Writers have strange internet search histories. The Best Lies author Sarah Lyu is here to discuss what she had to look up for her psychological thriller.

The weirdest things I googled for my psychological thriller (or: the revenge pranks I left behind)

by Sarah Lyu

I love psychological thrillers: the unreliable narrators, that anxious, eerie atmosphere, the truth hiding in plain sight among the lies. In contrast to traditional thrillers which tend to feature more action sequences and explosive confrontations, their psychological cousins focus on emotional torment, which happens to suit Elise Ferro, one of the characters in The Best Lies, my debut YA novel.

Elise loves the Kill Bill films. She’s obsessed with revenge, with righting wrongs. To be fair to her, she’s not unlike The Bride in those movies, having also endured quite a lot of wrongs. She may be a little extreme in her obsession, but she’s not too different from most of us who wish we always had the right comeback or could put our childhood bullies in their places. But unlike most of us, Elise does always have the right comeback and fears no bullies. She’s clever, and that makes her dangerous.

I, on the other hand, am not that clever, at least when it comes to dreaming up the revenge pranks Elise and her friends executed throughout the story. So to Google I turned. I must’ve spent hours lost in various forums and Reddit threads reading all the ways people got back at those who hurt them.

There were the familiar tales of toilet papering houses, spray painting cars, and lighting sacks of dog poop on fire outside of front doors — as well as less familiar (but highly illegal!) examples like “swatting,” where someone calls the cops to report a bomb threat at a target’s house to watch a bomb squad kick down the front door. (Do not do this. In the U.S., a swatter was recently sentenced to 20 years for a fatal 2017 swatting violation.) Other less familiar (and less illegal) pranks I discovered included hiding a teacher’s things above the ceiling tiles, or injecting vinegar and other malodorous substances through keyholes.

Then there was the one that provided the inspiration for one of Elise’s more devastating pranks where she ruins an enemy’s car forever without much effort. This prank is as serious as it is ingenious and only requires a few cans of tuna and a little basic knowledge of how a car’s ventilation system works. For most cars, outside air travels into the car through the front at the bottom of the windshield, and pouring tuna oil into the ventilation system results in a nearly impossible-to-remove stink that’ll haunt the car until its final days. (Disclaimer: Don’t try this at home, kids!)

While there were plenty of sites dedicated to payback and pranks to draw inspiration from, none quite matched Reddit. Stories of revenge are everywhere. Like the (now deleted) one about a woman who briefly unblocked her cheating ex every Monday to spoil the latest Game of Thrones episode before he had a chance to see it.

Revenge is in such demand that one subreddit dedicated to it even has a pinned post about reporting suspicious submissions — stories that seem a little too extra to be true. What this means is that there are Redditors who routinely make up tales of revenge for the community. The flip side of that, of course, is that there’s a big, insatiable audience for such tales.

This high demand for revenge is somewhat understandable. Before writing The Best Lies, the Kill Bill movies were among my favorites too, and when I stumbled upon The Count of Monte Cristo in the seventh grade, I became obsessed with it despite not really understanding much of the cultural and historical context for the book.

There’s something so powerful in the revenge narrative. First, you are weak and taken advantage of, but you grow strong or you come up with a clever plan — strong and clever enough to destroy those who hurt you in the first place. Who doesn’t want that?

This is how Elise feels. She’s sick of being weak, of being hurt by a world that seems indifferent to her pain. All she sees is others like her, people who need protecting, like Remy, the main character of The Best Lies. Theirs is a friendship built on a foundation of trauma and need, and the first adventure that cements their bond is a revenge prank against one of Remy’s exes. Thus begins their roar and rampage of revenge pranks, and thus began my deep dive researching strangers’ tales of revenge.

But what I learned through writing this book, through rewatching the Kill Bill movies (ahem, for research), and through devouring the best tales of revenge that Google had to offer is this: it’s not worth it.

I’m not going sit here and tell you that “revenge is a double-edged sword” or that “revenge is a two-headed rat-viper” (any ATLA fans in the house?), mostly because I think these sentiments oversimplify the issue. To me, it’s not about the harm you cause yourself when you strike back — it’s about the story you tell yourself long before that point. The story in which you are a victim, the story in which you’ll always be a victim.

These days, I can’t actually watch the Kill Bill movies anymore, and when I did research for this piece, I didn’t feel the same compulsion to lose myself in tales of revenge.

One of my favorite scenes that I wrote is the one where, near the end, Remy rewatches the films one last time. She’s seen it a million times before at Elise’s insistence, but this time, she’s alone, and she sees things in a different light. It’s not just a fun if slightly over-the-top revenge caper; it’s a romanticization of trauma and victimhood. All the moments of Uma Thurman slicing through her long list of enemies are gratifying, sure, but only because the narrative forces her to suffer unimaginable cruelty and loss.

I think the reason I can’t watch the films anymore is because I’m trying to tell a different story about myself nowadays, one in which I let go of victimhood and revenge fantasies in favor of a story about strength and survival on their own terms.

About ‘The Best Lies’

Remy Tsai used to know how her story would turn out. But now, she doesn’t even know what tomorrow will look like.

She was happy once. Remy had her boyfriend Jack, and Elise, her best friend — her soul mate — who understood her better than anyone else in the world.

But now Jack is dead, shot through the chest…

And it was Elise who pulled the trigger.

Was it self-defense? Or something darker than anything Remy could have imagined? As the police investigate, Remy does the same, sifting through her own memories, looking for a scrap of truth that could save the friendship that means everything to her.

Told in alternating timelines, this twisted psychological thriller explores the dark side of obsessive friendship.

The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu is available now! You can order it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and Book Depository, or add it to your Goodreads list.