Her Perfect Lies by Lana Newton
Genre: Psychological thriller
Read: 3rd December 2019
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 7th November 2019)
★ 1.5 stars
An exciting premise for a promising tale of psychological suspense, HER PERFECT LIES did not live up to my expectations. In fact I had to force myself to keep reading because I wanted to know how it ended...and even then it was far from exciting or gripping.
After a car accident, Claire wakes in hospital with no memory of who she is or how she got there. She doesn't recognise her husband, her friends or family. When she discovers her father is also in the hospital in a coma, she rushes to his bedside to sit with him, despite having no memories of him she just knows she has to be there.
She is soon fit to be discharged and her husband Paul takes her home...which isn't just a house, it's a mansion! Which her very wealthy mother bought for them, Paul informs her.
Home is meant to be a sanctuary, but there are so many nooks one can hide in this huge house to gain some privacy. And yet, Claire doesn't feel like it's home. She aches to get back to the hospital to visit her father again...and glean some more information from him about her life.
She is supposed to be happily married and yet Paul is distant with her. He watches her take her meds to ensure she does so...saying he just wants what's best for her. But does he really? Her best friend Gaby tells her that they had "issues" without elaborating, and when Claire discovers divorce papers with their signatures on, she believes that their issues must be pretty big.
And then the nightmares begin...or are they memories? Claire doesn't know but one thing she is sure of is that she is terrified of them. Who is the faceless man in her nightmares? And why is she so afraid of him? Is it Paul? Or someone else? Or is she just imagining it?
Claire begins to realise that the place she feels safest is with her father, so when Paul informs her that the hospital is discharging him, Claire insists he come and live with them. As her father is confined to a wheelchair unable to walk, Paul hires a nurse and a physiotherapist to see to his needs. Despite his willingness to help, Claire finds herself unable to trust Paul. Is it something her subconscious knows about him? Is he the man from her dreams?
And where was Claire's mother? Her father claims she was in the USA tending to a sick relative, but Gaby insists that there was no way on earth that Angela (her mother) would not fly back to be at her daughter's bedside. Her father is vague about when her mother will return - 3 weeks or 3 months, he isn't sure. Then her mother calls from the USA. Claire is ecstatic to hear from her, though she cannot picture her. In a flurry of words, Angela tells her she wishes she could be with her but she will be as soon as she can. At least now she knows where her mother is.
...Until she hears her father sobbing from his room, the police and Paul at his bedside. What's going on, she asks. Her mother's body has just been found, stabbed on her kitchen floor. Claire claims that that isn't possible as she has just gotten off the phone to her mother in the USA. But when Paul and her father return from identifying the remains Claire's world collapses even further. It's her. She is gone. Her mother is dead. But...then who has been calling her?
Claire finds that she must untangle the threads of her life...and discover who she was. Beginning with the car accident. Why does her father tell her she wasn't in the car, yet the police constable remembers vividly pulling her out? And why did he then lie to the police telling them she WAS in the car and they were on the way to go horse riding? Which is the truth?
But the more Claire digs, the more she uncovers that makes little or no sense. She learns that she had a brother she knew nothing about and an aunt, her mother's twin, she hadn't seen since she was 16. The house she thought she had grown up in in North London she had moved to from Windsor at the same age she last saw her mother's twin sister. What secrets was her family trying to cover up? Was it something she did and they were merely protecting her?
Claire realised the truth lay in Windsor...and endeavoured to find out exactly what truth that was.
The concept behind HER PERFECT LIES was an interesting one in where a woman wakes from a coma with no memory of her life whatsoever. Imagine what one could do with that! Her family, friends and even husband could rewrite her history and she would be none the wiser. However, it just didn't work here. I felt the story was just a jumble of one dimensional occurrences involving a handful of characters that were just too implausible.
I didn't warm to anyone in the story and found myself longing for it to end. But at the same time, I had to force myself to continue just so I could find out what really happened...and once I got there, I felt I would have been better off ditching the book for something far more enthralling. The conclusion was predictable in the end because what other explanation was there? There were so many secrets and lies all tangled together I couldn't even make headway with them that I didn't even care who was responsible in the end.
I must be one of the minority with this book because many others rave about it but I honestly could not see why. With a similar concept I believe Steve (S.J.) Watson did it far better in "Before I Go To Sleep" and because of that, I guess it is difficult to surpass its success.
Sadly, I did not enjoy HER PERFECT LIES at all and really struggled to complete it...and that was only because I wanted to find out what happened. But, don't take my word for it...there are plenty of others who have really enjoyed it. I'd recommend you take a look for yourself. Everyone's tastes are different and you may love it or you may not. You never know until you give it a go.
I would like to thank #LanaNewton, #NetGalley and #HQDigital for an ARC of #HerPerfectLies in exchange for an honest review.
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