In Society of Lies, Lauren Ling Brown weaves a fascinating, suspenseful, and carefully plotted story centering the alike and divergent experiences of two half-Black and half-Chinese sisters whose pursuit of belonging within a fictional secret society at Princeton University has dangerous and fatal consequences. Art curator Maya Banks (née Mason) returns to Princeton to celebrate her younger sister Naomi’s college graduation and her own ten-year reunion with her friends. Maya notices Naomi’s absence before the ceremony, just as an emergency alert pings on her cell phone. Moments later, the unthinkable happens: Maya learns the police discovered the body of a young woman in the lake…Naomi’s. 

Initial reports and forensics seem to indicate that Naomi had been intoxicated when she apparently died of an accidental drowning. While Maya concedes that it’s possible her sister occasionally revelled with friends, the notion that she would have used heavy substances, and right before her graduation, strikes Maya as totally out of character for Naomi. Indeed, the whole manner of Naomi’s sudden death feels off to her. Knowing that Naomi had been a part of Sterling Club like herself, her drowning feels too convenient and all too familiar. Maya can’t shake the memory of another girl’s untimely and accidental demise nor the haunting feeling that history is repeating itself. Maya senses that Naomi not only failed to heed her warnings against getting involved in Sterling Club, but was recruited into Greystone, its secret society, as well. As Maya delves further into Naomi’s final days, she uncovers startling facts about her sister and brushes up against her own complicated past with Greystone, the charismatic professor at its helm, and her three closest friends. 

The novel is set mostly on or around the Princeton University campus in New Jersey, combining the real Ivy League school with the fictional eating club Sterling and secret society Greystone. Other notable locations include NYC, a secluded woods in New Hampshire, an estate in Connecticut, Northern California (in brief flashbacks to and scenes establishing Maya’s and Naomi’s origins), and a lavish bachelorette party in the British Virgin Islands. Even within an already elite university, the world of Sterling Club and Greystone Society is impenetrable. As such, it’s insular to the point of suffocating–an enticing, extravagant, and protective little bubble that comforts Maya and Naomi until it turns into a vise that ensnares them. 

Temporally, the novel is set across three timelines: 1) Maya’s return to Princeton and the aftermath of Naomi’s death in 2023; 2) Maya’s sophomore through senior years between 2010-2013; and 3) Naomi in 2022-May 2023, in the months and days leading up to her death. There are connective threads between all three timelines as well as points of departure between the different perspectives. Despite two of the timelines being filtered through Maya’s perspective, it almost feels like there are three distinct narrators instead of two. The changes that have occurred over time and the ten plus years that separate Maya’s accounts of her relationships with various Sterling and Greystone members, Naomi, and others produce an interesting tension between Maya’s past and present narrations. It speaks to the complex and shifting nature of the self, age, and memory.  

Society of Lies possesses strong cinematic qualities and televisual adaptation potential. In terms of pacing, the novel largely does well in building tension, quickly moving between events in the present timeline, and cultivating a sense of suspicion and doubt regarding different characters’ motives and possible involvement in Naomi’s and an earlier Greystone member’s deaths. The intrigue that shrouds Greystone and the power and toxic dynamics upon which it operates could easily appeal to a TV audience. Beyond the talk of fraternity and family, the favors and nepotism, there are coercive incentives to all Greystone members falling in line. Greystone’s advisor, Matthew DuPont, is both intentional and thorough in the tabs he keeps on all of its members. The society’s ruthless and entitled world, young group of striving students/early career professionals, and cavalier mentors with skeletons in their closets has a similar feel to Industry and How to Get Away with Murder. The audience surrogates in those shows and the protagonist at the center of Society of Lies share marginalized, multiracial backgrounds and underdog statuses. The ambition, found family, romantic entanglements, hedonism, friendships, backstabbing, murder, corruption, investigations, and cover-ups are other commonalities. 

Relationships between characters seem to be strongest when the focus is on Maya, Naomi, Maya’s trio of Greystone girlfriends (Daisy, Kai, and Cecily), an earlier Greystone member named Lila, Naomi’s roommate Amy, and ex-boyfriend Liam. Matthew DuPont is an alluring, then hugely sinister presence in both sisters’ lives and all three timelines. Other minor characters like Maya’s husband and the longtime Greystone housekeeper  show up as surprising actors at crucial moments in the plot. 

LOGLINE: When Maya Banks returns to her alma mater to celebrate her ten-year class reunion and her younger sister Naomi’s college graduation, she is instead devastated when the police discover her body near campus. Although the detectives deem Naomi’s death an accidental drowning, Maya is convinced that Greystone, the secret society they both belonged to, and the similar death of another girl from years earlier, are somehow connected. 

MOOD: Excellently wielding a dual POV, multiple-timeline structure, Brown’s Society of Lies delivers a riveting and suspenseful tale that probes into power, privilege, identity, and the frightening costs of belonging.

TITLE: Society of Lies

AUTHOR: Lauren Ling Brown

GENRE: Thriller, Suspense, Women’s Fiction, Fiction, Dark Academia

PUB DATE: 1 October 2024

PUBLISHER: Ballantine, an imprint of Penguin Random House

LENGTH: 384 pages