9.1.18

BOOK REVIEW: Everything is Lies by Helen Callaghan

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.

Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 22nd February 2018

Wow, I completely loved this book! At 400 pages it's quite long but I read it in just under two days as I couldn't put it down; I was hooked from the very beginning.
I very much enjoyed Helen Callaghan's book Dear Amy but in my opinion Everything is Lies is even better.
Sophia returns home after a fraught telephone call from her mother. When she gets home the house is weirdly quiet and she finds her mother hanging from a tree in the garden and her father wounded but alive next to her. Sophia can't quite believe what is happening, her parents Nina and Jared are quiet, unassuming people who run a small cafe and nursery business. They would not be involved in a murder-suicide pact as the police are suggesting. With Jared in hospital and unable to speak, Sophia must seek the truth. She is led to some notebooks of her mother's but she is in no way
prepared for the contents. Her mother writes of a cult that she was part of in the 80's, an enigmatic leader called Aaron Kessler and a murder. Nina was convinced these people wanted to silence her; is Sophia's mother completely mad and making all these events up or has all of Sophia's past been a lie?
Helen Callaghan has written a tense, psychological thriller. The book flits between Sophia's present situation and her mother's life in 1989 where it seems she became caught up in a cult led by Aaron Kessler who she met at university. I was so intrigued by Kessler- I could totally see how Nina was taken in by him. The chapters taken from Nina's notebooks were my favourite, it was so interesting to see how Nina was drawn into this group of people she barely knew.
Everything is Lies was a fascinating read, the pace and plotting were both excellent and I think it is a book that will get many people talking.

Many thanks to Penguin for sending me a copy of this book to review. 

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