Lies She Told

Lies She Told by Cate Holahan published by Crooked Lane Books was provided to me for an honest review through Negalley. Thank you to everyone who took part in deciding to give me my copy I really did enjoy the book. This is my first book by this author.
The Lies She told is crafted to be told in dual perspectives one being Liza the author who is trying to come up with the next best seller, and Beth the character in the novel being constructed. I found myself profoundly confused in the first few chapters trying to figure out how the chapters are laid out, but after you get a grasp of the books construction it is one of those books you want to continue reading to see if fiction comes from reality or if reality has made the fiction.
We have Liza whose husband is worried about his best friend who is missing. When the body is found, her husband is charged. Meanwhile Liza, writes about a woman named Beth, whose husband is cheating on her, and she feels only way to keep marriage is to kill the mistress. The book goes back and forth between both plots that if you don't play close attention you might get lost in translation. You find yourself feeling bad for both fictional character and the writer's life that the story is very readable.
As I said this is a new author for me and I enjoyed this read very much. I found myself more drawn to the second half of the book just because once it gets it's running start you want to take it all the way to the finish line! Readers who like a Then and Now format or a dual perspective novel will love this book hands down!

The book-within-a-book format of this novel was a fresh take on a familiar suspense genre trope - the unreliable husband. The added complication of memory loss in Liza's narration added an additional layer of unreliability, creating a book full of fairly well-developed characters that couldn't be trusted. Rather than feel too tropey, Holahan found the right mix of believable and unnerving. This was a great book by a young author and I can't wait to see what Holahan writes next.

On the surface this books has it all: suspense, a great/captivating plot, developed characters....etc. But even with that, something was missing a little bit for me. I can't quite put my finger on it but that's the only reason I decided to give this book four stars instead of five. It might also have something to do with this being my first book in quite a while since having my second child over a year ago. I have finally started doing things I enjoy again and even though I can't give all my time to reading novels (even though I would love to be able to do that), I have managed to find at least half and hour each day.

To begin with, I decided to restart this book again since I was not able to finish it last time because I gave birth and then life got really busy and chaotic. The plot was totally up my alley, a psychological thriller full of twists and turns that, for the most part, kept me on the edge of my seat and made me want to keep reading. However, it was a bit confusing at first because of the way the book was organized since it switches between the main heroine of the book and also to the book that she is writing since she herself is a fictional writer. It took a little bit to get the characters straight in my head but once I got the hang of that, everything else seemed to flow smoothly. Definite props for creativity.

Even though the plot was twisty and messed up (just how I like them), at times it seemed to drag when I felt it didn't need to. Sometimes it would slow down and then all of a sudden take off and pick up at a very quick pace. I think for that reason, I can't get myself to give this book five out of five stars, the flow was just not doing it for me.

The characters were also well thought out and written but I couldn't quite picture them out in the real world, among other human beings. I guess the overall sense of who they were was definitely in there but did not really penetrate further down, at least not for me. The main heroine had a lot going on in her psyche and I definitely felt for her but not enough to actually relate and feel extreme sympathy towards her and what she was going through. I guess I just prefer all the feelings, Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

The style of the writing was precise and to the point, even though at times it got a little bit confusing trying to picture the exact action in the book that I was reading. In certain places I could have used a little more to paint the exact picture for me as it was happening. All in all, quite an easy and quick read.

In summary, although this book checks most of my boxes in terms of what I am looking for in a good, entertaining read, it doesn't go above and beyond and manages to deliver a pretty good read but not enough of a good read to have me obsess over it for months to come. All in all, not bad but not outstanding.