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A review by obsidian_blue
The Five Year Lie by Sarina Bowen
2.0
I started this a few weeks ago. But I never got a chance to input it because I have it as a paperback. This just really didn’t work. The entire over arching plot was so thin and it seems like Bowen was just too scared to actually make this a really strong thriller in my mind by going one way. The weird happily ever after that she kind of tacked on just didn’t work. The flow of the book was also really really weak. It just jumped back-and-forth between five years earlier in the present day and it just didn’t work with following Drew [five years ago] and Ariel [today].
"The Five Year Lie" follows Ariel. Ariel is a single mother to her four year old son, Buzz. She works at her dead father's camera security company [think Ring doorbell]. Ariel though gets a text message from her son's father, Drew. The only problem is, she hasn't seen or heard from him for five years. And when it's revealed that text messages are being sent to people all over her town from five years previously, Ariel realizes that something may have happened to Drew and him leaving town, may not have been as straight forward as she thought.
Okay, Ariel sucks. Full stop. At times she acts like a teenager because she really is selfish as the day as long and seems to be only be focused on Drew. She spent not even I think 3 months with the guy but it didn't make sense that he had such a hold on her since all of the Drew flashbacks just show them having sex and drinking all the time. True love it was not. And she spends most of the book dumping her son on her mother, borrowing her mother's car, and oh yeah lives in a place on her mother's property. The whole thing was just giving me "Arrested Development."
The other characters were bare bones. We have Ariel's only friend in this one, but it's one she never talks to until the events in the book start spinning out of control. She "makes" a friend at work who helps her investigate, but she spends time judging them it felt. Her mother and her relationship isn't super great, but you read about her father and get why.
Drew wasn't great. We find out [so freaking slowly] what he was up to and why and it didn't pass the smell test even a little. I won't get into the ending reveal about things because it was so dumb it made my head hurt.
We also get another point of view by someone calling themselves "The Brainz" and I just think that whole thing should have been cut.
The flow was awful. I think I saw a reviewer said this was a sad "The Last Thing He Told Me" knock-off and goodness knows I loathed that book, but definitely see the similarities in plot and just poor development/flow.
The ending as I said was just a mess. It didn't even make sense and I just had a hard time even accepting what we got.
"The Five Year Lie" follows Ariel. Ariel is a single mother to her four year old son, Buzz. She works at her dead father's camera security company [think Ring doorbell]. Ariel though gets a text message from her son's father, Drew. The only problem is, she hasn't seen or heard from him for five years. And when it's revealed that text messages are being sent to people all over her town from five years previously, Ariel realizes that something may have happened to Drew and him leaving town, may not have been as straight forward as she thought.
Okay, Ariel sucks. Full stop. At times she acts like a teenager because she really is selfish as the day as long and seems to be only be focused on Drew. She spent not even I think 3 months with the guy but it didn't make sense that he had such a hold on her since all of the Drew flashbacks just show them having sex and drinking all the time. True love it was not. And she spends most of the book dumping her son on her mother, borrowing her mother's car, and oh yeah lives in a place on her mother's property. The whole thing was just giving me "Arrested Development."
The other characters were bare bones. We have Ariel's only friend in this one, but it's one she never talks to until the events in the book start spinning out of control. She "makes" a friend at work who helps her investigate, but she spends time judging them it felt. Her mother and her relationship isn't super great, but you read about her father and get why.
Drew wasn't great. We find out [so freaking slowly] what he was up to and why and it didn't pass the smell test even a little. I won't get into the ending reveal about things because it was so dumb it made my head hurt.
We also get another point of view by someone calling themselves "The Brainz" and I just think that whole thing should have been cut.
The flow was awful. I think I saw a reviewer said this was a sad "The Last Thing He Told Me" knock-off and goodness knows I loathed that book, but definitely see the similarities in plot and just poor development/flow.
The ending as I said was just a mess. It didn't even make sense and I just had a hard time even accepting what we got.