Sweet Little Lies

by Caz Frear

[Leah]

Sweet Little Lies grabbed my attention because of its spine, it’s lime-green and I love it. Yes, I am a cover snob and yes, I am attracted to book covers with bright spines. What can I say, bright colours catch my eye! Getting serious, this is a thriller and I’ve read very few thrillers lately, having got a bit bored of the genre – there’s only so many times a woman can go missing, or a husband can be evasive about that woman going missing, or a child goes missing, etc, until you reach your limit. But I was intrigued by Sweet Little Lies because the back cover blurb is all about Cat’s dad and *his* role in a girl’s disappearance, that he lied. That he misled people, etc and it was just such an intriguing way to write the blurb!

I had a few tiny issues with Sweet Little Lies, so we’ll get them out of the way first: a police officer smoking weed is wrong, whatever way you dress it up. Google hasn’t come up much, but it did bring up an article that a police officer was sacked for smoking weed. That immediately lost points with me, that Cat smoked weed. Weed is still illegal in the UK, unless you have one of those medical dispensation cards??? And it just irked me immensely. Am I on a high horse? I dunno, but I didn’t like it. I don’t know why authors try to dress up smoking drugs as if it’s okay, as if it’s “cool”.

I also was so alarmingly baffled by Cat’s relationship with her dad. We get it, it’s complex. Her dad lied about Maryanne Doyle, Maryanne Doyle subsequently went missing, and since then Cat has tried to punish him and it was excruciating to read about. I’m all for daddy issues – but I cringed at the way Cat talked to her dad. Especially since she had no proof, just what her eight-year-old mind saw. And even then, at eight-years-old that’s hardly reliable. My memories of being eight are vague. I remember some things, some events, but I certainly don’t have day-to-day memories of anything at that age, and yet Cat remembers everything about that holiday perfectly (except we later learn, she doesn’t, as there’s an entire conversation that was had that she didn’t remember). I suppose what I didn’t get was that it Cat hated her dad so much, wanted to get back at him for hurting her mum so much, why she didn’t look into her dad properly? She’s a police officer, she could have mentioned it to her team at the very start, “Oh by the way, my dad knew that lass…” and he would have been investigated properly. But she didn’t. Was it loyalty? I do not know. It’s what kept me reading – because their relationship was like an off-balance see-saw; her dad was pretty decent to her all things considered, but Cat just didn’t give him the time of day.

Sweet Little Lies was such an intriguing read. It kept me gripped throughout, and I had not guessed how the plot would come together at all, which I always appreciate. I like when authors can still surprise me. I don’t know if Caz Frear plans more books with Cat, I would probably read them, though only if it’s with the same murder team as this one, as I liked Parnell and Steele. And I kinda feel like there’s more to Cat that we could learn, that we could see her really grow. Caz Frear has definitely hit it out of the park with her debut novel – it was tight, it was tense, it was paced so incredibly well and it kept me properly hooked from start to finish and I just had no idea where it was going.