Wicked Lies Boys Tell is the latest K. Webster book. She tends to write in a cycle, and at a certain point in the cycle, we get these really intense, emotional books. This is one of them. Lies is a very emotional and intimate book. It’s a new adult, friends to enemies to lovers, coming of age kind of thing.
So, the heroes of our story are Penn and Copeland. They are next door neighbors, and were best friends for years and years and years. They had a falling out 2 years ago, when they were 16, and they have spent the last 2 years apart. Copeland is furious with Penn, and pretty much hates him. Penn wishes that they could be friends again, and basically punishes himself by watching Cope. So, what happened? Well, Penn, who knows that he’s gay and has known that he’s gay for a long time, kissed Cope one night when they both drunk.
So, up to present day. Cope is angry at the world, especially Penn. He misses his best friend too. But, he has a girlfriend, one who is a total bitch may I add, and he’s doing everything he can to ignore any feelings he may ever have. Penn is the toast of the school, but he’s slowly falling apart.
One night, they both end up at the same party. And it’s a party where Penn gets into a fight and ends up breaking his golden football hand. Cope rescues him, takes him to the ER, and they get his hand casted. And this presents a problem. Penn’s dad is a huge fucking prick who is abusive toward him and his mom. He counts on Penn to reflect well back on him, and Penn no longer being a big football start doesn’t reflect well at all. Penn knows that he’s going to have a lot of problems with his dad, and his coach, who is also a prick. Luckily, Copeland has decided that he’s going to be in Penn’s life again.
I feel sorry for both guys. They are stuck between terrible rocks and even worse hard place. They both have terrible fathers who are only out for themselves and who don’t think anything of knocking their kids around. Penn’s mom is a junkie, which I don’t blame her for it, considering what her husband is like. The boys are trapped in horrible lives, and their fathers just want to make it worse and worse and worse.
Poor Penn. I mean, he took a chance and lost his best friend ever. He took a chance and boom, everything exploded in about a millisecond. It had to be so hard on him to lose everything all at once like that, especially when it comes to something like sexuality.
I was kind of mad at Cope because he didn’t really give Penn a chance to explain or anything. Yeah, I totally get why he was mad, but they had been best friends for more than a decade and he wasn’t willing to give him a chance to talk about it? I think part of that is the whole societal expectation thing. If Penn had been a girl instead of a boy, I don’t think that there would’ve been the same issue.
I loved watching the two of them together. There’s a whole great place where they are rebuilding their friendship as well as building their new relationship. It’s all familiar and different and new all at the same time. You get to see how much they were both torn apart by the things that had happened over the past couple of years.
I spent a lot of the time just close to crying because the guys were really pulling me apart, in the best way possible, if that makes sense. I don’t think that anyone else could’ve written this story. It’s a very K. Webster story, and it’s just a beautiful one.
I can’t believe Penn’s father and what his plan was. Because damn. What a fuckhole.
OK, that’s all I have to say on this one. Go check it out! Happy reading!
In Between the Pages 