Spoiler Discussion for To Tell You The Truth

Do you have questions about the ending of To Tell the Truth by Gilly Macmillan? Need a full plot summary or synopsis? Looking for a spoiler discussion of To Tell You The Truth? You are in the right place!

To Tell You the Truth by Gilly Macmillan. Published on September 20, 2020 by William Morrow.

Plot Summary of To Tell You the Truth by Gilly Macmillan

• Lucy, a successful mystery writer, has just finished her latest manuscript. It’s her first book that does not feature her popular main character, Eliza Grey, who is based on an imaginary friend Lucy has had since childhood. (Note: Lucy has conversations with Eliza throughout the book and sometimes Eliza speaks through her.)

• Lucy’s husband Dan surprises her with the news that he’s bought them a house. (Dan was an aspiring writer who now serves as his wife’s assistant.)

• Lucy is horrified. The house is near Stoke Woods, the place her younger brother Teddy vanished thirty years ago. Dan heard about the house from his friend Sasha, who lives in the neighborhood.

• Lucy’s agent says that the publisher doesn’t want the book. Dan is furious at the news and that she didn’t tell him she was writing a book without Eliza in it.

• Teddy disappeared decades ago at a summer solstice bonfire in the woods. Urged on by Eliza, Lucy left him in their “den,” an abandoned WWII bunker. Then the two of them went to enjoy the bonfire.

• Dan and Lucy attend a party at Sasha’s and meet her husband James, Ben and his wife Kate, and Barry and Vi. Lucy thinks Sasha and Dan seem a little too close.

• After the party Dan has a mysterious late night meeting. He tells Lucy it’s with a structural engineer about converting the basement into a media room. (Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all.) He drives off.

Dan Goes Missing

• Lucy wakes up and finds blood on the top of the basement steps. She cleans it up and goes back to bed.

• In town, Lucy runs into an old coworker of Dan’s who tells her Dan had been researching …WWII bunkers. (Well that is very specific!)

• The police show up and tell Lucy that Dan’s car has been found abandoned and burned. She faints and hits her head.

• Lucy meets the bunker specialist who gives her the bunker research he’d been going to give to Dan. Lucy is convinced Dan is looking for her den.

• Lucy’s boiler breaks and Sasha invites her to stay the night. She gives Sasha a set of keys to give to the repairman. The next morning, she leaves their house and decides to go find the bunker. It is padlocked and she finds Dan’s watch nearby.

• Lucy’s publisher wants her to record a public statement about Dan’s disappearance. Lucy agrees, then buries Dan’s watch in the garden.

• Lucy begins to suspect that MrElizaGrey, a regular on her online fan page, could be Dan.

• Police come and say a body has been found. They want to search the house so Lucy goes to Vi and Barry’s and realizes they know about her past.

Lucy Becomes a Suspect

• The police find blood in the house and read Lucy a passage from one of her books in which a woman kills someone cleans up the blood and moves the body.

• Lucy hires a criminal defense lawyer. She goes back to the flat where she and Dan used to live. Her former landlady mentions that Dan was working on a book project with someone named Sasha. She asks Lucy if she wants the boxes Dan left.

• Lucy snoops around the shed behind Sasha’s house. James hears her and shows her evidence that Dan and Sasha circulated stories about Lucy’s past around the neighborhood. He says Dan and Sasha were having an affair and working on a writing project about Teddy’s disappearance. James thinks Sasha hired someone to murder him who killed Dan by mistake.

• The police think Lucy killed Dan to prevent him from writing about Teddy.

• Sasha denies writing anything with Dan. And James denies telling Lucy that.

• Lucy gets flowers from MrElizaGrey, who knows she took Eliza out of her novel. Lucy messages with MrElizaGrey, who tells her to talk to someone named Naomi.

• Naomi says Dan came to talk to her about Teddy. She said Barry was setting traps in the woods near where Teddy disappeared, and around that same time.

• Lucy goes to the bunker and finds it sealed shut. Then she googles her husbands name and Teddy’s and finds out that the man who was at their house the night before Dan died was a journalist.

• Lucy goes to talk to the lead detective on Teddy’s case who still thinks she killed Teddy.

Spoilers for the Ending of To Tell You the Truth

• Lucy (finally) looks at the bunker information that Dan’s colleague gave her chapters ago and realizes the bunker had access to a tunnel.

• Lucy finds the tunnel access in Kate and Ben’s yard and follows it to the bunker which is filled with cash, art and jewelry.

• Kate and Ben show up. Their young son follows them. They tell her that Dan interrupted their accomplices while they were hiding stolen goods. Dan wanted a cut of the action and there was a row and he was killed.

• Lucy threatens to kill their son if they don’t call the police and confess. She says she will snap his neck: “I know because I’ve done it before.” (Wow, Lucy!) Ben does what she asks and confesses.

• Sasha admits to being MrElizaGrey and helping Dan gaslight Lucy.

• Lucy asks Eliza if she hurt Teddy.

• Eliza tells Lucy that no, her brother must have been taken by someone at the bonfire.

Spoiler Discussion for To Tell You the Truth

Whoa. Okay. So many thoughts.

Here are my questions about To Tell You The Truth:

Was Eliza just a figment of Lucy’s very active and creative imagination, or was Lucy suffering from some kind of mental illness, like Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder)?

According to my research, it’s quite common for kids to have imaginary friends, but unusual for adults. Unless Teddy’s disappearance somehow meant that Lucy needed Eliza around?

If Lucy DID have Dissociative Identity Disorder, was Lucy’s decision to cut Eliza out of her book was a threat to Eliza?

Do you think Lucy had anything to do with Teddy’s death? Did she tell Kate and Ben that she snapped Teddy’s neck just to save herself, or was she confessing?

I thought the whole smuggling explanation was a little farfetched. Though the idea of using old WWII tunnels for smuggling was cool, it just got thrown in there at the end.

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