There must be a better way to say this...

[drlloyd11]

I have been trying to work around some cliche sounding phrases, and wondered if people had some advice.
I want to talk about something being a "false dawn" or some other kind of trick to make the reader think everything is fine, even if it is not.
I don't want to use "false dawn", "calm before the storm", "bait", or "lured into complacency"


Any ideas?

[Hemiola]

Maybe "lulled"?

[Laragh]

Maybe "lulled"?

Yeah I was thinking along the lines of 'lulled into a false sense of security' but that seemed along the cliche lines he was trying to avoid. But 'lulled' by itself could work given the right wording.

[BeMyDeputy]

Can you give the context? The paragraph it's in, perhaps? What character's POV is it?

See, from what you have written, I don't know why you want to say it at all. If your goal is to trick the reader (or characters), isn't spelling out what that you're doing it the last thing you want to do?

[drlloyd11]

Sort of a "false dawn" sort of feeling. Like getting ironic good news before the bad..