In This Excerpt From Heart-Shaped Lies, Two Young Women Grapple with an Ex’s Betrayal
Elizabeth Agyemang’s debut YA novel, Heart-Shaped Lies, is the latest entry in the growing (and addictive) social media thriller sub-genre, whose stories tend to wrestle with the darker side of influencer culture, internet fame, and misinformation.
Described as John Tucker Must Die meets A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, the story follows the fallout when an internet-famous (and frequently controversial) teen prankster is found dead on a school trip and a hacker turns suspicion against the three young women who were (unbeknownst to one another) all dating him. Forced to work together to solve the mystery of his death, they’ll have to learn what sisterhood really means in order to survive.
Here’s how the publisher describes the story.
Kiara, Priscilla, and Nevaeh have nothing in common—except they just found out that they’re all dating Tommy Harding, the internet’s most famous teen prank star.
Kiara is the girlfriend who the cameras know and love, the academic star who Tommy parades around in public to keep his image in check.
Priscilla is Tommy’s co-star. As a beauty influencer and an accomplice to Tommy’s notorious antics, she’s always known that the two of them could be the Internet’s power couple—if only he would confess to his girlfriend what really goes on during their ‘rehearsals’.
And Neveah is the good girl, the pastor’s daughter who’d never dream of dating a boy who’s already taken.
When a viral post from Tommy’s social media account exposes his cheating ways during their high school class trip to Florida’s biggest theme park, the girls are crushed—and furious. Tommy claims his account was hacked. Now, Kiara, Priscilla, and Nevaeh want him out of their lives. Forever. After all, Tommy doesn’t just hold their hearts—he holds their secrets, too.
But when Tommy’s body is found the next morning, their so-called wish becomes a twisted reality. Because Tommy may be gone, but the internet is forever. And the girls are about to go from strangers to suspects….
Heart-Shaped Lies will hit shelves on Tuesday, November 26, but we’ve got an exclusive excerpt from the story to help tide you over right now.
chapter thirteen
Kiara
Kiara and Priscilla were nearly at the gondola ride when Nevaeh messaged saying that she was heading back to her hotel. She didn’t want closure, her text claimed. She didn’t want to meet the other two girls. Nevaeh just wanted things to be over.
But Kiara couldn’t help the pang of worry that throbbed in her chest as she read Nevaeh’s message.
“Do you think she’s okay?” Kiara asked Priscilla. “She sounded so heartbroken on the phone. This feels out of nowhere.”
“Yeah,” Priscilla said. “Almost like she’d been talking to Tommy.”
Kiara wrapped her arms around herself. Without streetlights, Priscilla had taken to using her phone’s flashlight. Its bright glow cast an ominous shadow of their figures in the corner of the park where they had wandered to.
“What do you mean?” Kiara asked.
“It’s Tommy,” Priscilla said. “You don’t think he’s not already making calls and doing damage control? He probably reached out to her and sweet-talked her. Maybe they’re even meeting in the park as we speak.”
“She won’t actually fall for it, though. Right?”
But the thing was, neither of them knew Nevaeh. Maybe she was the kind of girl who’d take Tommy back, no matter the situation. Priscilla too seemed to weigh the possibility. Yet as they stood in silence, a dark gleam sparked in Priscilla’s eyes, and when she spoke, bitterness tinged her words.
“We should get revenge.”
Kiara stared at Priscilla, waiting for an explanation.
“He’s probably gonna use her to fix his image,” Priscilla said. “Tommy played us. Both of us. And people need to know the truth. I’m not a boyfriend stealer and I know you’re just as messed up about this situation as I am. Of all of us, he betrayed you the most.”
Kiara laughed.
“That’s an understatement,” she said. Yet when Kiara looked up from her own phone, she saw that Priscilla was filming. For her channel. On live.
“You can’t be serious.”
But Priscilla wasn’t listening.
“You heard it from Kiara Stephens herself. I’m not a boyfriend stealer. Tommy and I were strictly professional,” she said, speaking to her audience. “And we’re going to get to the bottom of whoever hacked his account and is slandering my name. I promise, guys.”
It was almost as if Kiara was the one living in a fictional world, one where people like Priscilla and Tommy could defy the rules of reality as they bent and twisted the truth to suit their needs.
How did they define “strictly professional”? Was it holding hands during their prank videos, their gazes lingering moments past when the filming ended while Kiara watched with nervous knots in her stomach and pretended that the intimacy they displayed on camera didn’t bother her? Kiara was over Tommy. She was done with him. But what she was not going to do was to keep gaslighting herself into believing that any of the on-and off-screen flirting she’d witnessed between Tommy and Priscilla was suddenly okay now that it was clear that he was a certified asshole. And Priscilla herself—Kiara could have laughed out loud. Clearly, she wanted to do as much damage control as Tommy did.
Priscilla began her sign-off from the live. Before she could finish, Kiara grabbed Priscilla’s phone.
On-screen, thousands of viewers were already tuned in to the live.
“Your beauty princess is fake,” Kiara said, “just like the crappy bootlegged brands she sells to you.”
Before Kiara could say anything else, Priscilla grabbed her phone back and ended the live.
“Excuse you!” Priscilla snapped. “Do you know what you just did?”
As if Kiara cared. She wasn’t going to be a doormat anymore. Kiara wasn’t going to let people like Tommy or Priscilla twist and bend her to their own ends or hold her back. Not now, and never again.
“Screw all of you,” Kiara said.
And then she left. Without another word, Kiara marched in the opposite direction, away from Priscilla, Tommy, Nevaeh, and whatever twisted mess they’d probably end up with.
Most of the senior class had already trickled out of the park, and there were just a few stragglers remaining to continue partying. She searched the crowd, pushing past bodies and pulling off masks as she scanned the park for the one person she wanted to see now, more than anything.
There, laughing amid a small gathering of their classmates at the drinks table, Kiara found him.
Cover and excerpt from HEART-SHAPED LIES. Text copyright © 2024 by Elizabeth Agyemang. Reprinted by permission of Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. All Rights Reserved.
Heart-Shaped Lies will be released on November 26, but you can pre-order it right now.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB