Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - This is Why We Lied

The book should've been called "Mercy McAlpine can't cache a break" cause damn, woman must've been a serial killer in her past life to end up with this.

Not bad read, though it did loop around for a bit. There was this feeling of "informative dumping" where I will be like: "woh, woh, wait what?".
& the ending wasn't THE cleanest. I guess that's realistic, but I wanted something MORE.

Anyway, a good(?) story.

Content Warnings

kahoana's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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mizuhanome's review against another edition

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4.0

I'm writing this immediately after finishing. So maybe it's going to be a bit biased because I still feel completely devastated by that ending

This is Why We Lied is a Good Book. It's a Solid Book. It's truly a 4 star book ...for me, personally. It seems like a lot of people really love this book, and I think a part of that is also part of why it didn't fully click for me, which is the fact that this is book 12 in a series. Book 12?!?!?!?

The beginning of this book is really... I'm not sure if "slow" is the right term so much as, it goes over a lot of details that I struggle to care about. The thing is like... I'm sure this book, seeing the main leads go on their honeymoon, is very very satisfying for people who have read the whole series and watched them develop. It just... focuses a lot, too much for my tastes, on "isn't it so nice that these characters you may not know anything about are in love". It's very very very overly sappy and fanservicey before we get into the meat of things. That's pretty minor, though, but it drags at the start... Another thing is that this books writing style really didn't stand out to me one bit, which disappointed me and probably made it a bit hard to feel motivated to read it, but that's solidly personal preference.

It's good, though. I'm a sucker for closed area murder mysteries, I'm a sucker for family drama, all the good things in the synopsis that made me pick up the book were very very much there. I liked the characters a lot overall, in spite of the fact I didn't have a preconceived attachment to them. Although I do kind of agree that the culprit is easy to guess early on, it leads you down a lot of different pathways. Not in a "purposefully twisty to get a shock reaction" way, but genuinely unraveling a complex mystery, one completely mundane and grounded but horrifying and interesting.

That's the thing, though... This book is not for the faint of heart. God. Not even a little. It's INSANELY dark, consistently, throughout the entire book. I mean... the whole book centers around the life of a woman who went through almost every type of abuse imaginable, who truly had no one she could trust to not hurt her, no one she could rely on. (That's another thing I like, as well, getting the victim's POV and fully fleshing her out...) And just when you think you've heard the worst of it, it gets even worse. It's not shock value. Most of it is talked about in past tense, and when it is depicted, it only serves to showcase the true severity of the situation, the deep pain that it causes the victim. It felt very true to the reality of extreme familial abuse. It's just really that horrifying. The final reveal made me nauseous, and then start crying, and there's almost nothing that makes me uncomfortable in written text but it was just so harrowing, so real that I couldn't help but feel ruined by it.

So, like... Do I recommend this book? ...I recommend a good read-through of the content warnings first. And then, yeah.

Content Warnings

pterodog's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I enjoyed this installment much more than the previous one, probably because the story felt a bit more grounded in reality to me. It was sufficiently mysterious to keep me engaged and guessing up until the last few pages, and I did enjoy trying to figure out the culprit while I read.

I'm not sure why everyone forgot that Mercy couldn't have been speaking to Dave when she made that final phone call, but I guess the implication was that she was meant to be speaking to Cecil? This did confuse me a little, which is a shame as otherwise the last part of the story would probably have been less confusing.

I did appreciate Will's character development, and his choice

not to help Dave in the final page of the book. Otherwise, I think it would have felt a little repetitive for me. There's only so many times I can read Will putting his life and his relationship with Sara on the line before I start thinking about this being a Jeffery situation again.

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