What This Theme Explores
Guilt and blame in Sometimes I Lie are less about legal culpability and more about the stories people tell to survive. The novel asks how unprocessed guilt corrodes identity, how blame can be weaponized to control others, and how trauma invites characters to project responsibility outward rather than face themselves. From the opening accusation to the final reversals, guilt migrates between people and across time until truth itself feels unstable. With Amber Reynolds suspended between speech and silence, the narrative probes whether owning or offloading guilt determines who becomes a victim, a perpetrator, or both.
How It Develops
At the outset, guilt and blame enter as a mystery hook: Amber wakes in a coma and, before memory returns, names her husband as culprit. That instinct doesn’t just launch the plot; it establishes blame as a reflex and a lens. As the “Now/Then/Before” threads spool out, suspicion gathers around Paul Reynolds, whose faltering career and evasions make him look guilty even when the evidence is thin. The story teaches readers to distrust appearances, but also to notice how guilt—real or imagined—makes people act guilty.
Midway, blame goes mobile. Each timeline reframes earlier assumptions: a potential affair, a career rivalry, and a police investigation tilt the narrative toward the most convenient villain. Meanwhile, the childhood diary entries drip with responsibility and denial, creating a moral gravity that pulls the adult plot into their orbit. The psychological economy becomes clear: whoever controls the story of the past controls who must atone in the present.
By the end, the book detonates its own scaffolding. The crash wasn’t Paul’s doing but the result of a choice made by Claire, who blames Amber for seeing a child that wasn’t there. The diaries, too, are recoded: they belong to Claire, whose lifelong guilt for the fire that killed their parents is projected onto her sister—Amber’s real name is Taylor. Once awake, Amber stops absorbing others’ guilt and begins assigning it, exacting revenge not only on a rival like Madeline Frost but also on a predatory figure such as Edward Clarke. The result is a final tableau where blame is both verdict and weapon, and innocence is no longer the point—control is.
Key Examples
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Amber’s first thought is blame. From her hospital bed, she pins her condition on her husband before any memory returns, revealing blame as a psychological crutch and narrative catalyst. The certainty of her accusation primes readers to question how fear and vulnerability manufacture conviction.
I can’t remember what happened to me, but I know, with unwavering certainty, that this man, my husband, had something to do with it. (from Chapter 1-5 Summary)
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The childhood diaries convert confession into misdirection. Saturated with guilt about parental conflict and the fatal fire, the entries appear to be Amber’s—until the reveal that they are Claire’s, redirecting moral weight and exposing how written “truths” can function as planted evidence.
I didn’t mean for her to fall down the stairs, it was an accident. (from Chapter 41-45 Summary)
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Paul’s self-reproach makes him legible as the culprit. His shame over professional failure and infertility shapes his behavior, which in turn fuels suspicion from Amber and the police. The novel shows how self-blame can broadcast guilt even in the absence of wrongdoing.
His success broke him and his failure broke us.
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Claire narrates the crash to erase her responsibility. By insisting she reacted to a child in the road that Amber imagined, she reframes negligence as compassion and her panic as obedience—an illustration of how blame-shifting doubles as self-exoneration.
“We were driving along, you were crying in pain, and then you said something about a little girl in a pink dressing gown. I thought there was a child in the street. You screamed at me to stop.” (from Chapter 66-67 Summary)
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“Project Madeline” recasts cruelty as survival. Amber rationalizes her scheme to topple a rival as necessary self-preservation, revealing how easily moral lines blur when blame becomes a tool to claim space and safety.
I’ve always stayed within the lines when coloring in my life, but now I’m prepared to let things get a bit messy. (from Chapter 1-5 Summary)
Character Connections
Amber Reynolds (Taylor) is shaped by secondhand guilt and a lifetime of being cast as the problem. Her anxieties, meticulous plans, and eventual ruthlessness read as defenses forged under the pressure of inherited blame. When she awakens, she inverts the power dynamic: instead of absorbing guilt, she weaponizes blame, proving how a reclaimed narrative can harden into vengeance.
Claire begins as the story’s caretaker and ends as its original sinner. Unable to metabolize her guilt over the fire, she outsources it to her sister and curates a persona of protector and victim. Her mastery of narrative—writing the diaries, reframing the crash—shows how blame can be engineered to keep self-image intact.
Paul Reynolds is a study in how private shame becomes public suspicion. His self-blame for career stagnation and family disappointments makes him cagey and inconsistent, which invites others to label him guilty. He doesn’t merely suffer from guilt; he performs it, and that performance nearly convicts him.
Symbolic Elements
The fire stands as the novel’s originating sin: a blaze that consumes a home and ignites decades of misattributed accountability. It symbolizes how a single moment of catastrophe can calcify into identity, searing roles—culprit, witness, survivor—into the family’s psyche.
The diaries are guilt made material. As repositories of confession and denial, they masquerade as truth while redirecting it, demonstrating how written records can sanctify a lie and sentence the wrong person.
Bruises and scars externalize internal wounds. Marks on Amber’s body, and the cigarette burns inflicted in childhood, become visible verdicts in a story where testimony is unreliable. The body remembers even when the mind falsifies.
Contemporary Relevance
The novel’s moral fog mirrors a world saturated with curated narratives and “alternative facts.” Gaslighting, projection, and the weaponization of trauma echo conversations about toxic relationships and media manipulation. Sometimes I Lie cautions that in a culture where perception drives reality, guilt and blame are less about truth than about who controls the mic—and how long others are willing to listen.
Essential Quote
I can’t remember what happened to me, but I know, with unwavering certainty, that this man, my husband, had something to do with it. (from Chapter 1-5 Summary)
This line crystallizes the novel’s thesis: blame often precedes evidence. Amber’s certainty amid amnesia shows how fear and prior grievances script culpability, inviting readers to interrogate not just who is guilty, but how guilt gets assigned—and why that assignment can feel more stabilizing than the truth.