 |
Everything Is Lies by Helen Callaghan
Publication Date 22nd February 2018
Penguin UK/Michael Joseph |
No-one is who you think they are: Sophia's parents lead quiet, unremarkable lives. At least that is what she's always believed.
Everyone has secrets
Until the day she arrives at her childhood home to find a house ringing with silence. Her mother is hanging from a tree. Her father is lying in a pool of his own blood, near to death.
Especially those closest to you
The police are convinced it is an attempted murder-suicide. But Sophia is sure that the woman who brought her up isn't a killer. As her father is too ill to talk it is up to Sophia to clear her mother's name. And to do this she needs to delve deep into her family's past - a past full of dark secrets she never suspected were there . . .
What if your parents had been lying to you since the day you were born?
My Thoughts:
We are introduced to Sophia as she is finding her way in the exciting world of independence in a new job in London after an over protective childhood in rural England. Her mum Nina rings her regularly, guilt-tripping her into going back to the family home into the clutches of her parents. This night is no different, however this time Sophia gets the feeling that something is a bit "off" with her mum's phone call. Despite this, she stands her ground and stalls her mum saying that she will pay her a visit the following day. She will forever wish she had gone straight to her parents' home that evening as she finds a scene of horror when she gets there the following morning; her mum hanging from a tree and her father barely clinging to life near her mum's lifeless body. Sophia has always known her parents to be quiet, private people with few friends; her mum, in particular, a needy person. Her view of them both is constantly changing once the investigation into her mum's death gets under way and the facts of the case gradually get uncovered.
It would appear her mum had a very different life in her younger years. The discovery that her mum was about to publish a memoir of her youth shocks Sophia - particularly when she reads the first two thirds of the memoir and finds out exactly what she became involved in when she mixed with rock star Aaron Kessler and his cronies during her short university career - Sophia was totally unaware her mum had even been to uni! The final third of the memoir proves to be elusive and Sophia comes to believe that the missing third notebook holds all the answers to what happened to her parents that night.
The story switches between Sophia's point of view and Nina's narration of events back in her youth, which works really well in drip feeding the information the reader needs to complete the picture and see how that information affects present day events. The author cleverly demonstrates how people often create respectable personas for themselves in later life which expertly hide what has gone before - but that veneer can easily be destroyed when ghosts from the past rear their heads. The lengths some people will go to in order to keep the skeletons hidden in their closets can be deadly.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't wait to pick it up to discover the next revelation the author had in store for me. I certainly didn't find it predictable in any way, and would definitely recommend it.
About the Author:
My name is Helen Callaghan and I write fiction whenever I’m left unsupervised. I live in Cambridge amongst teetering piles of books.I’ve always written, it’s my one constant. I was at various points a student nurse, barmaid and drama student. Eventually I settled into bookselling, working as a fiction specialist and buyer for a variety of bookshops, and did that for nearly ten years. In the end I became restless and studied for A-levels at night school. I achieved a place at Cambridge University as a mature student, where I studied Archaeology.
When I’m not writing fiction I write technical documentation for IT companies, which is every bit as thrilling as it sounds.
My debut novel, Dear Amy, is published by Michael Joseph and available now. My forthcoming novel, Everything Is Lies, is being published by them on February 22nd, 2018.
I am represented by Judith Murray at Greene and Heaton Ltd.
No comments:
Post a Comment