A review by thephdivabooks
The Lies You Told by Harriet Tyce

4.0

The Lies You Told is captivating from the first to the last page. I thought I knew where this would lead, but I was completely wrong!

Sadie Roper has no love lost with the mother who judged her for prioritizing motherhood over a career. Sadie is living in New York with her husband and daughter when she receives the news of her mother’s passing back in London. Her mother has left her home to Sadie, but only on the condition that Sadie’s daughter enroll at Ashams, the private school where Sadie attended as a young girl.

With her marriage in tatters and the demons from her past beckoning, Sadie returns to London and agrees to the terms of her mother’s will. But soon the weight of Sadie’s past and her daughter’s unhappiness at leaving her life behind begin to bear down on Sadie. The other mothers at the school make high school cliques look like a breeze.

The Queen Bee of the mothers, Julia, runs the show with the other moms, and she has her sights set on taking down Sadie. Until she learns that Sadie is a legacy at Ashams. Suddently, Sadie and her daughter are swept into the midst of the main clique at Ashams, and Sadie is finding her way back into her old legal career by helping with an upcoming trial involving a girl accusing her teacher of sexual abuse.

Things reach a boiling point as Sadie soon learns that she has more enemies than friends…

I love a book with unlikable characters and an addictive plot. There’s something a bit wild reading a book where you know who the villains are and watch them work. This isn’t just another book about the mean mums running the school, though. There are several layers to the plot going on at the same time, and Sadie is often pulled between what is happening with her career and with her daughter.

Tense, dark, and compulsive!