In Shari Lapena’s suburban thriller Everyone Here Is Lying, the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl shatters the calm façade of Stanhope, exposing the fears and private fixations simmering behind neat lawns and curtained windows. Neighbors become suspects, secrets become leverage, and every family’s public image is forced to contend with the ugly truths beneath it. For a full plot refresher, see the Full Book Summary.
Main Characters
The narrative is driven by a core group whose lies and choices shape the mystery of Avery Wooler’s disappearance and its fallout.
Avery Wooler
Avery Wooler is the missing nine-year-old at the center of the search—initially a helpless victim, ultimately the story’s most chilling manipulator. Brilliant, vengeful, and starved for attention, she orchestrates her own vanishing to punish her father and revels in the chaos that follows. She forms a calculated pact with Marion Cooke, using the older woman’s obsession to hide out, then turns on her when their aims diverge. Avery’s stunt escalates into murder when she pushes Marion down the basement stairs, and her hunger for control culminates in a live-TV slip that betrays her sociopathic poise in the finale (Chapter 56 Summary). Her power over her family—especially William and Erin—reveals how a child’s lies can remake an entire town’s reality.
William Wooler
William Wooler is a respected doctor whose weak moral center and volatile temper prime him as the police’s first suspect. Haunted by a violent outburst against Avery and desperate to conceal his affair with Nora Blanchard, he lies reflexively, stacking deceptions that make him look guilty even as he professes love for his family. His marriage to Erin fractures under the weight of secrets, while his son loses respect for him, and the town’s scrutiny strips him of his professional sheen. Though ultimately cleared, William must reckon with the terrifying truth of who his daughter is—and with the realization that his cowardice gave her space to thrive. His downfall is the book’s clearest case study in how small lies metastasize into catastrophe.
Erin Wooler
Erin Wooler embodies the public face of maternal grief, a protective mother whose stoicism hardens as the search grinds on. Exhausted by raising a “difficult” child yet fiercely loyal, she lashes out at perceived threats and channels her fear into rage—first at William’s betrayal, then at Ryan Blanchard when suspicion turns his way. Erin’s love for her children, Avery and Michael, curdles into dread as the truth surfaces: she doesn’t fully know the child she’s defending. Even after Avery’s return, Erin’s ordeal persists, as she confronts the unsettling possibility that the danger lies within her own home. Her journey captures the limits of certainty in parenting and the emotional toll of living with the unknowable.
Nora Blanchard
Nora Blanchard is the “other woman” whose affair with William entwines the Woolers and Blanchards, drawing her family into the crossfire. Anxious, image-conscious, and wracked with guilt, she ends the relationship to protect her children—only to watch events spiral out of her control when Avery disappears (Chapter 1-5 Summary). The exposure of her secret poisons her marriage to Al and puts her son Ryan in the line of fire, compounding her shame with dread. By the end, Nora’s life has been detonated by choices she cannot take back, and her silence becomes indistinguishable from complicity. She personifies the novel’s thesis that private desires always leave public wreckage.
Marion Cooke
Marion Cooke is the neighbor whose obsession with William twists into a meticulous revenge plot. Beneath her calm, competent nurse’s persona lies a calculating stalker who hides Avery in her basement, then frames Ryan Blanchard to obliterate Nora’s family. She exploits Avery’s bid for vengeance as cover for her own jealous crusade, but underestimates the child she’s using. When Avery realizes Marion has double-crossed her, their alliance collapses into a lethal showdown on the basement stairs. Marion’s arc exposes how delusion can make ordinary people monstrous—and how quickly the predator can become prey.
Detective Gully
Detective Gully leads the investigation with empathy and method, reading emotional currents as shrewdly as physical evidence. She partners effectively with Detective Bledsoe while maintaining a rapport with Erin, balancing pressure with compassion as suspects multiply. Gully tracks the Woolers’ lies and the Blanchards’ secrets, follows the thread to Marion’s house, and ultimately finds Avery outside—closing the case without fully quieting her instincts. The official answers never satisfy her unease about Avery’s nature or the “undetermined” death in Marion’s basement, leaving a faint, unresolved chill at the edges of the truth. As the novel’s moral barometer, she senses what the town prefers not to see.
Supporting Characters
Ryan Blanchard
Ryan Blanchard is the frightened teenager turned scapegoat, his prior drug trouble making him an easy target when Marion’s lie points the police his way. Wrongfully arrested in the crescendo of the investigation (Chapter 31-35 Summary), he becomes the vessel for the town’s fear and the pressure cooker for his parents’ collapsing marriage. His exoneration arrives only when Avery resurfaces, underscoring how adult secrets endanger the young.
Al Blanchard
Al Blanchard presents as the supportive husband while secretly tracking Nora’s affair, simmering with humiliation and resentment. His voyeurism, lack of a clean alibi, and passive-aggressive bitterness briefly put him under suspicion; the crisis finally erupts in violence when he strikes Nora. Al’s quiet fury exemplifies the corrosive power of jealousy in seemingly stable homes.
Michael Wooler
Michael Wooler is Avery’s older brother—the conscientious child eclipsed by his sister’s constant turmoil. Carrying heavy guilt for revealing the hidden house key, he’s forced to tell the police hard truths about William’s temper and then watches his family implode. Michael’s wary gaze becomes a moral counterpoint to Avery’s chaos.
Detective Bledsoe
Detective Bledsoe is Gully’s pragmatic, more cynical partner, quick to zero in on William while still following the evidence wherever it leads. He applies pressure at key moments and helps draw Marion Cooke into the open. Though relieved when Avery returns, Bledsoe shares Gully’s lingering discomfort with the neatness of the official story.
Minor Characters
- Faith Blanchard: Nora and Al’s grounded, athletic daughter whose normalcy highlights Avery’s menace.
- Derek Seton: A local teen briefly suspected after Avery lies about having an older boyfriend.
- Alice Seton: Derek’s mother, a conduit for Stanhope’s gossip and judgment.
- Adam Winter: An autistic teen whose drone footage aids the search but can’t crack the case.
- Gwen Winter: Adam’s mother, a compassionate confidante to Erin who understands parenting a “difficult” child.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
At the center is the fractured Wooler family: William’s lies and temper collide with Erin’s protective fury, while Michael’s quiet conscience bears witness to Avery’s manipulations. Their home becomes a crucible where guilt, denial, and fear amplify a child’s capacity to control the narrative. The Blanchards, meanwhile, show a different kind of rot—Nora’s secret affair and Al’s covert surveillance erode trust until Ryan becomes a convenient repository for blame.
The affair between William and Nora forms the bridge that Marion Cooke exploits, binding two households in a chain reaction. Marion covets William, despises Nora, and sees Avery as the perfect instrument for her revenge; Avery, in turn, exploits Marion’s fixation until their alliance collapses into lethal self-preservation. Around them, Detective Gully and Detective Bledsoe stand as the town’s uneasy conscience, sifting truth from performance while aware that some truths remain beyond reach.
Stanhope itself functions as a pressure cooker: neighbors watch each other, rumors calcify into “facts,” and the community’s hunger for answers breeds scapegoats. Alliances shift with every new revelation, but the pattern holds—adults’ secrets create collateral damage, and the person who appears most innocent wields the greatest power.