Sinful Deceptions

by Zoe Miller

[Leah]

Alix Berkeley, the glamorous, Paris based make-up artist, is about to step onto the international stage with the launch of her signature brand of cosmetics. Successful beyond her dreams, it seems that nothing can stop her stellar rise to the top. Until a mistake from her past returns to haunt her. Her sister Emma Colgan lives in an affluent Dublin suburb and appears to have it all. But after years of playing the role of devoted wife and mother, she longs for her old self and a sense of excitement. Then, one night, she does something that will shake her family to its very core. As Alix’s glitzy launch night in Paris draws near, secrets the two sisters fought to hide begin to emerge and both are about to discover just how much their reckless mistakes have cost them.

I first heard about Sinful Deceptions when Zoe herself emailed us to bring the book to our attention. I thought it sounded really, really great and I was sad to find I had to wait six months or so for the book to be released. Those six months finally passed and I managed to get myself a copy of the book to review and I managed to get it read during my hour-long break at work as well as in the evenings when I got home and I was pleasantly surprised with the book.

Sinful Deceptions begins with a very intriguing Prologue, telling how Camille Berkeley was killed in a car accident, along with her supposed lover, causing scandal in the small corner of the Cotswolds where the Berkeley family reside. We then come flying back to the present day and we’re introduced to Alix Berkely and Emma Colgan, the two daughters of Camille. Alix is a make-up artist living her life to the full in Paris whereas Emma is a mum to two grown up children and is married to Oliver. However neither sister are happy in their current lives, and are hiding secrets – from themselves, from each other and from their family and friends – and as Alix prepares for the glitzy launch of her make-up collection Alix B, her past comes back to haunt her. Emma, on the other hand, makes a dreadful mistake that threatens to ruin her entire family and life as she knows it. I found the entire plot intriguing and I was quickly sucked into the book.

With the title of Sinful Deceptions, I was expecting a little bit more from the plot, though. I wanted something shocking. What Emma does is not shocking at all, not really in this day and age with it happening with anyone and everyone and it’s ridiculously easy to guess as the book leads up to her moment. Alix’s secrets were far more interesting, one more so than the others, but again it was pretty much run of the mill stuff. I don’t know what I was expecting, not really, but I was disappointed with what I got. I found the fact Alix and Emma used their mother as an excuse ridiculous – just because your mother cheats and lies and keeps secrets doesn’t mean at all that her daughters will inherit it, because deceitfulness isn’t something you inherit, it’s something you can choose to do. I thought they both used their mother as a cop-out and it just didn’t wash with me, it was a bit of a lame excuse.

I also don’t really know what I made of Alix or Emma. They both lie during the book and while they found it easy to berate their mother for what she allegedly did, they themselves did things very similar. So, again, their mother is included but she oversteps the mark, yet again. Obviously because they are both her daughters they’re like her, but not to that extent. Because like I say, you don’t inherit dishonesty, that’s something you choose to do or not to do. We don’t really see much of Oliver, Emma’s husband so I didn’t really like or dislike him. As for Libby, Emma’s daughter, I liked her most of the time, but she had her moments where I just wanted to give her a very hard shake. The only character I truly liked was Tom, Alix’s ex-boyfriend. He was the only character who seemed genuine to me, and I would have loved to have seen more of him (although I could understand why we didn’t). Those are pretty much the only characters in the book, along with a load of fringe characters who weren’t really around enough for me to judge properly.

It might seem like I’m completely dragging the book down, but I actually found it very readable. Yes, I had issues with the book and yes, I would have preferred it if we had dug into Camille Berkeley’s, and her husband’s, life because, lets face it, that Prologue had me completely hooked and I wanted to know more about how she ended up dead in a car crash. That story could have ran parallel with Alix, Emma and Libby’s (as Libby, Emma’s daughter, also has parts in the book). There was a bit of a twist at the end, which surprised me but which I didn’t expect at all. I also liked that the book was set in the third-person as it let us get to move from Alix to Emma to Libby and backwards and forwards and the fact Zoe Miller can juggle so many characters tells me she’s obviously a very promising author. So although I wasn’t completely convinced with Sinful Deceptions, I will look out for Zoe’s other books because she managed to keep me hooked throughout and I was turning the pages as fast as I could, whenever I could.