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A review by juliwi
Lügen. Nichts als Lügen by Helen Callaghan
4.0
Aaah give me all the family drama thrillers! I heard a lot about Everything is Lies and Helen Callaghan before I even started reading this novel, and usually that makes me quite nervous. There is something about major anticipation that alters a reading experience. The expectations are set high, sometimes so high it is almost impossible for an author to meet them. I'm glad to say Callaghan, however, didn't let me down. Thanks to Penguin UK, Micheal Joseph and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
At the heart of Everything is Lies is Sophia's discovery that everything she thought she knew is perhaps not what it seemed. At the very beginning of the novel she finds herself in a sticky situation with a senior colleague, which sets her on a path of nervous anticipation of disaster. When she discovers her parents, one dead and the other dying, she refuses to believe the police's story that it was her mother. Sophia sets out to prove her mother's innocence and so discovers secrets buried under years of guilt and denial. The pace of Everything is Lies is at times slow but this allows Callaghan to truly set a scene and let her characters get used to the spaces they find themselves in. Throughout the novel Callaghan manages to address a number of themes but the one that stood out to me most was the theme of power (im)balance, especially how easy it is for men in power to take advantage of or threaten young women. It is a very timely theme and it was fascinating to see Callaghan address this in different time periods, both Sophia's present and her mother's past.
Helen Callaghan takes her readers on a journey through Sophia's mind as she begins to unravel her own life and that of her parents. Everything is Lies is split between Sophia's narrative and that of her mother, Nina, as the former starts digging and the latter offers up spare glimpses and explanations. Callaghan strikes a masterful balance between the two, allowing her readers to identify and sympathise with both characters while keeping them on Sophia's side by only giving them the same bare insights as her. There are a number of high intensity scenes in the novel in which Callaghan very successfully keeps the reader on edge, even after the scene has ended. Just like Sophia, the reader finds themselves constantly questioning what people are saying, wondering if they are who they are or if, indeed, everything is lies. In the end I saw some of the plot twists coming, with just enough hints having been dropped that I had terrible realizations before Callaghan revealed them to be truth. But this is part of the fun, figuring things out as or before they happen, and Everything is Lies provides the reader with plenty of twists and turns to make it a real page turner.
For full review: http://universeinwords.blogspot.com/2018/05/review-everything-is-lies-by-helen.html
At the heart of Everything is Lies is Sophia's discovery that everything she thought she knew is perhaps not what it seemed. At the very beginning of the novel she finds herself in a sticky situation with a senior colleague, which sets her on a path of nervous anticipation of disaster. When she discovers her parents, one dead and the other dying, she refuses to believe the police's story that it was her mother. Sophia sets out to prove her mother's innocence and so discovers secrets buried under years of guilt and denial. The pace of Everything is Lies is at times slow but this allows Callaghan to truly set a scene and let her characters get used to the spaces they find themselves in. Throughout the novel Callaghan manages to address a number of themes but the one that stood out to me most was the theme of power (im)balance, especially how easy it is for men in power to take advantage of or threaten young women. It is a very timely theme and it was fascinating to see Callaghan address this in different time periods, both Sophia's present and her mother's past.
Helen Callaghan takes her readers on a journey through Sophia's mind as she begins to unravel her own life and that of her parents. Everything is Lies is split between Sophia's narrative and that of her mother, Nina, as the former starts digging and the latter offers up spare glimpses and explanations. Callaghan strikes a masterful balance between the two, allowing her readers to identify and sympathise with both characters while keeping them on Sophia's side by only giving them the same bare insights as her. There are a number of high intensity scenes in the novel in which Callaghan very successfully keeps the reader on edge, even after the scene has ended. Just like Sophia, the reader finds themselves constantly questioning what people are saying, wondering if they are who they are or if, indeed, everything is lies. In the end I saw some of the plot twists coming, with just enough hints having been dropped that I had terrible realizations before Callaghan revealed them to be truth. But this is part of the fun, figuring things out as or before they happen, and Everything is Lies provides the reader with plenty of twists and turns to make it a real page turner.
For full review: http://universeinwords.blogspot.com/2018/05/review-everything-is-lies-by-helen.html