The truth can be darker than fiction. Liza Cole, a once-successful novelist whose career has seen better days, has one month to write the thriller that could land her back on the bestseller list. Meanwhile, she’s struggling to start a family, but her husband is distracted by the disappearance of his best friend, Nick. As stresses weigh her down in her professional and personal lives, Liza escapes into writing the chilling exploits of her latest heroine, Beth. Beth, a new mother, suspects her husband is cheating on her while she’s home caring for their newborn. Angry and betrayed, she aims to catch him in the act and make him pay for shattering the illusion of their perfect life. But before she realizes what she’s doing, she’s tossing the body of her husband’s mistress into the East River. Then, the lines between Liza’s fiction and her reality eerily blur. Nick’s body is dragged from the East River, and Liza’s husband is arrested for his murder. Before her deadline is up, Liza will have to face up to the truths about the people around her, including her own. If she doesn’t, the end of her heroine’s story could be the end of her own.
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I really enjoyed this book. It is clever, complex, compelling and really well-written. It took me a few chapters to get into it but then I was hooked. The twin narratives work perfectly and I like the trope of a book-within-a-book.
The scenes and characters were all clearly drawn in my mind, the two lead characters’ feelings’ were well realised and the plot and structure are both effective. I’d be very interested to read more from Cate Holahan.
Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the ARC of Lies She Told.
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