An Honest Lie - Tarryn Fisher

Thriller

Rating: 6.5/10

Now: Rainy has uprooted her life for a fresh start with her partner.  To please him, she begrudgingly joins a social group made up of the wives and partners of his friends.

Then: Summer, a young girl mourning the loss of her father, finds herself living in what she is sure is a cult. Brought to their door by her desperate mother.

Rainy’s secrets are buried deep, and she is not keen to share them.  Certainly not with this group of women she has nothing in common with and can barely tolerate. Think real housewives of nowhere you’ve ever heard of…

And therein lies my problem with this book.

Rainey is a smart, savvy, and strong woman and yet allows herself to be cajoled by her man into forced fun with these women.  Even finding herself agreeing to a girl’s weekend in Vegas during which her past resurfaces as the reader learns her backstory through flashbacks.

Now don’t get me wrong, Rainey both now and then is a fascinating woman who I cared about and wanted to know.  But I couldn’t buy that she would allow herself to be laid bare in the presence of these women. That she would risk her nightmare unfolding among virtual strangers. The fact that that is how it played out baffled me at every turn. A disconnect that drove down the rating on this read without question.

And lest you judge me for going back on my assertion that I have no problem with unlikable characters, I don’t.  It’s the uninteresting ones that I wrestle with. 

Book Pairing(s): The Wives by Tarryn Fisher, Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson, The Project by Courtney Summers