Lies She Told by Cate Holahan — Book Review

From the author of the USA Today–bestselling novel The Widower’s Wife, comes an electrifying story of love and deceit, where the truth can be darker than fiction.

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.

The premise of this had me hooked from the first page. Holahan excellently weaves a narrative between a struggling author and her latest heroine's tragic storyline. Lines between fiction and reality quickly blur as Liza and Beth's lives begin to mirror each other.

After a string of failed books and infertility issues, Liza is working on her latest book while dealing with the aftermath of her husband's friend's disappearance. As cracks appear in the seemingly perfect marriage, the reader is quickly submerged into Beth's murder-revenge story in every other chapter, mirroring moments and characters from the author's real life.

Many aspects of what it's like to be a writer are perfectly articulated and portrayed through Liza. Holahan shows the downside of what could happen to an author who gets into their character's dark headspace and can't get out of it when you've hit save and closed the laptop. Obviously, Liza is on the extreme end of the spiral some creatives could go down - one she cannot come back from in her case. Other aspects, such as how Liza views the world and the emotional toll writing can have on someone outside of their craft and the writing method, are much more relatable to a writer reading this. Liza was a unique character to tell this story through. A character you wanted to root for becomes the villain of her own story without realising it, which was a fresh take on a heroine of a thriller.

As someone who has read - and written - a few female-led thrillers, Beth was a very familiar character in this genre. New mum Beth goes on a spiral after discovering her husband is having an affair weeks after giving birth. Bouncing between wanting to save her marriage or end it, she develops an intense attraction to her new therapist. When both relationships disintegrate, Beth's jealousy and paranoia drive her to commit murder. Beth starts as a sympathetic character - more so than Liza, which is interesting because Liza is Beth's author - but quickly becomes a darker character, much like her author. Murder, deceit and jealousy follow both women as the real story unfolds.

Very early into the reading of this book, I called a friend and predicted what was really going on with Liza. I was right, which took some of the suspense out of the reading experience. The writing kept me interested, but the reveal at the end was what I expected. A few reveals surprised me, but both characters get an ending that neither truly deserved after their actions. Whether justice is served or not, Beth and Liza are both victims and antagonists of their ultimate fates, which the author portrays well in this book. As I listened to this part on Audible, the duo casting of Amy McFadden and Lisa Larsen as Beth and Liza were brilliant, and both voice actors made this an engaging listen.

One could read this as an interesting take on a villain origin story. Not all characters we are meant to sympathise with, and Lies She Tells is an original take on that concept. This was a quick read, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a good thriller about authors. If you're a fan of Sarah A. Denzil's Saving April, the cult classic Fatal Attraction or Paula Hawkin's The Girl on the Train - give this a read!

My rating for Cate Holahan's Lies She Told is ★★★.