blinded by desire? Is love always entwined with risk?
Another theme is disappearance. When Kiki’s family vanishes, when Nate disappears, the novel constructs absence as a powerful force. It isn’t just that people are missing; the missing pieces warp reality. Kiki is left to wander through questions: was she deceived, manipulated, used? Could a love built on lies ever be anything but a ruin?
Mooers also examines perceptions: how much of who we see someone as is what we want them to be. Kiki’s attraction is partly to the ideal. She wants connection, intimacy, trust. But when those desires fill in the story with fantasy rather than truth, the person behind the mask is obscured. Lies aren’t always malicious; sometimes they are survival, sometimes excuses, sometimes illusions.
Danger creeps not only from external threats but from internal ones. Trust betrayed, love misread, loyalty misplaced—Mooers shows that sometimes the greatest danger is believing in something that never was. The climax does more than resolve the mystery. It forces reckoning: what remains when deception is exposed?