Fake Plastic Girl Books in Order

The Fake Plastic Girl series is YA suspense with a Hollywood noir glow. It follows sixteen-year-old Justine Childs, a Venice Beach girl who wants badly to step out of the wings and into the glamorous world she has spent years circling. These books care about murder, but they care just as much about image, status, and the ache of wanting to be seen.

In Fake Plastic Girl, that ache takes shape when ex-child-star Eva Kate Kelly moves in nearby. Justine has always been close enough to fame to study it, partly because her mother works with celebrity clients, but closeness is not the same thing as belonging. Eva Kate changes that. She is magnetic, messy, hard to read, and very good at pulling people into her orbit. Late-night parties, designer gloss, secrets, and shifting loyalties make the whole series feel sunlit on the surface and sick underneath.

The friendship is the hook, but it never feels safe.

Lisbon is especially good at writing the emotional tug between admiration and obsession. Justine wants Eva Kate's attention, her approval, maybe even her life. Eva Kate, meanwhile, is never just one thing at a time: vulnerable, manipulative, lonely, powerful. When Eva Kate turns up dead in the Venice canals and Justine becomes the obvious suspect, the books lean fully into mystery. But the series never leaves Justine's head for long, which means readers stay close to her self-doubt, hunger, fantasy life, and talent for telling a story that puts her in the best light.

That carries straight into Fake Plastic World. The second book keeps the murder case alive, then widens the frame to include prosecutors, courtroom strain, social media attention, and the ugly thrill of being known for the worst possible reason. Justine is still chasing the truth about Eva Kate's death, but the larger arc is about what fame does to people who want it, fear it, or mistake it for love. The tension comes from both the case itself and the way public opinion starts hardening around a teenage girl before the facts are settled.

The spotlight is almost another character.

Tone-wise, expect glossy teen suspense with a sharp mean streak, not a cozy mystery. The Venice Beach setting matters because the canals, beach houses, and celebrity spillover give the story a look that is beautiful, unstable, and a little rotten around the edges. If you like toxic friendships, unreliable narrators, image culture, and fast-moving mysteries with courtroom drama in the mix, this series delivers. Read Fake Plastic Girl first and Fake Plastic World second, because the fallout, the case, and Justine's unraveling build directly from one book into the next.