Lies

by T M Logan

"Six days ago, Joe Lynch was a happily married man, a devoted father, and a respected teacher living in a well-to-do London suburb. But that was before he spotted his wife's car entering a hotel parking garage. Before he saw her in a heated argument with her best friend's husband. Before Joe confronted the other man in an altercation where he left him for dead, bleeding and unconscious. Now, Joe's life is unraveling. His wife has lied to him. Her deception has put their entire family in jeopardy. The man she met at the hotel has vanished. And as the police investigate his disappearance, suspicion falls on Joe"--

• ISBN10: 1250182263
• ISBN13: 9781250182265
• Publish Date: 11 September 2018 (first published 4 May 2017)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 16 November 2021
• Imprint: St. Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[chymerra]

I can't even begin to explain how much I liked this book. Can't even begin. I will admit that I went into reading Lies, thinking that this book was going to be an ordinary mystery. Then I started reading the book and well, I was proven wrong, This book is anything but ordinary.

Lies had a simple plot. Joe sees his wife going into a hotel parking lot. Seeing that she is supposed to be at work, he follows her. He ends up witnessing her arguing with a family friend. Breaking them up, the friend turns on Joe and tries to start a fight. Forced to defend himself, Joe knocks the friend unconscious. Before he could get help for him, Joe's son has an asthma attack...which requires Joe to go home to get his inhaler. Returning, he finds that his friend has disappeared. Strange things start happening that culminate with the police charging Joe with murder. But everything is not what it seems. The truth is more sinister than what Joe expected.

I felt awful for Joe. His life was destroyed within a week. I did think that his reaction to what was going on was pretty dead on for an ordinary guy. His confusion over everything came off the pages. Even his actions started showing how erratic he was becoming. I love it that the author took him to the edge and then pulled him back. I won't say what pulled him back. But I will say that it was brilliant. 

The mystery angle of the book was excellently written. I did figure out part of what was going on. I thought it was the whole thing. But, then the major plot twist happened and it seemed like it came out of left field. There is a smaller, minor plot twist that happens almost after the major one. It only added to the story. It was also sad. 

The suspense angle of the book was awesome. I was with Joe, wondering who was tormenting him.

The end of the book was insane. Like I mentioned above, there was a plot twist that blew my mind. I didn't see it coming. But, the author also touched on what happened afterward. Which is something that I don't see too often in books like these. I was glad that the author chose to do that. It gave me the closure that I needed.

What I liked about Lies:

A) How intense the book was

B) Joe. 

C) The plot twist

What I disliked about Lies:

A) Nothing, the book was very well written

I would give Lies an Adult rating. There is no sex. But there are sexually explicit pictures and talk. There is violence. There is language. I would suggest that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

There are trigger warnings for Lies. They are stalking and death.

I would reread Lies. I would also recommend this book to family and friends.

I would like to thank St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review Lies.

All opinions stated in this review of Lies are mine

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

[Leah]

Lies is one of those books that you start reading, and before long you it’s bedtime but you’re halfway through the book so you stay up to finish it, leaving you open-mouthed and hard to believe what kind of rollercoaster you’ve just been on at 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s intense, insane, enthralling, and the chapters literally whiz by, helped massively by the fact that one chapter blends SO seamlessly into the next one that you just can’t help but keep reading, until your eyes are incredibly sore because you’ve been starting at your Kindle screen for over 4 hours. It’s INSANE.

What absolutely baffled me the most was the simple fact of how quick a life can change – this book literally spans about 10 days in total and Joe goes from this normal dad, with a normal job, normal life, to something completely different, after he finds himself in the frame for the disappearance of acquaintance Ben. Everything that comes out after that is just like one piece of bad news after another and JUST when you think it can’t get any worse for Joe, that he’s literally had EVERYTHING but the kitchen sink thrown at him, some other twist or secret comes out and you just start to wonder what he must have done to upset the world because, damn, was it out to get him.

I actually really liked Joe. He was a decent fella, decent husband, didn’t do a lot wrong, except for the parking lot fight with Ben, who was a jerk, then all of a sudden his life is in the toilet and he’s trying to figure out just why Ben is trying to ruin his life AND keep himself out of prison. It’s so intense. You’re right there with Joe as he tries to find Ben and keep his family together and you just get SO involved in the plot, it’s so, so insane. It’s like trying to figure out the world’s most intense crossword puzzle, where the answers are on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t figure it out for toffee.

Did I know where Lies was going? DID I HECK. One minute I thought I had it all figured out, and then wham! I was smacked in the face with yet another plot twist. I’ve never been so baffled by a book and it was incredibly hard to try and keep everything I knew about Ben and Joe and everyone straight – to remember what the messages said that Joe got (which added yet another interesting turn to things), to try and remember all the little bits that JOE remembered but didn’t quite get, so that when he got them, you got them. It was intense and surreal and utterly amazing, even when I put the book down, even for a toilet break, I was thinking about it and that ending just absolutely blew my tiny mind. I didn’t see it coming and it was FANTASTIC.

PS: I feel like I have to say this, in defence of all the Geordies and Mackems but IF YOU COME FROM SUNDERLAND YOU’RE NOT A GEORDIE OKAY? This book says that Ben is a Geordie and has a Geordie accent. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. Geordies come from Newcastle, Mackems come from Sunderland. That’s the rules and it will offend a ton of Mackems to be referred to as Geordies in the book, so I hope that gets changed.