Title: Seven Lies by Elizabeth Kay
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
Genre: Contemporary, Domestic Suspense, Mystery
Length: 352 pages
Book Rating: B+
Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through Edelweiss
Summary:
It all started with just one little lie. But we all know that it never ends there. Because, of course, one lie leads to another…
Growing up, Jane and Marnie shared everything. They knew the other’s deep-est secrets. They wouldn’t have had it any other way. But when Marnie falls in love, things begin to change.
Because Jane has a secret: she loathes Marnie’s wealthy, priggish husband. So when Marnie asks if she likes him, Jane tells her first lie. After all, even best friends keep some things to themselves. If she had been honest, then perhaps her best friend’s husband might still be alive today. . .
For, of course, it’s not the last lie. In fact, it’s only the beginning…
Seven Lies is Jane’s confession of the truth–her truth. Compelling, so-phisticated, chilling, it’s a seductive, hypnotic pageturner about the tangled, toxic friendships between women, the dark underbelly of obsession and what we stand to lose in the name of love.
Review:
Seven Lies by Elizabeth Kay is a deliciously clever domestic mystery.
Jane Baxter and Marie Gregory have been best friends for eighteen years. Meeting at age eleven, they were inseparable until they went to different universities. They remained close throughout uni and became roommates once they began working. But now Jane feels her friendship with Marnie slipping away as her best friend’s romance with Charles Smith become more serious. She knows if she is completely honest about how much she despises Charles she will lose Marnie forever. So Jane begins spinning a web of lies as she does whatever it takes to hold onto the friendship that means so much to her.
Jane is the chatty narrator of this disturbing tale of obsessive friendship. She has survived a stunning tragedy but she is unhealthily clinging to her friendship with Marnie. She and Marnie are complete opposites with Jane being morose, miserable in her career and devious. Marnie is light and happy with a very successful food blogging career. With a conversational tone, Jane tries to be honest as she recounts each of the seven lies she told her best friend.
Seven Lies is a mesmerizing mystery with a unique storyline and unreliable narrator. The characters are well-drawn and a few are deeply flawed with questionable moral compasses. Jane is a conniving woman whose dark side is well hidden beneath her pleasant, biddable exterior. Marnie is a wonderful woman who has no idea what Jane will do to preserve their friendship. Elizabeth Kay brings this unputdownable domestic mystery to a twist-filled conclusion. A brilliant debut that I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend to readers of the genre.
