To Tell You the Truth by Gilly Macmillan
Genre: Psychological thriller
Read: 15th April 2021
Published: 25th June 2021
Paperback: 13th May 2021
★★★ 3.5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Lucy Harper has a talent for invention...
She was nine years old when her brother vanished in the woods near home. As the only witness, Lucy's story of that night became crucial to the police investigation. Thirty years on, her brother's whereabouts are still unknown.
Now Lucy is a bestselling thriller writer. Her talent for invention has given her fame, fortune, and an army of adoring fans. But her husband, Dan, has started keeping secrets of his own, and a sudden change of scene forces Lucy to confront some dark, unwelcome memories. Then Dan goes missing and Lucy's past and present begin to collide. Did she kill her husband? Would she remember if she did?
Finally, Lucy Harper is going to tell us the truth.
Cross her heart.
And hope to die.
MY REVIEW:
I was pretty excited by the impending release of TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH, after reading and enjoying the author's previous thriller "The Nanny", so much I apparently requested it twice! I kid you not. Apparently there is a paperback edition coming out next month that I had requested, not realising I had already requested (and been approved) for what I believed to be the ebook edition for last June. Needless to say, I can now kill two birds with one stone...or should that be two editions with one review!
So Lucy Harper is a successful mystery thriller writer of an equally lucrative series featuring her literary heroine DS Eliza Grey. Her fans adore the series and eagerly await the next "Eliza" book, some even creating a fan fiction forum featuring the popular detective.
But what people don't know is that Lucy's character is based on her own imaginary childhood friend who has remained with her throughout her life. Only her husband Dan knows about the real Eliza...the one that lives in Lucy's mind. She has become her alter ego speaking up for her when Lucy doesn't have the courage and acting in her place when she doesn't have the strength. Eliza has always been there for her when she's needed her. She has always understood her and known what she needs. And now Lucy realises that she needs Eliza now more than ever.
When Lucy was nine years old, she went into the woods behind her home on the summer solstice with her three year old brother Teddy to watch the bonfire. But something happened...and Teddy disappeared. He was never seen again. When Lucy returned home her parents were frantic and as the days passed, they grew further distant from her...somehow blaming her for his disappearance. Police believed that Lucy knew more than she was letting on, as do her parents, and that she was making up stories to cover the truth.
Wanting to put the past behind her as an adult, Lucy changed her surname so she could not be connected to the tragedy of her past. Then she met Dan and they married. And then one drunken night she confided in Dan her deepest secret ever...the night when Teddy disappeared. Every last detail. Only Dan and Eliza knew everything that happened that night. And now it's about to all come crashing back.
Dan, who also aspired to be a writer, is coercive and manipulating, secretly jealous of his wife's success and living in her shadow though he doesn't have a problem with spending her money. So upon finishing her latest book in the Devon cottage they had rented for the duration, Dan announces that they would be returning to Bristol the following day without giving Lucy some down time to recharge after spending months living in her own head. But instead of going back to the flat they shared, he drives them further afield...closer to Charlotte Close where she grew up...closer to Stoke woods where Teddy disappeared...and up an almost deserted lane to a derelict mansion bordering the woods, announcing that the house is theirs...that he bought it for Lucy (with her money, I might add). He even began renovations (also with her money) - which are much needed - setting up an office for her with a desk at the window overlooking the woods...as if he wants her to relive Teddy's disappearance all over again. What was he thinking? There is no way she can live here. But Dan can be persuasive when he wants to be and so Lucy half-heartedly agrees...for now.
They meet the other neighbours in the quiet lane for welcoming drinks at the house of one of Dan's old university friends, Sasha. And she might be imagining it but her husband and this woman appear to be very close...intimate even. Are they having an affair?
And then one night Dan leaves the house...and doesn't return. Lucy thinks he has gone off on one of his disappearing acts and will return a day or so later. Instead, police come knocking to let her know that their car has been found abandoned and burnt out just outside the city. And Lucy begins to fear that something may have happened to Dan. Then she recalls discovering the following morning after he walked out the blood on the tiles with no clue as to how it got there. Questioning her own sanity at the time and egged on by the ever present Eliza, Lucy scrubbed the tiles and grout clean with bleach until she could see no trace left. Now the police are here asking about her and Dan's relationship and why he would walk out in the middle of the night?
In her quest to discover the truth, Lucy uncovers a whole lot more. But is her narrative reliable? Can we trust what she is saying, thinking, seeing and doing? Or does she know more than she is letting on? And why is Dan digging into her painful past knowing how she feels about it? Is any of what is happening real? Does "Eliza" really have her best interests at heart? Or is she just the product of an overactive imagination? Is she being gaslighted? Is she losing her mind? Could what is happening now be related to what happened then? Is someone messing with her head? Or is she truly mentally ill? And what is with the creepy neighbours?
And above all...is she about to discover what happened to Teddy all those years ago?
I was immediately pulled in from the first page of the prologue and found the story to be engaging and addictive. I wanted to know what was happening to Lucy now as well as finding out what happened to Teddy then. I couldn't turn the pages quick enough. There were so many twists and revelations I was kept on my toes throughout. And then there was Dan. I wanted to kill him myself 10% in. I didn't like him from the first moment he stepped onto the pages. He certainly didn't have Lucy's best interests at heart nor was he looking out for her. If he was, then why force her to live in a decrepit old mansion bordering the very forest her brother disappeared in when she was a child? The night from which she has run ever since. I was glad to see the back of him when he slammed the door and stormed out...but I also knew he was up to something. But what, exactly?
Lucy herself was a complex character and an incredibly unreliable narrator. You just didn't know if what she was saying was truth or her imagination. And the whole "Eliza" business...OMG! That woman drove me insane! Eliza, that is. It took me a little while to establish when Lucy was a child that Eliza wasn't a real person but one of her own imagination. But now that she is an adult and Eliza is still with her, I had to wonder if her imaginary friend was actually an alternate personality that her subconscious formed to protect her. Her behaviour and ramblings with an imaginative person screamed dissociative identity disorder...and her unreliable narrative pretty much backed that up. But it made it hard to work out whether how much she saw, did and know was true and how much was imagined. And honestly, as riveting as it was simply everyone in the book was unlikeable.
To tell you the truth, I had high hopes for this book and was sadly disappointed...with the way it ended. After all that build up and tension, I felt kind of cheated out of what really happened which felt like a rushed afterthought. And then without proper closure for the rest of it! By the end of it, I felt like checking into a psychiatric unit myself I was so disappointed with that half-baked conclusion.
TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH is a riveting thriller that will keep you engaged throughout but don't hold your breath for an ending that will wrap everything up nicely and give you closure...because it doesn't. But as a whole, the book was brilliantly disturbing and twisty which is why I have settled on 3.5 stars. It was a fantastic read throughout but that ending really spoiled it for the rest of the story.
A perfect thriller for those who like theirs twisty, disturbing with a touch of delusional.
I would like to thank #GillyMacmillan, #NetGalley and #CornerstoneDigital for an ARC of #ToTellYouTheTruth in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
A former art historian and photographer, Gilly grew up in Swindon in Wiltshire and also lived in Northern California in her late teens. She studied at Bristol University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She lives in Bristol, UK, with her husband and three children.
Her first novel, WHAT SHE KNEW, was a Target pick, a LibraryReads pick, an Indie Next pick, an Edgar award nominee, and an International Thriller Writers award finalist. THE NANNY is a Spring 2020 Richard & Judy WHSmith Book Club pick.
Gilly’s novels have appeared on the New York Times, Sunday Times, Globe & Mail and Der Spiegel bestseller lists and have been translated into over 20 languages. She’s been described as ‘one heck of a good writer’ (Wall Street Journal) and her novels have been praised as ‘nuanced, completely addictive’ (People), ‘riveting’ (Publishers Weekly), and ‘visceral, emotionally charged…heart-wrenchingly well told’ (The Daily Mail).
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