Emily has no idea where her nightmares come from. She seems to have the perfect life – loving parents, three good friends, a great prep school that she’s grown up around since her father owns it – but every night she drowns or is burned alive in her dreams, and wakes up screaming. Other than this one little flaw, her life is perfect, and becomes more so when she gets involved with the new guy at school, Del. But then, little by little, her life unravels until soon she is so tangled up in the lies she’s been told that she has no idea what is true anymore.

Last year at ALA, I got an ARC of Jessica Warman’s first book, Breathless, and loved it. I just had to get my hands on this new one of hers, and I wasn’t disappointed. Where the Truth Lies is a beautifully written work, with layers upon layers of intricate webbing. I would go as far as to say it was even better than Breathless. It touched on many different issues, focusing particularly on teen pregnancy, adoption, the foster system, drug addiction, and what makes a parent fit to raise a child. Warman’s strength lies in her characters. I know that in Breathless, the characters were at least somewhat based on people she knew, since the book was partially based on her own experiences. I don’t know if the same is true for this book, but either way, she writes the characters just as true to life as in her debut. They are all complicated people leading complicated, though fairly normal, lives. The drama is there, but isn’t out of the ordinary, not melodramatic, never overdone. It feels real.