If you can’t remember it, how do you prove you didn’t do it?

Release Date: February 4, 2020

Publisher: Gallery Books

Price: $10.99 (paperback)

Plot Summary:

Eva Hansen wakes in the hospital after being struck by lightning and discovers her mother, Kat, has been murdered. Eva was found unconscious down the street. She can’t remember what happened but the police are highly suspicious of her.

Determined to clear her name, Eva heads from Seattle to London—Kat’s former home—for answers. But as she unravels her mother’s carefully held secrets, Eva soon realizes that someone doesn’t want her to know the truth. And with violent memories beginning to emerge, Eva doesn’t know who to trust. Least of all herself.

Told in alternating perspectives from Eva’s search for answers and Kat’s mysterious past, Christina McDonald has crafted another “complex, emotionally intense” (Publishers Weekly) domestic thriller. Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell’s I Found You and Karin Slaughter’s Pieces of Her, Behind Every Lie explores the complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships, family trauma, and the danger behind long-held secrets.

Grade: C-

Review:

I read this author’s debut novel last year, The Night Olivia Fell and I really enjoyed that novel. This novel, although it had a very strong premise of having an unreliable narrator (which I’m a sucker for) really didn’t hit its mark for me. My biggest issue with the novel was that for being a thriller, it seemed to fall under the formula of Lifetime movie thrillers. The so-called “bad guy” is clear from the get-go and any twist reveals aren’t very surprising either as I had figured out the whole novel by the 35% mark.

I don’t fault authors for writing about the same location as a previous novel (hell King has made a career out of setting the majority of his works in Maine), but this novel is also set in Washington state, just as her debut. Again, this novel has the same premise as the author’s debut where a low-middle class character has a relationship with an extremely wealthy man. Apart from the novel being highly predictable (for me), the thing that really irked me the most was the fact that the British characters were so stereotypical of how an American believes a British person acts or speaks. I’ve been to England multiple times and have a lot of British friends and have never heard anyone use “Blimey!” as an expression every two seconds as one of the British characters continuously does in this novel.

Not to mention that the protagonist so conveniently discovered things without any hard work. And honestly, how credible is it for someone to be able to travel TO LONDON from SEATTLE right after being struck by LIGHTENING. I am more likely to believe impossible things in a supernatural novel than a novel set in a fictitious reality of the real world.

Unfortunately, this book didn’t quite work out for me, nor did it offer that much entertainment. I honestly couldn’t wait for it to be done. However, if you’re the type of reader who loves cozy mysteries and Lifetime inspired thrillers, then you may enjoy this book very much. It’s not a terrible book and the writing flows easily. The author excels in descriptions about setting but still is incapable of writing compelling dialogue.

If you’re in the mood for a light read, you can give this book a go.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

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Plot Summary:

In the small hours of the morning, Abi Knight is startled awake by the phone call no mother ever wants to get: her teenage daughter Olivia has fallen off a bridge. Not only is Olivia brain dead, but she’s also pregnant and must remain on life support to keep her baby alive. And then Abi sees the angry bruises circling Olivia’s wrists.

When the police unexpectedly rule Olivia’s fall an accident, Abi decides to find out what really happened that night. Heartbroken and grieving, she unravels the threads of her daughter’s life. Was Olivia’s fall an accident? Or something far more sinister?

Christina McDonald weaves a suspenseful and heartwrenching tale of hidden relationships, devastating lies, and the power of a mother’s love. With flashbacks of Olivia’s own resolve to uncover family secrets, this taut and emotional novel asks: how well do you know your children? And how well do they know you?

Review:

The writing for this thriller was quite simplistic (I’m not saying this is a bad thing, quite contrary), and suits the mystery, as you don’t want the plot to get sidetracked by flowery prose. Instead, the writing was taunt and there was a never-ending mix of twists and turns at every corner. I can forgive the fact that the daughter was pregnant (as it seems like it needed to be a plot device to keep the daughter on life support throughout the whole investigation due to the baby), but it always seems like whenever a daughter is keeping secrets from an overprotective parent it means that they’re either doing drugs or pregnant so it can get a bit cliché.

There were a lot of characters in the book, and since many of them were unreliable or keeping secrets, that means that every person was a suspect until proven innocent. Although I had guessed who had pushed Olivia over the bridge long before it was revealed, I still found the book very enjoyable. Since this was more of a domestic thriller, there wasn’t the sort of urgency you’d see in another type of thriller (as in there was no serial killer on the loose and no one was trying to actively STOP Abi from investigating in any real threatening way).

But I appreciated how the book explored a mother-daughter dynamic that was both asphyxiating as it was tender and loving. We find out in the book exactly why Abi was such an overprotective parent, but how that behaviour is what led to a series of events to occur in Olivia’s life that ultimately led to her falling from the bridge.

I was satisfied with the end, although the epilogue veered towards a Lifetime movie ending of sorts, it had a lot of heart and soul that sucker punched even the most cynical of readers into wishing that Olivia could’ve survived her fatal fall.

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

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Tag: christinamcdonald

Book Review: Behind Every Lie by Christina McDonald

If you can’t remember it, how do you prove you didn’t do it?

Plot Summary:

Grade: C-

Review:

If you’re in the mood for a light read, you can give this book a go.

DID YOU ENJOY WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF YES, THEN SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG, GIVE THE POST A LIKE, OR LEAVE A COMMENT! NEW POSTS ARE UP EVERY TUESDAY & THURSDAY!

Book Review: The Night Olivia Fell by Christina McDonald

A search for the truth. A lifetime of lies.

Plot Summary:

Grade: A

Review:

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