Title: Behind Every Lie
Author: Christina McDonald
Published: February 2020, Gallery Books
Format: ARC E-book, 336 pages
Source: Netgalley
Summary:
From the USA TODAY bestselling author of The Night Olivia Fell—an “emotionally charged mystery” (Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author)—comes a thrilling new suspense novel about the insidious nature of family secrets…and their deadly potential.
If you can’t remember it, how do you prove you didn’t do it?
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.
My thoughts: This is the first book I’ve read by Christina McDonald and it definitely grabbed me from the go. I read it as a buddy read with the #notyomamasbookclub and it is a great book to read for a book club.
I loved the way this story is told, alternating between the present and the past and eventually weaving the stories together. It is an emotionally charged story about the lengths a mother will go to protect to protect their child and I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out just what was going on. I do have to say there were some parts that I felt were a little bit contrived, but all in all, it was a thrilling book that really gets your heart pumping.
I love when an author plays around with memory and that is definitely what happens here. Eva has been struck with lightning and wakes up to find that she has no memory of the incident and on top of that, her mother has been murdered that same night. But she also has a trauma from back in college when she was attacked and that emotional trauma has been following her ever since.
This book had so many moving parts. It explores the complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships quite well, as well as the danger of keeping secrets. I really found myself hooked and even though I had an inkling of where things were headed and who was involved, I still couldn’t figure out the why and how. But it definitely had me frantically flipping those pages to get the answers, for sure.
I enjoyed this book and am looking forward to our final discussion on the last half of this book. I think there will be some interesting chats going. And I definitely will be picking up Christina McDonald’s debut novel, The Night Olivia Fell, very soon…I really like her writing and will certainly be keeping an eye out for what she writes next!
