The Lie

by Chad Kultgen

Try to remember the moment when all the stupid innocent things you thought about life and love, all the things you thought mattered, all the things you thought were true...try to remember when they all turned out to be lies. -Kyle

I never thought anything Kyle and I were doing would lead to this....I was clearly incorrect. -Brett

We all get what we deserve. I know I did. -Heather

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Contemporary, Drama, Novels, Adult Fiction, Comedy

432 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2009

About the author

After two months in his birthplace Spokane, WA Chad Kultgen spent the majority of his life in a suburb of Dallas, TX called Lewisville. After high school, he turned down a full ride baseball scholarship to Trinity University in San Antonio, TX to pursue writing. He moved to Los Angeles, CA where he joined the likes of George Lucas, Robert Zemekis, and Ron Howard as a graduate of the prestigious School Of Cinema/Television at the University of Southern California.

His first job was writing for one of the most widely circulated trade magazines in the music industry, HITS. After two years of being entrenched with rock-stars and their entourages, Chad moved on to become a staff writer for one of American Media's most beloved supermarket tabloids. He created stories about flesh eating zombies, time-traveling stock traders, and
sandwich making house cats for the magazine that gave birth to Batboy, THE WEEKLY WORLD NEWS.

Chad's next endeavor found him selling his first TV show to VH1. The reality show POSERS featured Chad himself along with two of his real life friends posing as various unrecognizable celebrities to get behind Hollywood's velvet rope. VH1 made a pilot episode in which Chad posed as the bass player from the band Maroon 5 in order to infiltrate one of Hollywood's hottest and most exclusive nightclubs. Once inside he proceeded to drink free champagne and use his fake celebrity to escort five female stars of the adult entertainment industry back to his limo. Despite the success of the pilot internally, a perfectly timed regime change at VH1 left Chad with nothing but DVD of the night's events and the paragraph you just read for his troubles.
In addition to writing the pilot episode of The Average American Male, Chad's feature screenplay BURT DICKENSON: THE MOST POWERFUL MAGICIAN ON PLANET EARTH is currently in the process of being optioned by NEW LINE CINEMA.

Reviews

[Deanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book that had me so disgusted at so many points. I should have put the book down as I was so outraged at the misogyny but somehow fascinated and unable to stop reading. I'm disappointed in myself.

In THE LIE Chad Kultgen is on to stereotyping college students. A very sick love triangle. We have Brett, the rich student who's contempt for women is made apparent immediately as he will only refer to them as whores. Other than having sex he is always looking for new ways to demoralize and dehumanize women...
Then we have his best friend Kyle who is dating Heather off and on. Heather is only with Kyle to try to get closer to Brett (uggghhhhhhhh).
They each take turns telling the story from their own perspective.

The story goes on through four years of college and is basically about how the three of them attempt to destroy each other. Some say Kultgen offers an astonishing take on the amoral universe of college today but in my opinion it just feels like it's an highly exaggerated and cliched frat-house college movie.

Again I'm no prude but this was just over the top. Hatred of women taking top priority... In the end (actually even in the beginning) there were little to no redeeming qualities about any of the characters. Some people say that's the point and that people will want them to "get what's coming to them". I just felt disheartened and sad. Of course I felt bad at the way Brett treated women in the book but also pissed off at the portrayal of these college girls that they would do anything to have a shot at being with Brett...that this was such a goal.

I seriously don't think I remember anyone EVER studying either...

My sick obsession with finishing everything I start is something I should really work on.

[Tattered Cover Book Store]

I have a sort of morbid fascination with this author after reading his
first book The Average American Male. To say his writing style is
saying misogynistic is like saying the Grand Canyon is a big hole. It
terrified me that when I gave that book to a guy friend of mine he
gobbled it up and reviewed it by saying "Ya, that's pretty much how we
think". This gave me a full body shudder that I've never been quite
able to shake.

Kultgen's second book, The Lie, trumps the first soundly. This is the
story of three college kids--2 males, one female. One guy is
relatively normal, at least at the beginning of the book. The other
guy is an over privileged fiend that goes out of his way to invent
humiliating sexual situations to put women in and has an extensive
catalog of offensive descriptions for and opinions of women.
Completing the triangle is a status conscious, brainless and seemingly
soulless young woman. The book tells the tale of how these 3, over
the course of their 4 years at college, do their best to destroy each
other.

There is some suspense, or at least a hovering sense of impending
doom, that kept me turning the pages of this book. It is definitely
NOT for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It is sick,
twisted, dark and hypnotic. And yes, I will be giving my copy to that
same guy friend to see what he thinks. I'm afraid. Very afraid.

Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk fans will easily fall into the
Cult of Kultgen.

Jackie

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a bit of a bone to pick with Chad Kultgen.

SPOILERT ALERT

So basically, that book was a lot of bullshit. The first like, 5 chapters were so awesome, and I was really excited to read it. I kind of figured that the sexual commentary would go away after a while, like when an author describes a character as having blonde hair, and then doesn't mention it again. But this book was just relentless. For example, there were like 15 combined pages about anally fingering college girls, and approximately 1 paragraph describing Kyle's rape trial. What?

After a quick Google Image I've decided this douche bag is just a frustrated virgin who got his heart broken (just like Kyle) but didn't feel like he got enough pity from his heartbreak. Here's a fun fact: guys don't love sex that much. Obviously we love it a lot, you know we're welcome to it anyday. But after like 6 months of fucking countless sluts in the ass, EVERYBODY would be bored of that, seriously. These people had endlessly powerful sex drives. Brett talks half the book about how he wants a unique existence, and he does this by... fucking girls in college? The whole book was meant to be shocking, and then at the end the reader is supposed to feel the disparity that the characters feel, and we're supposed to pity Kyle and hate Heather and think Brett was a well-meaning cockface.

But I hated them all, really. Heather was the worst, and honestly, Kyle was such a dumb suck. He goes through this visceral revelation and decides bitches are just for sex, has that threesome in the jacuzzi, etc. And THEN he has sex with Heather ANYWAY! The fuck was the whole point, if the character revelation we'd been waiting for for 300 pages just gets reversed offhandedly twelve pages later. There was no point. There was no point at all. It was 400 pages of "You can't. Always get. What you waaaaaant!" which is a song I also hate.

That said I appreciated reading this book on the grounds that it had kind of interesting parts. I liked Brett's rejection of his peers, and I actually thought he was pretty cool in his relationship to Kyle and his thoughts about the role his family expected of him. But I don't really understand why it took a prostitute for him to get an STD when he was basically fucking whores the whole book. That part was very very confusing to me.

Also, the constant use of "Everything seemed to be perfect... little did we know the LIE. WOULD. RUIN. IT. ALL." may have been considered to be the "sense of impending doom" but it was just irritating. I'm reading a book, I understand there is supposed to be a climax at somepoint, so mentioning it at the end of every chapter is simply overkill.

I've read other reviews of this book, and it seems that whenever someone says "yeah, I hated all the characters" someone else feels that need to say "well the author did their job then didn't they?! They got emotion out of the reader!" which isn't at all the case. After I read Twilight (mistake), I hated all the characters in that book too. Should Stephanie Meyer be considered a splendid author because she got some emotion out of me?

Another thing I'm noticing with these reviews is that mainly women are the ones who are giving it 5 stars, which I can only assume to be because they want to make themselves seem edgy, twisted, different, and as though they can handle reading such disgusting things, unlike other girls who would consider this to be "like, so gross!" Ladies ....no.


This book definitely isn't for the faint of heart, but in my opinion, it's not for anyone at all.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure what I want to say about this book yet, other than that it is the most fucking intense (literally!) thing I've probably ever read. The first half flew by due to both the format (alternating chapters narrated by each of the three main characters) and suspense - I found the second half to be more tedious as you basically waded through it to find out how each character meets his/her demise. The way it panned out after the buildup caused it to seem a little blase - maybe that was the point? Still, a mostly horrifying look at a small cross-section of sex-obsessed self-interested black holes of society, to put it simply. On the one hand, I found Kultgen's take on the various lies to be philosophically interesting. On another hand, I thankfully knew no one like this in college. I also have a whole new take on the term "for real." Again, it's a little hard to stomach at times, but overall is the strangest, most engrossing book I've come across in a long time, so four stars it is.

[Shanannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

The blurbs on the back of the book were intriguing enough to make me want to read this book, however they really give absolutely no insight into the actual story. When I first started reading this book, I actually thought it had to be some kind of experiment to see how far someone could actually get in the book without throwing it in the trash.

It reads as if it were written by a freshman male college student, not just in terms of content, but also in terms of writing talent. The writing was so poor and cliché, the first few chapters made my brain hurt. I put the book down and checked other reviews on here and saw so much praise for the honesty and devious plot that I decided to push through. The entire narrative from one of the characters is excessively vulgar and misogynistic that it seems to serve no purpose other than shock value. It probably greatly amused the author to be able to write those things in the name of "literature."

The writing is so amateurish and superficial that I have a hard time believing the author is anything other than a male college student trying to combine his Composition and Creative Writing class lessons and his adolescent male fantasies and perceptions on paper. I almost gave the book 2 stars since it did hold my interest enough to finish it, but then I remembered how I would just skim most pages toward the end to get the gist and cut through the bullshit writing. Like, this book was like, totally not worth, like my time.

[Commodore · Rating 1 out of 5]

Look, dude, we get it: you're upset because your parents named you Chad. I'd be upset if my parents named me Chad. However, please stop inflicting your heavy-handed misogyny on the rest of us. We know, it's so edgy and extreme and in-your-face, and it takes a certain kind of person to appreciate it (referred to in circles as a "douche-nozzle"), but it's still not going to make Bret Easton Ellis come to your parties.

I guess it's just that Kultgen started writing in the wrong era. In the 90s he would've had his heyday: think about it. In 1991, people read Bret Easton Ellis and the horrifying tortures Patrick Bateman may or may not have inflicted on everyone around him. In 1996 there was Chuck Pahlaniuk and we were stunned--and disgusted--at Tyler Durden's ingenuity, selling rich women back their own fat asses. In the 2000s and beyond, though? I can pull up a hundred images on Google, each a thousand times worse than anything Kultgen can throw out there in his books, and it takes me approximately .02 seconds. So the "shock" is usually pretty toothless, leaving the book to be judged on its content. And that spells a big uh-oh for Kultgen.

I haven't really done an in-depth analysis so I might be wrong, but as well as I understand it, American Psycho is a satire--though not a very good one in my opinion--about the 80s love for Wall St. He took the "superficial, soulless Wall St. type who only cares about money and possessions" and ran with it, giving us a protagonist who puts insane focus into his and his coworkers outfits, possessions, and business cards, but can hack a person apart with a smile on his face because he just doesn't care. Fight Club gave us what happens to men who were promised that if they are always angling for that promotion or buying new furniture for their condo, they will be happy. They did, and it was not enough. So they banded together to reject this new American dream, and hilarity ensues.

Bearing that in mind, what is the deeper point Chad Kultgen is trying to make with The Lie? That people in their late teens are often assholes and make poor decisions? That growing up privileged can make you an even bigger asshole? Gee, what a fucking revelation! Really breaking new ground there, pal.

So yeah, the shock fails to dazzle, and the substance is nowhere near enough to carry the book. I felt like even though Kyle was pathetic and spineless, and Brett was pure scum, we were supposed to pity them and hate Heather most of all. I guess because Kyle and Brett at least had their friendship to redeem them (that's really about the only thing redeemable about this book) and Heather just had her sorority, none of whom she was ever that close to. Women and their catty frenemies, amirite bros?! (So glad I didn't pay for this.) All you're left with is the strong suspicion that the author is another whiny whiteboy jerkoff who feels entitled to sex and is still carrying a chip on his shoulder because some girl in high school shot him down. I admit I might skim through Men, Women, and Children to see if he gets any more egalitarian (hey, it's right there in the title; I can hope) but I'm definitely not paying for the dubious pleasure.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The star rating was difficult to me. The book is well written, but so dark and horrifying it's difficult to give it an "I liked it" rating. So take that with a grain of salt.

I have a sort of morbid fascination with this author after reading his first book The Average American Male. To say his writing style is saying misogynistic is like saying the Grand Canyon is a big hole. It terrified me that when I gave that book to a guy friend of mine he gobbled it up and reviewed it by saying "Ya, that's pretty much how we think". This gave me a full body shudder that I've never been quite able to shake.

Kultgen's second book, The Lie, trumps the first soundly. This is the story of three college kids--2 males, one female. One guy is relatively normal, at least at the beginning of the book. The other guy is an over privileged fiend that goes out of his way to invent humiliating sexual situations to put women in and has an extensive catalog of offensive descriptions for and opinions of women. Completing the triangle is a status conscious, brainless and seemingly soulless young woman. The book tells the tale of how
these 3, over the course of their 4 years at college, do their best to destroy each other.

There is some suspense, or at least a hovering sense of impending doom, that kept me turning the pages of this book. It is definitely NOT for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It is sick, twisted, dark and hypnotic. And yes, I will be giving my copy to that same guy friend to see what he thinks. I'm afraid. Very afraid.

Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk fans will easily fall into the Cult of Kultgen.

[Kyle Mccarthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's nothing decent, good, or redeemable about ANY of the three main characters. But that's exactly the point of the book. For the entire story, you outright hate these people and want them to get what's coming to them. In the end they do, and it's still unsatisfying. Like a 350 page car accident you can't stop watching. Oh, and Mr. Kultgen has a real penchant for misogyny.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like that one star is "didn't like it." I'd give this book no stars if I could. This is a horribly written book with highly unlikable, stereotyped characters. There's a rich college guy who believes that all women are expendable whores, his nerdy best friend who thinks otherwise (but then comes to the same conclusion), and the slutty girl who starts out sleeping with the nerd in order to sleep with the rich guy.

As stated before, the book is horribly written, in a rotating first person perspective. The rich guy's chapters are all misogynistic, masturbatory fantasies that go on endlessly about how all girls are whores, which holes he stuck it in, and how he got someone to do anything because of his money. Other reviews apparently found these chapters hilarious, but I fail to see the humor. (In the first 50 pages, he has sex with two girls at once, cums in one's mouth, has her spit it out in a cup of listerine, and then has her pour it on her friend's vagina.)

The nerdy friend's chapters are slightly less annoying, but not by much. Instead, he constantly laments about how he "should have known" the love of his college life was a horrible person. "I loved her, but I should have known at the time she was a *insert random, female-oriented derogatory word here.*"

The girl is by far the greatest piece of work. If she was a sympathetic character, it would have done wonders. Instead, she *actually* is slutty and self-serving, having slept with several people, done several drugs, had two abortions, and constantly talking about how she needs to further her social status no matter what.

I don't understand how anyone can give this poorly written piece more than one star. People have said the book is engaging, but in this case I find this only true if one has the same, "must complete book" OCD that I have. Each chapter serves to make you hate the characters that much more, but even that gets repetitive and redundant. One eventually finds themselves speed-reading in order to finish the book and get it out of their lives. Even at the end point, it's too late. After sloshing through so much muck, one doesn't even care about the ending anymore. And while one doesn't expect the ending to happen as it does, thanks to the shenanigans of the rich kid and the slut girl, it's not that surprising either. Sort of an "...oh" reaction followed by a huge sense of dissatisfaction.

If I were to recommend this book, it'd be to to anyone who refers to girls as "bitches and hos" and means it. Otherwise, keep it off your bookshelves.

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so darkly humorous and so insanely fucked up that it was hard to put down.

When I bought this book, I had absolutely no idea who the author was or what the book would be about. There is no summary found on the cover for the story, really. Maybe that was what intrigued me so much.

The story follows three Texas college students:
First, there is Kyle, an intelligent guy who was the only guy to come from the middle class at his private school. Kyle has high hopes for his medical future, but due to his parents' inability to send him to college themselves, his academic scholarship and on-campus job are what get him through. True to the "smart guy" stereotype, Kyle is the dorky attractive virgin who doesn't know he is actually an amazing catch, and he's waiting for love.
Next, we meet Heather, a total sorority bitch. Heather is attractive, and not entirely unintelligent. However, she knows that if she's ever going to make her dreams come true of marrying a rich, hot fraternity brother, she'd better hide her public school past. These thoughts and her carbon-copy partying sisters turn Heather into a mindless, money-hungry girl.
Then, there's Brett. a rich guy who is expected to follow in the footsteps of his father, therefore his entire future is laid out in front of him. The only problem is that Brett is entirely uninterested in the life he's been given, and his outrageous antics are only allowed due to his unmatched good looks.

Although the story line of this book is amazing in itself, the way Kultgen creates his characters and their surroundings make for one of the most vivid novels I've read in a while.
As each character's story intertwines and time progresses throughout the novel, the characters themselves transform. Kultgen never loses your attention with the plot, and he ensures the novel is believable although you won't believe it.

This book is definitely a good read, but it does get extremely racy. And yes, it is okay to laugh.

[Mike Crews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book so terrible that it's actually good? The language is vulgar. The content is filthy. The characters are deplorable. Yet, I found myself turning pages faster with each chapter. I wanted to rate this book lower because how seemingly unnecessarily graphic the content was; however, I realized that would not be fair to the author or the book.

Chad Kultgen does a great job of telling the story through three unique 1st person perspectives. The story is presented to the reader in such a manner that shows all the narrators are unreliable and think that everyone else is in the wrong. In fact, they all play their own disgusting part in this devastating tale of lost loves, relationships and opportunities. In a way, these characters deserve what they get, and likewise, deserve each other. This book has no hero. If you need a hero you can root for, pick up a comic book.

I have read reviews criticizing Kultgen's misogynistic depiction of women in this book, and those reviews are not far from the mark. Though, I do believe that Kultgen equally offends his own gender in the telling of this tale. Kultgen shows the disgusting nature of how some young man carry themselves and how they treat the women in their lives. Others have stated that Kultgen is perpetuating negative college stereotypes, but the reality is...these people exist; these types of things happen. The believable reality of this obscene story is what impacts the reader and forces you to think about these awful people long after you close the book for the final time.

Prepare to be angry at every character in this book and enjoy this horror show, train-wreck, roller-coaster ride that is "The Lie."

[Alixandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the fuck did I just read

[francesca · Rating 2 out of 5]

the herpes really threw me for a loop

[Dennis Holland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unapologetic sleaze. I can’t even begin to explain why I enjoyed this dirty, dark and deliberately offensive, testosterone-fueled fantasy about sex and lies and their consequences but I did.

[Juan Araizaga · Rating 3 out of 5]

432 pages and 8 days after, the second book i´ve read of the author, and honestly, i was more excited about this book than the other (average american male). This book is fine, i mean, the first thing i liked it, was the structure, divided into three major parts/characters. In this book we have the virgin guy, the slutty girl, and the motherfucking rich boy. Is a (very american) great mix, but I think it´s so damn hollow as a book, especially if you consider the "lie", my goodamn problem was too much expectation about one lie, about one way to redeem the book.


It's undeniable, that the book has so many good parts, so many points of view, and so much of a fragmented society, that bends but doesnt break. The situation here also are so american, sorority, sex, rape, university, sometimes i just feel like an archetype.

I wanna keep reading about the author, but maybe is it enough for the rest of the year, it is not faul of the book, was mine, for hoping so much.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's another Mr. Kultgen success. A very fast smooth read. I read it in one go this weekend, but not because it has no substance. There's one thing that made me "chase" it. There is one "terrible thing", a calamity alluded to right from the start, and it wasn't revealed till the very end. I wasn't going to stop until I found out what it was. And I wasn't disappointed.
Once again, Mr. CK did not show us his philosophical side till the very end, and only entertained us with a fast paced story. I felt keenly for the three characters. They were very well drawn. One suffered from love, one was lost and frustrated and took it out in sex, one was just vain and empty. Unlike Average American Male, Lie is much more serious in tone. There is much more pain, and painted very clearly in every action the characters took.
Everything unfolds before our eyes, and we can see the story hurtling towards a bitter end. Ah, but that is the best part, we'll never guess what happens. It's a big surprise.
The language is also much stronger than Average Amer. Male. Anger is well depicted by dirtiness and sex, which is clever. With the story, Mr. K again shows us his main point, the vapid heartlessness of young women and the trapped succumbing of young men.
When I write reviews, I always compare authors and books, so I can't help but think of J R Allison's Liar. I've mentioned both authors before so maybe I'm being redundant. But it's an amazing coincidence. First of all the titles, Liar - The Lie. Then both books are written in the same technique, the stories are told by the characters' inner voices. The Lie has three voices, and Liar has two. Both books are successful in this regard. The style of language of both is of a school like no other authors'. Philosophically they are both illustrating the depravity of the world. Only difference is, The Lie is serious and sad, and Liar is fun and joyful. Both books are about tangled relationships, though the stories are completely different. Liar is also about a woman in her 30s, which could almost be the girl in The Lie, getting nastier after a bit of life experience. It was really quite interesting to compare the two and see the similarity and difference.

[Mitchel Broussard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilariously evil, extremely perverted and insanely addicting. The last 100 or so pages are filled to the brim with devious plots and dirty tricks and it all works just so well. The characters really change and, well not grow, throughout the novel, but develop new personalities. I, literally, can not believe how it ended. It's just so insanely @#$%-ed up.

It has, also, one of the most effective points of view I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I mean i know I've read a book like this sometime before, it just worked so pitch-perfect for this one. Each character is retelling events of their four year stay at SMU, from an undisclosed period in the future. So, for example, when we first see Kyle meeting Heather, Kyle narrates "Little did i know, she would be the end of me." We're left to wonder what he means. Will she kill him? How does she ruin his life? They are so happy, what the hell is going to go wrong? It is HIGHLY effective in pushing you through the book at a quick pace.

And i loved the alternating chapter perspectives of each character. I know i admit this for every book that uses this device, its just this kind of book is built for it. And it doesn't make you feel like you are a 9 year old like some books that put the name of the character on every chapter header. It assumes you're smart enough to know the difference between each character, and you really can tell. Everyone has their own slang, mannerisms and sense of humor.

If you're looking for an edgy, hilarious, and witty tale of 3 college friends who want to ruin each others lives, look no further. But be warned, this book is filled with more dirty and hilariously disgusting sexual activities than you can wave a used condom at.

And I'm not even embarrassed to say i loved it so much. (well, maybe a little.)

[Jeff Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

At this point, I'm generally hatereading these books after being horrified by The Average American male. I found The Lie to be better on a whole, since it actually has a coherent plot that isn't completely centered on how terrible women apparently are, but still.

Long and short, the book alternates between three people: a person (Brett) who could very well be a college age protagonist from Average, his best friend who is a good guy even though Brett does everything in his power to try and change that, and Heather, a girl that Brett eventually dates. Things just get more and more terrible until there's basically nothing redeeming left about anyone involved, and it's just tragic. There's hatred of college, hatred of women, of prostitutes, of sororities, of business, or...everything except sex, which is something that should be pursued at every opportunity, and only out of a sense of revenge or anger.

And yet the book was still really readable, and actually had moments in it that The Average American Male did not. If the book could cut back on so much of the outrageous offensive stuff, it might actually be something that could be recommended to other people. Instead, it's like an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia crossed with the movie Very Bad Things without showing the self-awareness necessary to ensure the audience understands that this is satire or a joke. It's kind of unfortunate.

[Natalie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate this book. What irks me more than anything is that I paid full price for this piece of crap.

Now, I know that many people dislike this book because of the misogyny, but that wasn't the problem that I had with it (not that I like misogyny). The problem for me was that all the characters are based on the same boring stereotypes that have been around forever. I mean, if you're going to have sterotypical characters, at least do something new with them. And to make it worse, none of these characters are at all likeable. There have been books that I've read where the protagnists were't necessarily likeable people, and I've still managed to enjoy the story, because of the plot, setting etc. That was not the case here.

In short, there really wasn't anything that I liked about this. And I want my money back.

[Dion · Rating 1 out of 5]

This reads like a second-rate Bret Easton Ellis, which is pretty bad considering that Bret Easton Ellis often reads like a second-rate Bret Easton Ellis. I understand that The Lie is supposed to be edgy and shocking, but it just comes off sounding pathetic, like it was written by a misogynistic, sexually-frustrated 15-year-old boy who was turned down one too many times for a date to junior prom.

[Dana Perich · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm really conflicted on this book. I am giving it two stars simply for the fact that it kept me engaged the whole time. I don't know if I couldn't put it down because it was that interesting or just because I really wanted to be over and done with it. I read it in about 6 hours. The other reason I gave it two stars is because I actually kind of liked the ending of the book.

Here are my main issues with this book and why I gave it 2 stars. I'm not easily offended. I make jokes about having sex with my dead grandfather like it's no one's business, so Kultgen's vulgar depictions of sex are just that. I think it actually just made me sad, not mad. The reason it made me sad is because even though I can joke about weird/vulgar things, it's simply that, a joke. In this case, while it's just a fictional character, Brett is a complete asshole. Brett views women as simply a means to an end and repeatedly mentions how much he despises them and basically uses them for sex. He defiles them in many ways but has a complete hatred for them. He has them do vile things and doesn't care about how they feel, etc., having them put Listerine inside their vaginas, cumming all over them, etc. He repeatedly mentions that women will do anything with him because of his money, his father's status, etc. What made me sad about this, is that I could actually picture some men I know reading this and thinking this was acceptable. And while these men are more round and developed then Brett because they're real people and not a fictional character, it's very obvious they think men are superior just like Brett and the author, Kultgen. I actually had to put the book down at page 73 for a good half hour. I was honestly just saddened and felt surrounded by negativity because I know there are people like this. I called my husband because I simply wanted to talk to a man that I knew was a good person and didn't share in these views. Later on in this book there is actually a 3 way scene depicted where Heather, one of the main characters, takes drugs of her own will but clearly is roofied or drugged in some way unknown to her and then gives her boyfriend a blowjob while his friend forcibly has sex with her. She doesn't recognize this as rape even though she cries and doesn't want to have sex for a long while, she even calls this ex-boyfriend much later in the book and tries to get back with him because she's so desperate, and then accuses the "good guy" of rape. It's just screwed up. I really hope people reading this recognize and will call this what it is - rape.

After taking a break, I spent another 5 hours or so finishing the book. As I mentioned before, I think it was more because I'm reading this for a book club and I wanted to finish it; I knew if I put it down, I may struggle to pick it back up because of how it made me feel so sad.

After finishing it, some of my bigger literary complaints are the use of flat and stereotyped characters. Two of the three main characters, Brett and Heather, have no character development and are just terrible people with no redeeming qualities. Brett is a rich woman-hating asshole who is just like the peers he says he hates so much. Heather is stupid, wants an Mrs. degree, thinks teaching will be an easy profession, cares more about an engagement ring then love, and is just an awful girlfriend. The secondary characters also have no growth. There is Kyle's freshman roommate who is described as a stereotypical "Christian" who says things like "if Christ wants it to happen, it'll happen," (something in years of being in the church I've rarely heard said). There are the sorority sisters who just want to be engaged before they graduate or their lives are over, the frat guys who drug girls and force them to have three ways, etc. Even the girls Brett continuously calls whores and sleeps with are overall flat characters who will do almost anything he asks because he's just so hot and so rich. The only character we really see change is Kyle. Even then, his change is so drastic it's unrealistic. He goes from being this "nerdy," very naive and in love character to having alcoholism, screwing everything in sight, and planning revenge on Heather for being a terrible girlfriend. The only redeemable person in this whole novel is a secondary character, Erin and even she is depicted as pretty desperate because she's willing to take Kyle back.

The character development is my biggest complaint about this book from a literary standpoint. From a personal standpoint, it just made me sad that there are people out there that find it acceptable to behave like this or hold these views toward women, toward relationships, toward Christians, etc. I would hope most people in the world are intelligent and can separate that a label doesn't define someone, that not all women are the same, not all Christians are the same, etc. One bad experience with a woman doesn't define all relationships. One person who tells you you're going to hell doesn't speak for a whole religion. If we all lived this way the world would be a sad place.

On a positive literary note, I do enjoy books that show multiple perspectives and switch between character point of views. It gives more insight to the story and what’s truly happening.

I didn't mind the ending because everyone was a terrible person because they were so two-dimensional. I was happy that all of their lives were kind of shitty.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hoo boy, trust me, your ears will be ringing after you finish this.

Chad Kultgen's The Lie is a very sad, tragic, and yet somehow human novel that I really can't compare anything else I've read to. At times it reminded me of "The Rules of Attraction" with the way it depicts the debauchery of college in larger then life form, and but while Bret Easton Ellis prefers to demonstrate the way senseless sex and mindless drug use numb us to the pain of others, Kultgen zeros in on that pain in order to see exactly how this pain shapes us into who we are. In essence, it explores the microcosm of emotions and little actions or inactions that can haunt our lives, and does so in a way that the readers realize how so many of them are due to the little "lies" we tell each other, for better or worse.

You'll recognize the characters as archetypes, with Kyle being the naive "Nice Guy," Heather the slightly superficial party girl, and Bret as the "Alpha Male" who seems to have success in everything he does. Look closer however and you'll see that the purpose of each narrative is to deconstruct each of these, and the book does this by acknowledging from the get go that all these people will have done something horrible to one another by the end. With this hanging over the story, we the readers are therefore privy to a tragic series of events wherein we see how bitterness clouds our memories so that we can't recognize why things went wrong.

Kyle starts the most sympathetic, and his first meeting with Heather is almost like an inverse of what happens to Lauren from Rules of Attraction. Kyle's belief in true love however blinds him to the messy nature of love (And sex, particularly), and so when he feels betrayed he directs his anger towards the object of his affection, in the process hurting his family, his grades, and eventually turning his view of women misogynistic and sexist. He claims insight into Heather in hindsight, but his lie is that what he does is in any way "justified" by what happens between Heather and him. Kyle is easy to side with because of how he feels "wronged" by Heather, but who he becomes in reaction to this is a truly awful person who is really no different then the "asshole ex" that girls despise and cause them to have a hard attitude towards men.

His ex-girlfriend Heather is harder to like, even though what she goes through is perhaps even more tragic and likely to make Kyle seem like an asshole for not being more understanding. She's hard to like because even though she is earnestly in love with Kyle, she's not as fixed on "true love" being the reason two people should be together, and this gives her a flippant attitude that manifests in how she views sex and relationships. As a party girl, Heather does a lot of the things that Bret does, only she's looking for someone who she can see herself with that will give her a good life, but because she's also young and wants to have fun she sometimes makes decisions she will later come to regret. Her position as a sorority girl creates a gap that Kyle can't overcome, and she has expectations that eventually drive a wedge between them in a way that seems almost inevitable. Heather's lie is that the life she wants will be satisfying, and that it doesn't matter how she gets there or who she ends up with.

In contrast to both, Bret is a misogynistic asshole who has such a disturbing like of empathy and callousness that the only reason we're able to read his chapters without barfing is for his honesty in admitting such things. Bret is shocking indictment of the view that men should get pleasure solely from bending women to their sexual desire, and this is made clear through a combination of dehumanizing sexual terms he narrates with, and the way his sexual encounters barely register as him getting pleasure, but only constitute a sick bet he seems to have made about how disgusting he can be. The way he relishes in these acts is sick, yet he exercises the ever present double standard by blaming women for enduring them, all because he believes that "love" is a lie and that it's his status as a son of a wealthy parents that makes women flock to him.

And yet, Bret's narration often stumbles upon truly moving moments of his character and how he relates to being born into a world where he's had to work for nothing, and therefore gets very little real pleasure from anything. Though he thinks Kyle naive to Heather's intentions, and hates her for "ensnaring" him, he genuinely seems to envy his optimistic view of the world and love. This shines through several times in the narrative where he is able to look at women as people even though his own course of action is to automatically reduce them to objects. It's through Bret that the book sends perhaps it's most direct and affecting message, that we CAN change, we don't have to keep hurting each other or ourselves, and

The books ending is the sort of thing that will keep you up into the long hours of the night seething with either rage or frustration for all these people. The ultimate reveal of what Kyle does to Heather is not someone getting their what they deserve, but a cruel act that finally show's how wrong he is to do it. Despite this, Heather's response still feels unjust not because it's undeserved, but because it takes advantage of her status as a woman and partially seems to reinforce certain misogynistic views because she gets away with it. But when you look closer, you'll see that after all Heather has gone through, she does deserve some kind of recompense after what Kyle does to her, and though it's easy to call her a "bitch," the reality is her revenge is not unlike the crime she suffers.

In the end, nobody gets away, and nobody is able to escape the lie, but thanks to us being the readers we understand more then them and can recognize the truth outside of their colored perceptions of it. Learn the reason we lie, and if you keep the actions of the characters in mind, you may just be able to change yours and other's fates.

[Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too bad they don't have a lower rating - it was probably the worst book I have ever read to the end. It was pure trash and juvenile pornography at its worst and not worth writing a lengthy review. That said, the story is all about the sex lives of three bimbos in college; it was written clearly for bimbos and no doubt by a bimbo.

[Ally Sereno · Rating 3 out of 5]

let me start this review off by saying that i think none of my friends should read this book! please allow me to indulge my guilty pleasure of this type of book and mind your own business!

anyhoo with that being said i kinda ate this book up until the end. the drama had me keep going like oh man what was gonna happen next. of course everyone in this book is a horrible person but i knew that going in and was what i wanted out of it. you can definitely tell a man wrote this book tho in the way he writes the female narration and by the sex acts depicted.

speaking of the end of the book… i think we may have gone a little bit too far. like okay dayum😳 like we were bad people this whole book but kyle’s devolution really had me shocked and everyone really was just god awful horrible. i hope i never meet anyone like these people ever in my life. if the ending hadn’t been so extreme i think i would have given this book four stars but it really was just a lot.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't been so riveted by a book so recently that I finished a book so quickly. It engulfed me. Is a very misogynistic book but it hits it's mark more times then not I love this book and it's feral kernels of truth it goes perfectly with tucker max's "I hope they serve beer in hell" it's a must read for men and if women really want to know what men are liked or think stripped of all the sheen and bullshit they should read this to find out the horrible truth now true not all men are the same it's not fair to lump us all together but all the thoughts you read have crossed most men's minds at least more then once no one is perfect not even you ladies (and if you do think you are perfect you obviously think a little too much of yourself.) but just as films, books and television lump all of you ladies together. it is a fair assessment that men have some of the same characteristics thoughts and desires. These two books should be passed around like a secret for male bonding. Sow e can give each other knowing looks and use certain terms so we know we each read the book or ask which was your favorite story or where are you up to in the book the books really have a certain charm. I may have already said too much. I'm giving the secret away d'oh the first secret of fight club is you don't talk about fight club oh man there I go again.

That you feel guilty for enjoying but relish it like it's your id run wild. It lures you sort of like rap music. Sometimes it has the most disturbing graphic lyrics that you listen to. your like oh my god but then you really get into the beat and crave it. Then all of a sudden you accept the song hook, line and sinker. You find yourself singing songs like "pop that pussy" or from "Until the Sweat drips from my balls skeet skeet skeet skeet." And you are singing to the song aloud with no shame because you are just so into it but don't take the lyrics literally. it's like that. Trust me it's such a good read Just as you have chick lit you could call this dude lit. I know you all thought I was going to say dick.

[Alyssa · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I was 17, my then boyfriend gave me this book after both he and his friend read it and agreed it was one of the best books ever. Reading this 10 years later, I wish I would have read it then and known earlier what a misogynistic prick he was.

The author’s capability to conjure up some of the most vile words I’ve read written about women were concerning. The writing was pretty terrible and the characters were shallow and predictable.

I almost stopped reading it like 3 times, but I hate not finishing books I start so I subjected myself to the torture that was reading this book to completion.

[Ash · Rating 1 out of 5]

I normally spend hours online looking up plots of books, reading reviews and visiting numerous favorite author's websites. There's usually one in a hundred chance I pick up a book not knowing what it's about already, or the author. So I picked up this book one lonely day at Borders, suggesting to myself that maybe I should read something different once and a while. Something a little less depressing, something light. It's true when I read the back of the book it disgusted me, and reminded me vaguely of Max Tucker, or Victor from Glamorama-one or the other, hell both. But it's my sick obsession with insight, whether it be disgusting or not, that led me to the check out counter.

I wish there were 1/2 stars, because this book totally deserves another 1/2 star. Now you ask, how can a this book be crappy but keep you engaged? Well it kept me engaged with a world I knew nothing about, nor a world that I want to be any part of. It is about a love triangle (and many, many sexual entanglements) on a college campus, mainly about sororities, rich frat boys and oh yeah-nothing else. I very much liked the set up of this book, and that's because it pretty much copies Bret Easton Ellis' Rules of Attraction. It's pretty gross, but not in an utterly good way. It's in no way witty, or surprising, nor does it do a great job with shocking you.

I finish this review wishing that I didn't peel the price sticker off so I could return it back to Borders. Alas, it sits in my Ikea bookshelf, and I hope that no one ever asks me what it's about, because besides being gossipy engaging, it's somewhat painful to explain the elements of this book. It's entertaining, and that's about how far it goes.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really absorbing read but I can't say that I really liked or enjoyed this book as they are just not the correct descriptors! This is a tale of despicable college living, the antithesis of all the schmaltzy American college TV shows you see. Not having the "Greek System" over here in the UK I've always wondered what these Frats are really like and I have a horrible feeling that a lot of them probably are very much what is described in this book. The characters are a mixture of vacuous, self absorbed, manipulative and depraved individuals who manage to disgust you further and further as the story unfolds. It's a more graphic version of the Dangerous Liaison influenced film "Cruel Intentions" but without the morals! I found reading this book had a very negative affect on my dealings with people in day to day life as I became more convinced that everyone in the world is depraved! The book is very well written, completely absorbing, horrifying and funny in equal meansures and a great read. I would recommend it, but only if you read it at a time when you don't have an issue with believing that humanity is essentially doomed! I'm relieved I've finished reading it so that I can go back to having a naive belief that there is good in everyone deep down!

[Mike Iovinelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this story has some of the most disgusting viewpoints on sex, love, relationships, money, and women, I found it to be extremely entertaining. Each character is beyond flawed, but throughout the book, the author balances them out with some truthful moments. I thought this helped make them more real instead of these three F%#@-ed up people. The story is told through all three main characters, each alternating a chapter--I loved this style. The language was also also very real and everyday, -especially the character of Heather. I found myself laughing out loud at certain parts and then being completely horrified at some of the actions of these people. The ending is infuriating...not because it's bad, but because of the outcome of the whole story. I don't think I would have wanted it any other way though because it just drives all the points home that were developed thoughout the book. I'm looking forward to reading The Average American Male--I like this author. He's a little crazy but can tell a story and keep you interested.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Awful