FFBC Blog Tour, Guest Post, & Giveaway: Trust Me, Im Trouble (Mary Elizabeth Summer)

Trust Me, I'm Trouble (Trust Me #2)
by Mary Elizabeth Summer
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Release Date: October 13th 2015

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller, Fiction

The sequel to TRUST ME, I’M LYING
Staying out of trouble isn’t possible for Julep Dupree. She has managed not to get kicked out of her private school, even though everyone knows she’s responsible for taking down a human-trafficking mob boss—and getting St. Agatha’s golden-boy Tyler killed in the process. Running cons holds her guilty conscience at bay, but unfortunately, someone wants Julep to pay for her mistakes . . . with her life.
Against her better judgment, Julep takes a shady case that requires her to infiltrate a secretive organization that her long-gone mother and the enigmatic blue fairy may be connected to. Her best friend, Sam, isn’t around to stop her, and Dani, her one true confidante, happens to be a nineteen-year-old mob enforcer whose moral compass is as questionable as Julep’s. But there’s not much time to worry about right and wrong—or to save your falling heart—when there’s a contract on your head.
Murders, heists, secrets and lies, hit men and hidden identities . . . If Julep doesn’t watch her back, it’s her funeral. No lie.

Julep Dupree is a lot of things—liar, master of disguise, and a halfway decent ukulele player (that last claim might be apocryphal). But as much as it seems to me like she sprang up out of nowhere, she did have a few forebears that influenced a good bit of her personality.



Julep derives her quick wits when getting out of sticky situations from Neal Caffrey. Neal’s plans almost never go off without a hitch. The same is true of Julep. Each of them has to roll with whatever their often unpredictable marks throw their way. The measure of a good grifter is how fast they can adapt to changing circumstances. The measure of a great grifter is being able to successfully adhere to their own moral code while doing so. That’s something I always admired about Neal—he had certain lines that he just would not cross. So I built that quality into Julep. 

Mary Shannon is about as opposite as it is possible to be from Neal Caffrey. She’s tough and biting where Neal is nothing but smooth charisma. She’s a strict rule follower where Neal makes his own rules. And yet I’d be lying if I didn’t include Mary at the top of the Julep-influencer list. What’s great about Mary is that she doesn’t take any crap from anybody, and I do mean anybody. She doesn’t shy away from doing the hard things, and more often than not, it comes down to her to take care of everything and everyone around her. I love how as watchers of the show, we came to rely on Mary as much as her charges did. Every once in a while, she’d show the smallest slice of tender underbelly, but the rest of time, she was all cactus. Julep can be prickly or smooth, but she gets her fearless determination to save people from Mary.



Nate Ford is a grifter mastermind, an expert at the double-cross, but emotionally crippled by grief and guilt. Viewers followed his character arc through vengeance, depression, and eventually to acceptance, but it took us several seasons to get there. Julep, like Nate, has a finely honed sense of guilt. She blames herself when she can’t save everyone, and she struggles with accepting loss (as well as assistance from anyone silly enough to offer it). From Nate, Julep gets her skill at leading a team of degenerates through the more complicated heists. She also gets her ability to see three or four moves ahead of the bad guys from him.




Philip Marlowe is woven deep into the fabric of American culture. So deep, in fact, that one barely has to scratch the surface of any crime procedural these days to see shades of him. Julep is no different. She’s as much a child of Marlowe’s as Kate Beckett, Vic Mackey, and Horatio Caine. She gets her lone-wolf nature from him, and also her deeply (deeply) buried inner romantic. 

Last but not least, Julep has a huge helping of Veronica Mars in her. Obviously, the snark. Obviously, the expectation of pecuniary compensation for services rendered. Obviously, the eye roll. But even more than these surface things is Veronica’s ferocious loyalty, her complete disregard for societal boundaries when forming familial attachments to people, and of course, her driving need to protect the people she feels responsible for. All of these qualities are in Julep in spades. You’re a marshmallow, Julep Dupree. So that’s it! I’m sure there’s a little Faith (from Buffy) in Julep, a little Mercy Thompson (from Patricia Briggs’ books), and a little Mal Reynolds (from Firefly) as well. There’s a little bit of all the cool kids, really. I love Julep because she is a patchwork quilt of all the black-sheep characters I’ve inexplicably fallen for over the years, almost in spite of myself. Who does Julep remind you of? Let us know in the comments!

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Mary Elizabeth Summer is an instructional designer, a mom, a champion of the serial comma, and a pie junkie. Oh, and she sometimes writes books about teenage delinquents saving the day. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her daughter, her partner, and her evil overlor–er, cat. TRUST ME, I'M LYING, a YA mystery, will be released by Delacorte in Fall 2014.

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