Olivia Miller claws her way to consciousness. Grabbed by an assailant while she’s on a morning run and strangled until she passes out, she has been stuffed into the trunk of a car. She manages to find a release, pops the lid and jumps out. Olivia takes off running, pursued by her captor who’s armed with a knife and obviously intends to kill her. When she slips and tumbles down an embankment, she thinks she’s a dead woman. But just in time, a police car arrives and shoots the man looming over her.

Caleb Stephens

That’s the way If You Lie, Denver author Caleb Stephens’ third thriller, plunges the reader into Olivia’s story. There is much more terror to come.

Seven years after Olivia’s narrow escape, she has developed a successful true-crime podcast, Still Living with Olivia. Unable to speak for nearly a year after her abductor attempted to strangle her, Olivia decides to make her voice count when she recovers. She has built the podcast to nearly a million listeners, and she, her research assistant Nina and their community have solved more than two dozen murders and disappearances. Her brush with death and her podcast work have sharpened the observational and investigative skills she was born with—and soon she’s going to need them.

Out of the blue, Olivia receives an email from her older sister Quinn, from whom she’s been estranged for the past five years. She and Quinn parted on unpleasant terms, but now Quinn is reaching out to reconnect and patch things up. She tells Olivia she’s getting married; her fiancé has booked a celebratory cruise on a luxury yacht, and she invites Olivia to come along, all expenses paid. With reluctance, Olivia accepts.

Olivia arrives in Puerto Rico, where Quinn is to meet her for transport to the departure point, to find that her sister is a changed woman. When they last saw each other, Quinn’s face and body were ravaged by addiction. But now, she looks completely different—healthy, well-groomed and beautiful. As a Maserati stretch limousine arrives up to take them to the yacht, Quinn says, “I told you this trip was going to be amazing.”

For some reason she can’t put her finger on, Olivia’s instinct is to run back into the airport and flee. But she swallows her unease and climbs into the limo. Once inside, she is surprised to find more people who will be joining the cruise. She is introduced to Quinn’s fiancé, handsome successful businessman Bryce, who runs a green-energy hedge fund; Alex and his boyfriend Liam; health and fitness entrepreneurs Tim and Kerry Stroud and their adopted son Darren; and brother-and-sister twins Caprice and Chaz Hanson.

Olivia’s discomfort grows when they arrive at the departure point, an industrial port clogged with shipping containers, but then the yacht, named The Athena, appears, and it is incredible, inside and out. Again, Olivia brushes aside her discomfort, and they board, where they meet Julianna Nadar, who will lead them through a series of self-actualizing exercises. It turns out that Quinn, Bryce, Liam, Kerry and Caprice are part of a cult called Xclivity, and the cruise’s destination is the island of Elysium, where they will undergo a ceremony called “Transcension.”

None of this is what Olivia was expecting, but even as her worry increases, she takes Quinn at her word—that it will help them resolve their differences and become the close sisters they once were.

With the stage thus set, they depart and speed into open water on a trip Olivia will survive only because of her wits. Several other passengers will not make it back to dry land. To reveal more would spoil the journey for the reader.

In a good thriller, that journey includes suspense, plenty of action, darkness, red herrings, a ticking clock, high stakes, an engaging and dynamic protagonist, an evil villain against whom the protagonist must struggle, and lots of plot twists. Stephens, who is accomplished in this genre, delivers them all. Stephens is also the author of Girls in the Cabin, Feeders and short fiction including “The Wallpaper Man,” a film adaptation of which was nominated for multiple awards at the 2022 Ethereal Horror Fest and Filmquest film festivals. Girls in the Cabin is a psychological thriller set in the Colorado mountains, nominated for the Colorado Book Award; Feeders adds sci-fi and horror elements to the genre.

If You Lie is full-blown horror, and readers should know that the story is brutal and gruesome. But the book also elucidates how family and individual trauma can affect victims in different ways, from strength and newfound purpose to unrelieved hate and the desire for vengeance. Fans of thrillers who relish in stories that horrify but eventually see the protagonist overcoming evil will find it to be a page-turner and an engaging read.