Lies She Told by Cate Holahan

Book Blurb:

Sometimes the truth is darker than fiction.

Liza Cole has 30 days to write the thriller that could put her back on the best-seller list. In the meantime, she’s struggling to start a family with her husband, who is distracted by the disappearance of his best friend, Nick. With stresses weighing her down in both her professional and her personal lives, Liza escapes into writing her latest heroine, Beth.

Beth is a new mother who suspects her husband is cheating on her while she’s home alone caring for their newborn. Angry and betrayed, she sets out to catch him in the act and to make him pay for shattering the illusion of their perfect life. But before she realizes it, she’s tossing the body of her husband’s mistress into the East River.

Then the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur. Nick’s body is dragged from the same 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 herself. If she doesn’t, the end of her heroine’s story could be the end of her own.

My Review:

EEK! Not one unreliable narrator but two? Wait a minute…A book within a book?

Maybe my fault, as I normally listen to my audiobooks while performing another task; gardening, cooking, cleaning, shopping. Big mistake here as the story begins at a rather slow pace, easy to fade in and out, and the narration by two similar voices wasn’t wholly easy to separate out which character was speaking.

First, Liza. She’s an author in a slump, on deadline, and sweating it. Beth is the main character of the book she is struggling with and it doesn’t help both are experiencing somewhat parallel stories. So each chapter alternates between the author and the MC in the book she’s writing and pretty soon it gets tougher to keep up with whose story we are currently following. Confusing.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I thought Beth was over-the-top whiney and got tired of her fighting tears all the time. Okay, she’s a new mom—there is such a thing as post-partum depression. But she’s just psychotic. This lady was in full-on post-partum separation and there were times when I feared for her infant.

Liza was still trying to get pregnant and scheming on how to get hubby in the sack for the next go-round with fertile timing. Enter unresponsive (cheating) husbands, the bast…ds. As I didn’t care all that much for either MC though, I couldn’t whip up sufficient empathy.

Lots of twists and turns took me half the chapter to sort out whose voice I was currently listening to when suddenly I became quite alarmed at what was happening. GEES, what had I missed??!  I couldn’t believe it! Well, that got my attention and was also the point at which the lazy rhythm began to speed up.

I paid close attention then through the conclusion, but still my head was swirling, trying to separate the two storylines—make sense of it. And I wasn’t satisfied. Were all threads closed? I don’t think so.

It was a weird, often bewildering ride and I must admit to being hooked, entertained, and engaged. An unusual thriller for me—perhaps for you as well.

I received a copy of this audiobook from my local lovely library. These are my honest thoughts.

Book Details:

Genre: Psychological Thrillers, Suspense
Publisher:  Blackstone Audio, Inc.
ASIN: B073WHSPC4
Listening Length: 9 hrs 54 mins
Narrator: Amy McFadden, Lisa Larsen
Publication Date: September 12, 2017
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: Lies She Told [Amazon]

 

Rosepoint Publishing:  Four stars

 

The Author: Catherine “Cate” Holahan is the USA Today bestselling author of The Widower’s Wife (August 2016), Lies She Told (Sept. 2017), Dark Turns (November 2015), and One Little Secret (July 9, 2019). An award-winning journalist and former television producer, her articles have appeared in BusinessWeek, The Boston Globe, The Record newspaper, and on many web sites. She is a graduate of Princeton University and lives in New Jersey with her husband, two young daughters, and sometimes-good dog.

©2022 – V Williams