The Lies You Told
Fiction
Grand Central Publishing
December 1, 2020
Hardcover
400
Free from publisher
In the playground it's the law of the jungle But at the school gate, there are no rules at all... When Sadie Roper moves back to London, she's determined to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. First, she needs to get her daughter settled into a new school-one of the most exclusive in the city. Next, she's going to get back the high-flying criminal barrister career she sacrificed for marriage ten years earlier. But nothing goes quite as planned. The school is not very welcoming newcomers, her daughter hasn't made any friends yet and the other mothers are as fiercely competitive as their children. Sadie immediately finds herself on the outside as she navigates the fraught politics of the school gate. But the tide starts to turn as Sadie begins to work on a scandalous, high-profile case that's the perfect opportunity to prove herself again, even though a dangerous flirtation threatens to cloud her professional judgment. And when Julia, queen of the school moms, befriends Sadie, she draws her into the heart of the world from which she was previously excluded. Soon Sadie and her family start to thrive, but does this close new friendship prevent her from seeing the truth? Sadie may be keeping her friends close, but what she doesn't know is that her enemies are closer still... Dark, addictive and compelling, The Lies You Told is a compulsive psychological thriller from a master storyteller.
My review:
This was a solid thriller with many moving parts, perhaps too many, but more on that later. I was completely invested in the three parallel storylines. First was the schoolyard theme, with parent competitiveness in full on mode. Then we have the family dynamic of a mother and daughter in a delicate situation brought about by an unusual housing situation. Lastly, a court case involving a teacher accused of molesting a student. All of these plots were super interesting, and propelled the story along at a fast pace. For me, while the pace was fast and the stories engaging, I felt that maybe there was too much going on to really settle into each individual plot point. I think using one or two of them may have allowed more expansion of each topic. Nevertheless, I did find myself tearing through this to see how everything was going to play out, so I may just be nitpicking here. The ending was satisfactory, although I did figure out one of the scenarios ahead of the the reveal, which doesn't mean much because there were lots of twists and turns by the end!
Lots of interesting characters to love and loathe, with tons of action, make this a fast paced and engaging thriller. If you like school mom shenanigan stories or courtroom dramas, this will be one to check out.
