This is a far cry from all of the festive holiday posts around here lately - but, well, reality is I like books with twists and turns. The tangled web that can be woven from secrets or lies in a character's past pretty much always makes for an interesting story. And right on point, most of the titles here even have "secret" or "lie" in the title, reflecting that you know you're going to be in for a page-turning ride as you try to unravel that web...
Sweet Little Lies
This popped up as a
Book of the Month Club option a few months back, and I was hoping it would check all of my mystery-loving boxes: set in England/Ireland, starring a detective who is flawed and maybe crosses some ethical boundaries in their work but someone you can like/root for, and with a storyline that weaves together a mystery in the detective's work that brings up or connects with some mystery or secret of their past. And: check, check, check! Cat Kinsella puts her a troubled childhood in the past, with a rising career as a detective in the Metropolitan Police Force in London - but when her work on a new murder investigation calls her to her home neighborhood, where her estranged father still lives, some long-buried memories of her childhood are dredged up. When the investigation gets linked to Maryanne Doyle, a teenager she knew who went missing years ago, she has to figure out whether her memories and long-held beliefs about her father and his potential involvement are actually true, and whether her its her father who is lying, or her memory that is false. As she untangles this web of secrets and lies, the character development and storytelling remind me of my mystery favorites - most especially
Tana French (and most especially there,
Faithful Place, which also deals with a detective confronting his history in his home neighborhood when a dead body turns up) - in incorporating not only an interesting mystery storyline but also an interesting, well fleshed-out character. Also, I appreciated that the ending was a bit ambiguous here, so it definitely feels more developed than a standard-format detective genre read. And of course leads me to hope that this turns into a series!
4/5 stars
The Witch Elm
Speaking of my favorite, Tana French - I was eager to get my hands on her latest release, despite learning that it's a standalone and not part of the
Dublin Murder Squad series that I love so much. And my verdict? She's still my favorite and it's really well written, but I still kinda wish she had written another Dublin Murder Squad book instead, since I prefer more of a detective/procedural with the psychological twist, more than just the straight-up psychological suspense. In
The Witch Elm, the main character Toby has always lived a charmed life, but then what happens to a happy-go-lucky person when that luck seems to run out? First he is the victim of a brutal beating during a robbery in his home, and then when he moves to the extended family ancestral home to recuperate and also help care for his beloved uncle who has been diagnosed with brain cancer, things really go haywire when a body is found buried in the old elm tree in the back yard. Family relationships are strained as he and his cousins explore their memories and differing stories of that summer years ago when one of their classmates went missing - as Toby realizes that maybe his memories are now completely false, after the brain trauma in the robbery - and with the investigation into this murder running in the background, the story explores memory, whether really know who we/each other are, and what things we might be capable of that we don't even realize. Though I'd say it's a bit more about the characters than a dramatic, fast-paced plot, and it's quite a long book, it's well written and developed enough that it ends up being quite engrossing. It actually reminded me in many ways of
The Secret History, but with characters who were perhaps a bit more likeable - so if you're a fan of
The Secret History, definitely check it out, or if you like slow-burning psychological reads where you can't quite decide if this narrator is reliable or not - and he can't even decide it about himself!
3.5/5 stars
The Lying Game
Talk about lies driving a plot line - this one is totally based on them, with a "lying game" that four girls played in their teenage years, while they were inseparable friends at a boarding school together, always trying to one-up each other with tricking other students or faculty. Flash to present day, when the closeness of their relationships has lessened a bit with time, but Fatima, Thea, and Isa still drop everything to come when Kate texts, "I need you." It turns out that whatever happened to cause them all to leave the school one year, and especially what caused Kate's father, the art teacher, to leave, is the biggest lie of the game. Now the secret coming to light, and the reader get lots of twists and turns along the way as they try to figure out just what part each girl had to play in how it all played out. This is the first of Ruth Ware's books that I've read, so I don't have her others to compare it to, but I'd say it reminded me of authors like
Lisa Jewell; perhaps also a good pick for someone who enjoys something like
Not That I Could Tell or
The Perfect Mother or
Big Little Lies, if you're looking for something with twists and turns, quite relationship-based, that's not gory or too creepy - it's the kind of book that's a good ride while you're reading it but won't exactly stick with you. So:
3/5 stars
The Secret History
Told as a story looking back at his college years at a seemingly idyllic school in Vermont, Richard recounts how he got involved with this eccentric group of friends studying the classics under the unconventional tutelage of a charismatic professor - and how this group, in their quest to find a higher state of being, reaching for the ideas of the ancient Greeks and their bacchanals, gets involved in murder and the subsequent cover-up. This is a backlist title that I had never picked up until this fall when I heard it recommended/talked up by several people/podcasts I trust in the span of a few days. And I'm afraid that expectations may have let me down here... Perhaps I thought I was in for more of a mystery, but really it's more of an exploration of morality and guilt with a very slow burn (tons of time on background here) in terms of the murder plot. The only pacing really pulling the story along for me, once we finally got beyond the background/development of relationships to the murder part that you know is coming right from the beginning, was the tenseness of the characters involved in their guilty feelings, their fear of discovery, and what that does to their personalities and relationships, making them all jumpy or more alcoholic than usual, etc. I like stories about groups of eccentric misfits, but I think I like them with a bit more of a lighter tone. Or at least with one or two of the characters actually being likeable - which I didn't really find in this book. Also I hated that I could not for the life of me figure out what decade it was supposed to be set in. However, I can see why it is thought of as a very well crafted book, and connections to other books I have read makes it more interesting too, so though I struggled a bit to get through it, I say:
3/5 stars
One of Us Is Lying
At the beginning of this story, five students fitting every range of high school stereo type (jock, homecoming princess, Yale-bound braniac, stoner, and the loner/outcast) walk into detention that they earned after having been caught with cell phones in class - except the phones seem to have been planted in their bags. And just a few minutes later, one of them is dead after a terrible allergic reaction to peanut oil. Since the one who died is a student who had an app where he published gossipy but kind of vicious things about people in the school (who hooked up with whom, etc.), this looks like murder, since a lot of people had reason to hate him. And it turns out that all of the remaining students in the room have secrets that Simon was about to publish. So even as they band together to figure out what happened, there's still that undercurrent of thinking that one of them could be lying... Plenty more secrets come to light by the end of the book, which makes for some great twists and turns and totally addictive reading. I loved that it had the cute but somewhat unexpected/mismatched romantic relationship of a book like
Emergency Contact, the new group of friends coming together after the "popular" trappings fall away of a book like
Puddin', all the escapist fun and characters you just have to love of a YA book in general - PLUS this whodunit plot that kept me guessing until the end. Maybe not the world's greatest literature, but I had a lot of fun devouring this one.
4/5 stars
So - not exactly "seasonal", but if you've got some time to pick up a book over the holiday break, here you can find some great ideas here for something that you'll want to curl up with and not put down!
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