Book Review: Lies She Told by Cate Holahan

Lies She Told by Cate Holahan
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication date : July 10, 2018
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

Liza Cole, a once-successful novelist whose career has seen better days, has one month to write the thriller that could land her back on the bestseller list. Meanwhile, she’s struggling to start a family, but her husband is distracted by the disappearance of his best friend, Nick. As stresses weigh her down in her professional and personal lives, Liza escapes into writing the chilling exploits of her latest heroine, Beth.

Beth, a new mother, suspects her husband is cheating on her while she’s home caring for their newborn. Angry and betrayed, she aims to catch him in the act and make him pay for shattering the illusion of their perfect life. But before she realizes what she’s doing, she’s tossing the body of her husband’s mistress into the East River.

Then, the lines between Liza’s fiction and her reality eerily blur. Nick’s body is dragged from the East River, and Liza’s husband is arrested for his murder. Before her deadline is up, Liza will have to face up to the truths about the people around her, including her own. If she doesn’t, the end of her heroine’s story could be the end of her own.

Liza is a romantic thriller author who’s in a bit of a writer’s slump. When her editor presses her for an outline of her latest book, she balks. She doesn’t like outlines. Instead, she tells him she will deliver the finished book in one month.

At the same time, her husband has grown distant after his best friend went missing a month ago. Liza has been undergoing fertility treatments that are not working and having an absent husband is not helping on that front.

Lies She Told alternates between Liza’s real life and the novel she’s writing about Beth, a new mom whose husband may be cheating on her.

This book started out slowly. At one point, I was wondering why it’s classified as a thriller – there were no thrills. It finally picked up in the last few chapters and then it was twist after twist.

I picked up this book when I was in a bit of a reading slump and I was hoping for an unputdownable thriller. I enjoyed this book, but it wasn’t as much of a page turner as I was hoping it would be.