My Lies, Your Lies by Susan Lewis – Book Review

My Lies, Your Lies

by

Susan Lewis

Today I am overjoyed to be joining the blog tour for My Lies, Your Lies by Susan Lewis.

Please take a look at the blog tour schedule below and stop by to see what other book blogger’s reactions are to this amazing new publication.

Thank you to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours and to Harper Fiction for a copy of the book which I have reviewed honestly.

About The Book

His life was destroyed by a lie.

Her life will be ruined by the truth.

Joely tells other people’s secrets for a living. As a ghost writer, she’s used to scandal – but this just might be her strangest assignment yet. Freda has never told her story to anyone before. But now she’s ready to set the record straight and to right a wrong that’s haunted her for forty years. Freda’s memoir begins with a 15-year-old girl falling madly in love with her teacher. As the story unravels, Joely is spun deeper into a world of secrets and lies.

Purchase Link

My Thoughts

I find books like this one the hardest to review.

Somehow, there doesn’t seem like there are the correct words to do it justice.

I feel like saying “Don’t listen to what I have to say, just read the book, then we can talk about it….for hours and hours.”

However, I need to say just a few things.

I visited the North Devon location many times and sat on the little water-powered carriage which transports you between Lynton and Lynmouth. It’s the perfect location for the imposing Dimmett House, the home of Freda Donahoe an unpredictable and reclusive author.

When Joely goes there to help Freda write her memoir she is at a crossroads in her personal life and sees the trip to North Devon as a very welcome distraction. She finds Freda difficult to read, sometimes aloof, brash, and erratic. Joely’s ghostwriting comes under great scrutiny from the accomplished author but the unfolding love story between a fifteen-year-old girl and her music teacher is utterly compelling.

When the memoir takes a very sudden and dark turn Joely realises that this is far more than a teenage fantasy.

This dual timeline narrative has a secret revealed around every corner. The captivating storytelling delves through aspects of grief, betrayal, loneliness, and revenge. The ‘story within a story’ element was so cleverly plotted and I enjoyed the references to the 1960s  music. The book highlights that we should never assume or second guess because what seems obvious to some may have a totally different meaning to others. We learn that decades can be wasted harbouring heartbreak and hatred and that the simplest sentence spoken can have a catastrophic effect on people’s lives.

I will always remember this book, especially next time I use the Victorian cliff railway and wander along the South West Coastal Path.

I’m already looking forward to reading it again!

Author Bio

Susan Lewis is the internationally bestselling author of over forty books across the genres of family drama, thriller, suspense and crime, including the Sunday Times bestseller One Minute Later and her most recent novel Home Truths. Susan’s novels have sold nearly three million copies in the UK alone. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol during the 1960s. Susan has previously worked as a secretary in news and current affairs before training as a production assistant working on light entertainment and drama. She’s had homes in Hollywood and the South of France, but now lives in Gloucestershire with husband James, two stepsons and dogs