by Wesley Harris
First Lie Wins, a Novel by Ashley Elston, Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, 2024
Ashley Elston’s First Lie Wins opens with a perfect Southern life that is almost entirely false.
Evie Porter has a handsome boyfriend, an attractive home and a place among the well-connected residents of Lake Forbing, Louisiana. The problem is that Evie Porter does not exist. The name, background, and personality have been created for an assignment, and boyfriend Ryan Sumner is not simply a romantic interest. He is her target.
Evie works for a mysterious figure known only as Mr. Smith. He supplies identities and locations, then sends her into other people’s lives to gather information, manipulate events, or steal what he wants. She has survived by becoming whatever each assignment requires, but the Lake Forbing operation begins to unravel when a woman arrives using Evie’s real name and personal history.
From that point, the novel becomes a fast-moving contest over identity, loyalty, and control. Evie must determine what Mr. Smith knows, why Ryan was selected, and whether the life she has built can become more than another temporary performance.
Published in 2024, First Lie Wins was Ashley Elston’s first adult novel after six books for young adults. It became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and was selected as Reese’s Book Club choice for January 2024. Reese Witherspoon praised its secret identities, mysterious employer and cat-and-mouse structure.
For North Louisiana readers, however, much of the book’s appeal lies in its setting.
Elston lives in Shreveport, graduated from LSU-Shreveport and has built her writing career in North Louisiana. The novel takes place mainly in the fictional town of Lake Forbing, described as a medium-sized North Louisiana community known for fertile farmland, natural gas, and quietly held wealth.
Although Elston does not identify Lake Forbing as Shreveport, she has explained that readers familiar with the area should recognize the city through its descriptions. She wanted the setting to function almost as another character, using details of Southern social life rather than relying on the Louisiana shorthand of Mardi Gras, swamps, and New Orleans.
That choice gives the book a refreshing regional authenticity. This is a Louisiana of suburban homes, inherited businesses, country-club friendships, gas wealth, watch parties, and social circles formed over decades. People know one another’s families, histories, and reputations. An outsider may be welcomed politely, but she will also be examined closely.
That atmosphere suits a novel about deception. Evie can create a convincing identity, but Lake Forbing is the kind of community where every answer may lead to another question. Ryan’s friends are suspicious not because they are detectives, but because they have known him most of their lives and instinctively recognize that Evie appeared without a past.
Elston uses that social scrutiny effectively. In a larger or more anonymous city, Evie might disappear into the crowd. In Lake Forbing, her ability to survive depends on winning over people who notice inconsistencies and have the resources to investigate them.
The plot moves between Evie’s current assignment and earlier identities she assumed in other places. Those flashbacks gradually explain how she became skilled at reading people, improvising under pressure and escaping when plans collapse. They also reveal the emotional cost of living without a stable name or home.
Evie is a morally complicated protagonist, but Elston makes her easy to follow and often easy to admire. She lies, steals and manipulates, yet she is also resourceful, disciplined and increasingly determined to escape the person controlling her. Her attraction to Ryan adds another uncertainty: she may be using him, but she is no longer sure that everything between them is false.
Ryan is similarly difficult to classify. He appears to be the comfortable heir to a successful Louisiana business, but his wealth and activities carry questions of their own. Elston keeps both characters just ambiguous enough that the reader cannot be certain who is deceiving whom.
The novel’s greatest strength is its construction. Identities, objects, and conversations that appear incidental often return with greater importance. Elston gives readers enough information to form theories but withholds enough to keep those theories unstable. Each revelation changes the meaning of something that came earlier.
At times, the story depends on an unusually elaborate level of planning and coincidence. Readers who prefer strictly realistic crime fiction may find some of the machinery too polished. The characters also move through dangerous situations with the confidence and efficiency of figures in a caper film.
But First Lie Wins is not attempting to be a police procedural. It is a sleek psychological thriller built around reinvention, misdirection, and the pleasure of watching a capable protagonist turn a trap back on the people who designed it.
Its North Louisiana setting adds more than scenery. Lake Forbing provides the wealth, familiarity, and social pressure that make Evie’s assignment possible—and dangerous. Elston understands that deception works differently in a place where appearances matter and where people quietly keep track of who belongs.
The result is a clever, highly readable thriller that gives North Louisiana a rare role in popular suspense fiction. Rather than presenting the region as exotic or backward, Elston uses its modern neighborhoods, energy wealth, and close social networks as the natural setting for a sophisticated game of lies. Beware, the book includes a couple of words you can’t say on television.
For local readers, recognizing the world behind Lake Forbing is part of the fun. First Lie Wins offers a twisting story about a woman who has lived through countless false identities and finally decides to take control of the truth.
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