The Non-Political Life of a Trad Wife

Everyone is Lying To You by Jo Piazza

Pages: 336 Genre: mystery

Rating: 1.5 Star

Kindle Notes and Highlights

As college students, Lizzie and Bex were best friends. Now, fifteen years later, they couldn't be more different. After an unfortunate trip where Bex ghosted Lizzie, the two lost contact. Bex became Rebecca Sommers, a trad-wife influencer who has gained a following for posting her picture-perfect life with her five children and her husband, Gray, while living off the land at their ranch. Lizzie is a magazine writer who is struggling in the current age of media and who is incredibly tuned-in to her phone. One night, Rebecca reaches out randomly, inviting Lizzie to join her at a mom-influencer conference. After one night of reconnecting, though, Rebecca and the kids are missing and her husband has been found dead in their barn. Rebecca is everyone's top suspect, but Lizzie isn't sure and wants to find the truth. But finding Rebecca, and clearing her name, means she'll be learning all kinds of secrets that these influencers hold.

No matter how you pitch it, mystery/thriller books that expose the dark side of social media are never that revolutionary, and "Everyone is Lying to You" is no exception. While I was interested by the idea of looking at trad wives specifically, the author did not deliver on this idea. This ended up being an underwhelming, inexperienced, and apolitical perspective exploration.

For those uninitiated, "trad wives" (traditional wives) online are women who are proponents of women living lives with traditional, conservative values. This usually includes being stay-at-home moms, making food from scratch, belonging to a religious community, and — in this case specifically — building a successful media presence off of these ideas. Usually these women are very wealthy, often from either their or their husband's family's wealth. And yes: by being a trad wife influencer, you have a job (often a very successful one). Yes, that is hypocritical with being a stay-at-home mom when that life comes from the belief that women should be homemakers while their husbands support the family (obviously just being a stay-at-home mom is different).

This is why trad wife influencers are dangerous. These women push this ideology onto young women, presenting it as the "right" way to live, when it actually puts women in an unsafe situation with little autonomy. Especially since the women who work as influencers do make money, which puts them in a lot better position as they'd be able to support themselves if they had to. It's all a part of the rise of conservatism that we're facing these days, and — in a way that's almost worse — it's just another way to be a right-wing grifter.

Agree with my interpretation of it or not, those two paragraphs are a deeper look into trad wives that you'll get from this entire 300+ page book. The author ignores any political implications involved in trad wives, acting almost as if it's a category the audience arbitrarily, and unfairly, puts women in. You cannot divorce trad wives from politics, and you shouldn't because it makes your book worse. Furthermore, the author opted to make almost every man we meet an evil monster, it takes away from the impact the women have. Yes, I'm sure many husbands of trad wives are abusive, but in the case of these influencers, the women have a position of power and responsibility.

The point that I'm really struggling to get across here is that this is a nuanced conversation that this author boiled down to what is essentially a "girl power" story.

And, frankly, I didn't love the angle this book took on social media in general. In an effort to portray the effects of parasocial relationships, it almost seemed to take the stance of blaming the viewer, rather than the influencer, for buying into the lies that influencers sell. Don't get me wrong: there's a conversation to be had about how viewers behave. But influencers who lie to their audience about big things — like promoting a certain lifestyle while actually living in a conflicting way — isn't good. It almost seemed like this book wanted to me to be impressed by these women who are being wrongfully criticized by evil viewers for simply being business women.

Overall, the book did a lazy job of looking at social media, which is frustrating when it's the entire framework for your mystery.

If I hop off my chronically-online soapbox, the writing wasn't super impressive either. The sarcasm felt out of place, especially alongside surprisingly-frequent graphic depictions of violence, often of the sexual nature. I think a lot of the book was going for an edgier tone, but that never felt authentic. The characters were also all weird. All of them were built to fulfill a specific role, and none of them seemed real.

The mystery was fine, I guess, although it was less of finding clues and more of being rewarded with reveals. Towards the end, though, it started to feel directionless, leading us to a conclusion that was unsatisfying and random.

I was not impressed by this book. If you want to start a conversation, don't shy away from the topic you're covering. But if you're going to, at least make the rest of your book worthwhile.

If you're interested in looking at trad wives in an actually interesting way, I'd suggest this video.