Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of good things about THE LIE by C.L. Taylor on the book blogosphere so I thought I’d do the done thing and get myself a copy of it. I did so on amazon kindle and paid a ridiculously cheap 99p for it and it’s honestly one of the best 99p’s I’ve spent in a long time. I’ve never read anything by the author before so was quite eager to get stuck into it!
The story focuses on a group of 4 girls. Friends since university, Emma, Daisy, Al, and Leanne decide to go on a girls retreat to a camp in Nepal. The story follows their journey there and the events that have passed since, 5 years later. It focuses on the portrayal of friendship and just how far you would go to protect someone you love. We learn that Emma has changed her name and relocated to escape the aftermath of an accident that happened while they were in Nepal, and we also learn that the surviving girls are no longer in contact with one another. We learn that the characters are flawed and broken and that each of the four girls has demons which have affected them their entire lives- all of this is explored whilst they are in Nepal and contributes beautifully to the plot. I particularly enjoyed the flashback scenes and was very keen to keep reading once I’d gotten started, eager to find out what was going to happen next.
The novel is quite fast paced but at the same time, it is very easy to keep up with. The descriptions are fantastic, as are the character developments and I really found myself both liking and disliking certain characters. I really enjoyed the storyline right up to the last few pages, and while the ending was fair and made sense once I’d read it, I felt that the book was heading in a completely different direction to the one it did.
The switches between time periods was done consistently and equal focus was placed on the present day and the events happening 5 years previously. Certain aspects of the novel were incredibly tense and I found myself shocked by particular happenings. I’ll definitely be picking up “The Accident” by C.L. Taylor at some point in the next few weeks and I’m very excited to see what she has to offer in the future.
4/5
