Sometimes I Lie

by Alice Feeney

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can't move. She can't speak. She can't open her eyes. Though she can hear everyone around her, no one knows because she's in a coma. But she doesn't remember what happened. And she has a sneaking suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, the narratives build and collide for an ending that leaves readers speechless. This novel delves into the blurred gap between who we are and who we'd like to be.

• ISBN10: 1250144841
• ISBN13: 9781250144843
• Publish Date: 13 March 2018 (first published 23 March 2017)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 9 September 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Flatiron Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[mrs_mander_reads]

Holy. Crap. I don't know that I'll recover from this one. If you like unreliable narrators, crazy twists, and time jumps, read this now.

[chymerra]

Sometimes I Lie is one of those books that mess with your head. I started reading this book thinking that the book was going in one direction. I wasn’t expecting the plot twist at the end of the book. I also didn’t expect the mystery of who the second narrator was. The author did a great job keeping that person’s identity secret until the end of the book. Any book that can successfully keep plot twists hidden and use red herrings correctly is a book that I recommend to anyone!!

Sometimes I Lie’s plot starts off with Amber waking up in the hospital. Having no memory of the accident, she realizes that there is something wrong with her. Her fears are confirmed when her husband and sister visit and start discussing why Amber is in a coma. She starts to relive the past few weeks, trying to figure out why she ended up in a coma. She needs to find out what happened leading up to the accident. She needs to remember what happened the night of the accident. She needs to wake up. But will she?

I didn’t like Amber at first. Her issues made it very hard to like her. Once the book started getting into her past, my dislike for her started to wane. I started to feel bad for her. She had been through a lot and was starting to heal when the accident happened. But, the more the book went on, the more I realized that Amber caused her own issues. I also realized that Amber wasn’t as helpless or a victim as she liked to think she was. My feelings for her at the end of the book were mixed.

I had mixed feelings about the journal entries when they started. At first, I couldn’t understand why they were included. But, as the story went on, I began to understand why the author chose to include them. I thought the author was genius for not naming either girl, except for the friend’s last name. It made me assume things that turned out to be wrong.

Let’s talk about plot twists. I love a good plot twist….when they are done right. In Sometimes I Lie, they were definitely done right. I was shocked when things turned out the way they did. And the huge plot twist right at the end. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor.

I would rate Sometimes I Lie for Adults only. There is language, violence, and sex. There is a sexual assault on a bedbound hospital patient. That could trigger people reading the book. There is also a miscarriage scene that could trigger. Depression, anxiety, and OCD are also discussed…along with an unnamed mental illness. I would recommend Sometimes I Lie to family and friends but I would warn about what I listed above. This is a book that I would reread.

Pros of Sometimes I Lie:

Plot twists galore
Not knowing where this book was going to go
The journal entries
Cons of Sometimes I Lie:

Amber. I had mixed feelings about her
Claire and Paul. I couldn’t figure out what their relationship was.
The very ending of the book. While I liked it, I didn’t want to see a happy ending.
I would like to thank Flatiron Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review Sometimes I Lie.

All opinions stated in Sometimes I Lie are mine

**I chose to leave this review after reading an advance reader copy**

[dpfaef]

In 1987 I was living in Huntington, Long Island, that Christmas there was a strange news story of a young newly married couple who had a fight, the wife had gone missing.  For at least a week there was nightly news stories about how the young husband was assisting the police in the search and was responsible for providing information that led to the discovery of his wife's body.  He was later convicted of murdering her.  I often wondered if something had tripped in his mind that allowed him to repress what had happened. What happens when the mind gets so so over loaded it can no long know the truth.

Alice Feeney's Sometimes I Lie gives us a glimpse, into the dark side of how the mind works.  She also did an excellent job of messing with my mind in one of the best psychological thriller I have read.  If you enjoy this genre, this is the book to read.

This review was originally posted on The Pfaeffle Journal