Publishing in ebook 22nd October 2020 and paperback 19th November 2020 from Agora Books.
From the cover of the book:
When everything you say is a lie, can you even remember the truth?Annie lives a quiet, contained, content life. She goes to work. She meets her friend. She’s kind of in a relationship. She’s happy. Not lonely at all.
If only more people could see how friendly she is — how eager to help and please. Then she could tick “Full Happy Life” off her list. But no one sees that side of Annie, and she can’t understand why.
That all changes the night Chloe Hills disappears. And Annie is the last person to see her.
This is her chance to prove to everybody that she’s worth something. That is, until she becomes a
suspect.
Drenched in atmosphere and taut with tension, All Your Little Lies takes a hard look at why good
people do bad things.
************************************
What a cracking little thriller All Your Little Lies turned out to be! Once I started it, I could not put it down, and ended up reading it in a single sitting - if perching uncomfortably on the edge of your seat counts as sitting!
Annie Marwood is a young woman with a murky past, which unfolds beautifully through out the book in the form of childhood flashbacks, that cut periodically into action taking place in the present. The weight of her history hangs heavy on her and has led to her being a bit of a recluse, choosing to keep away from prying eyes and the chance that anyone might get too close - except for her one and only friend Lauren, although even she does not know the real truth.
Her sheltered life means that she has never really learned how to act in social situations, and she often misreads the intentions of others. She longs to be easy-going and popular like Lauren, and she tries to be as friendly as her limitations will allow, but her efforts sometimes make her come across as odd. She yearns for some love in her life too, and she rather likes her work colleague, Paul - and she is sure he is attracted to her in return, but her attempts to force a relationship with him have been something of a disaster.
Annie is happy in her own way, at least on the surface, but when a young girl goes missing in her small town, the legacy of her past that makes her obsessed with missing children cases leads to her misguidedly getting involved in the investigation and derailing the quiet contented life she has tried to create for herself. It seems Annie was there when the girl disappeared, even if she cannot remember seeing her, but in her desperation to eliminate herself from the inquiries she ends up making herself look like a suspect - and as the lies start to show, the situation snowballs into something dangerous and unpredictable.
Annie is a complex character, socially awkward and not very good at reading others, which means she gets herself into scrapes and difficult situations. There were many times in this book that she was so frustrating I wanted to give her a shake and get her to see sense, but she is so used to telling lies about her own life that she finds it very hard to admit to the truth about anything.
Interestingly, as Annie's chilling past is revealed - and her secrets are horrifying indeed - you understand completely why she is the way she is, and her parents have been more than complicit in this, especially her mother. Annie is terrified about people finding out about her past and this creates an almost impenetrable barrier that means she cannot let herself be close to anyone. But her history also makes her adept at picking up some of clues about the disappearance of the missing girl that others seem to have missed, which was really rather clever in the part of the author, Marianne Holmes.
The book also asks some intriguing questions about the hysteria that can build up around the cases of missing children, and how both mass media, and social media, can stoke this into a frenzy that brings about devastating consequences.
This is a proper page turner that is perfectly paced and will keep you guessing all the way through. It's tense, exciting, thoroughly absorbing and ultimately rather touching - think Eleanor Oliphant mixed with Girl on a Train and you will get the idea.... but no spoilers from me.
If you like your thrillers tense, this is the one for you!
All Your Little Lies is available to preorder from your favourite book retailer now!
Thank you to Agora Books and Marianne Holmes for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Peyton Stableford from Agora for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
Marianne Holmes is the author of A Little Bird Told Me, published by Agora Books in 2018.
She was born in Cyprus and bounced around the UK, Germany, Kuwait and Belgium with her RAF parents as a child but is now firmly based in London with her own family.
She has degrees in Classics (RHUL) and Linguistics (UCL), neither of which got much use while she worked in marketing.
No comments:
Post a Comment