She lost her job. Her name. And maybe her mind.
Now someone else is living her life — better.
The Wrong Liza is a psychological thriller about identity theft, corporate gaslighting, and one woman’s fight to reclaim the truth.
When Liza is fired without warning, she finds her apartment stripped, her phone reprogrammed, and her past rewritten.
Everyone around her insists it’s all in her head — but someone is erasing her, piece by piece.
What if the person they believe is Liza… isn't her at all?
Perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware, and Tana French, this debut blends paranoia, memory, and control into a tight, haunting narrative.
She lost her job. Her name. And maybe her mind.
Now someone else is living her life — better.
The Wrong Liza is a psychological thriller about identity theft, corporate gaslighting, and one woman’s fight to reclaim the truth.
When Liza is fired without warning, she finds her apartment stripped, her phone reprogrammed, and her past rewritten.
Everyone around her insists it’s all in her head — but someone is erasing her, piece by piece.
What if the person they believe is Liza… isn't her at all?
Perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware, and Tana French, this debut blends paranoia, memory, and control into a tight, haunting narrative.
8:11 a.m. Upper East Side, Manhattan.
Her coffee tasted normal. The inbox was already a mess, but nothing urgent. The usual junk. A billing reminder. A 3 PM pitch.
Her plant had one new leaf. A good sign. The kind of thing her therapist would've called "a grounding anchor."
A Tuesday like any other.
Except for the sheet of paper taped to the door of her building. Black border.
In Loving Memory
Liza Connor
Her photo — from last year's company headshots. But someone had crossed out her eyes. Two thick black Xs, drawn by hand. The ink still fresh.
Someone's idea of a prank? She squinted. Maybe it was a typo. But the photo... the photo was hers.
She googled her name. Nothing. Then "Liza Connor obituary." Nothing. Like the internet didn't know yet. Or wasn't supposed to.
Her hands were cold. Not outside—inside. Like something had turned to ice beneath her ribs.
The paper smelled like hands. Not hers.
In the bathroom, she vomited — acid burning her throat. But the real nausea stirred deeper, under the ribs. That slow understanding: while you slept, someone decided.
Helen from 4B stepped out to grab a package. Cat-print robe. Morning news blaring.
"Morning," Helen mumbled, eyes down.
iPhone. Photo of the obituary. Her fingers shook, kept missing the button. Can a dead girl send a text? The thought came unbidden, absurd.
Mascara — two coats. Lipstick. The resurrection ritual. If you can still do your makeup, maybe you still exist. Or maybe it's just muscle memory, long after your brain gives up.
MetroCard in her purse. Same route as always. Her body remembered better than her mind did. Yesterday felt distant, blurred at the edges.
The lobby smelled like Tuesday morning — coffee, floor cleaner, and something else now. Fear, maybe. Hers.
Badge swipe. Red.
Again. Red. Blinking like a heartbeat.
"Trouble?" Brian, the security guard. Usually nodded hello. Today, his gaze went right through her.
"Guess it demagnetized."
The tablet flickered, as if reluctant to speak.
"Access was revoked Friday," he said, still staring at the screen like it showed something obscene. "You're not in the system, ma'am."
Not in the system. Like she was a corrupted file.
"Brian." Her voice came out metallic, wrong. "I've worked here two years. You saw me Friday morning."
Silence. He studied her face — comparing it to something. His memory? The database? Did it matter?
"No active badge, no entry." Protocol. A shield.
Liza steadied herself against the desk. Marble. Cold. Solid. Four breaths in, four out — stress training from some forgotten corporate seminar.
The network was fading piece by piece. Email — locked. Messenger — gone. Her name on the staff list — deleted.
She tried her corporate login one more time. Access denied. Like she'd never existed.
Memory slipped. Was the Chinese takeout Sunday? Or Saturday? The days had started melting together.
Call IT, something whispered. Not her voice. Somewhere deeper.
Voicemail. "All agents are currently assisting other clients." A perfectly pleasant recording, trained to ignore panic.
Her knees buckled. She didn't mean to sit — just found herself on the floor.
"Liza?!"
Kara. Miami tan already fading in patches. Designer bag. Heels clicking too fast across the marble.
"Oh my God." She froze a step away. Eyes wide, pupils swallowing the color. "What are you doing here?"
"Apparently? I'm dead." A laugh escaped. "There was an obituary on my door. Still warm. Like a fresh croissant."
Kara crouched beside her, slowly, cautiously. Took her hand — warm fingers meeting ice.
"Show me."
The iPhone trembled in Liza's grip. She handed it over. The photo of the obituary. Those hand-drawn Xs over her eyes.
Kara stared at the screen. Didn't blink. Too long.
"Someone..." She swallowed. "But why?"
"If I knew?" Liza managed a smile. "People used to steal money. Now they steal lives. Progress."
"Come on. We're going to Janet. Now."
Kara's badge blinked green. Liza faced the turnstile like a wall.
"Brian, she's with me. This is urgent."
He hesitated, some algorithm spinning behind his eyes. Then he pressed a button. Let the ghost through.
Elevator. Coworkers filing in. Familiar faces — or were they? In the mirrored doors, a girl in black stared back. Her? Or the one who would come next?
In the elevator, Mark looked up — then looked through her. Like she was a name he'd forgotten. Or someone he'd never met.
"Friday. Rooftop bar," Kara said quickly. "You ordered a third martini. That's rare for you."
Fragments of the night returned. Not faces — sounds. Ice melting in glasses. Kara's laugh cutting through bar noise.
Seventh floor. Same smell — toner, coffee, someone's Chanel. Everything exactly the same. Except her.
Janet Thompson sat behind her desk, wearing one of her professional masks — the "I'm sorry, but..." kind.
"Please sit, Liza."
"On Friday, a resignation was sent from your terminal." Janet's fingers were interlocked, wedding ring turned inward. Bad sign. "Digital signature matches."
"I was in a meeting."
"I know."
Janet turned the screen. Security footage. Someone in a black hoodie, hood pulled low. Liza never wore sportswear to the office. Ever. But the card in the figure's hand scanned green. Her badge.
Liza leaned forward. Perfect video quality — you could read the hoodie's logo. But the face under the hood? Just shadow. That face — or lack of it — looked almost edited. Too smooth. Too void.
"4:42 a.m.," Janet noted, her manicure flawless. "The movements are... deliberate. Like someone rehearsed."
"I'm sorry," Janet said. Standard phrase, well-practiced. "The decision is final."
"What the hell, Janet?!" Kara shot to her feet.
Janet nodded to the guard. His hand moved to his tablet.
"Thirty minutes to collect your things." Janet stood, paused at the door. "They were sent Friday. By courier. To the address in our system."
The door clicked shut with finality.
The guard stayed, watching his screen. Counting down minutes or playing Candy Crush — what was the difference?
Her mind felt hijacked, like someone else had been using it. Two years of work — deleted by a hooded stranger.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
Digital life. Digital death.
Someone had decided what to keep. What to erase.
The elevator descended. Kara gripped her arm. Tight. Painful. Real.
"You're coming with me," she said, pulling out her phone. "Stephen will handle this. He's a lawyer."
"Thanks." A whisper. "For believing me."
"Of course I believe you." Kara squeezed tighter. "This is a setup. We'll prove it."
The elevator jolted. Light — dark — light. A second of nothing. Or a dress rehearsal?
The Tuesday after Labor Day was supposed to start with a seven-dollar latte. A Starbucks line. A promotion she'd been half-dreaming about.
But dead girls don't get promotions. Just a red light on a badge. Final. Honest.
In the elevator glass, her reflection arrived a second late. Like even light was giving up on her.
The Wrong Liza by Jazz Voss is a short, suspense-filled psychological thriller about identity and the ultimate example of identity theft. While the initial setup was somewhat confusing and, perhaps, compounded by a staccato stream-of-consciousness narrative style, the plot soon coalesced into a riveting tale of deception and frightening manipulation — one I couldn’t put down.
Set in present-day Manhattan on the Tuesday after Labor Day, Liza Connors prepares for work at her corporate job like any other normal business day, when she discovers a notice affixed to the door of her apartment building displaying her picture on it, along with the sentiment “In Loving Memory – Liza Connors,” with the eyes ‘X’ ed out with black marker. Was it a sick joke? A heart-stoppingly tragic error? Or, if possible, was it something even more alarming, like a truthful indication of her actual condition? Neither Liza nor the reader knows for certain at this point, but it is absolutely attention-grabbing.
Continuing to her office, the situation gets odder as her access badge is no longer functioning, and security confirms it had been deactivated the previous Friday. Kara, a coworker, arrives just as Liza is on the verge of collapse and escorts her to Janet Thompson in the HR Department for their firm to figure out what’s going on. Unsurprisingly, HR is no help except to add to the mystery. Janet claims Liza resigned by email early Friday morning, and there is both digital and video evidence to corroborate her statement. Unfortunately, the company has a policy of no “take-backs.”
Accompanied out of their offices, things are about to take a turn for the worse as Liza begins to receive reports from friends and family about interactions with her that she has no memory of whatsoever. From that point, it is a non-stop barrage of gaslighting and taunting indications that someone is literally taking over Liza’s life as she watches helplessly from the sidelines. With Kara still by her side, Liza no longer knows who she can trust or who could possibly be behind the unrelenting takeover.
Time after time, just when I thought I knew where Liza’s story was headed, a new twist in the action was introduced. By the final page, the story resembled nothing I could have possibly imagined it could have evolved into. I was compelled to return to the beginning and read the whole story again to see how it ended up where it did.