All my Lies are True (Poppy & Serena #2) by Dorothy Koomson
Genre: Contemporary fiction, Thriller
Read: 18th December 2024
Published: 9th July 2020
★★★★★ 5 stars
DESCRPTION:
From the bestselling author of The Ice Cream Girls comes a gripping emotional thriller of love and obsession and the nature of coercive control. 'The author plays a blinder' says the Sun.
Verity is telling lies...
And that's why she's about to be arrested for attempted murder.
Serena has been lying for years. . .
And that may have driven her daughter, Verity, to do something unthinkable...
Poppy's lies have come back to haunt her . . .
So will her quest for the truth hurt everyone she loves?
Everyone lies.
But whose lies are going to end in tragedy?
MY THOUGHTS:
Firstly, let me say right off the cuff that YOU NEED TO READ THE ICE CREAM GIRLS first! Otherwise this one won't make a whole lot of sense. And even if it did, you will feel like you are missing a big part of the story.
So...ALL MY LIES ARE TRUE. I didn't even know I wanted a sequel to Poppy and Serena's story...until I read this! I didn't even know there was one until I saw it listed in Goodreads. I loved "The Ice Cream Girls" but I think I enjoyed this one so much more! I wasn't sure what to expect but it certainly wasn't what it ended up being. And in the end, the whole story - Poppy, Serena and Verity's - seemed to come full circle and end nicely.
The focus of this story is Serena's now adult adult daughter Verity, who was just 14 at the time of the first book. Now 24, Verity is training to be a solicitor whilst her brother Con is nearing the end of his A Levels. The past ten years have brought a sense of healing to her parents who nearly split up a decade ago after the truth about Serena's involvement as an ice cream girl became public knowledge once again - thirty years after the fact.
But now Verity has a secret. And a boyfriend.
Logan Carlisle has wanted justice for his sister ever since she was released ten years ago and they were reunited. He believes Poppy was innocent of the crime for which she served twenty years of her life for and that Serena, the other ice cream girl, got away with murder.
When he meets Verity by chance, he gives her his thoughts and together they decide to look into the case that swept the nation thirty years before to see if they can't see what others failed to. They spend hours, days and weeks pouring over the court transcripts and discover that both Poppy and Serena were so inadequately represented it's a miracle both girls weren't convicted. But if Poppy didn't do it, then did Serena?
But this is not just an ordinary tale of a quest for justice. It is not just some ordinary romance built on secrecy and deception. Both Poppy and Serena have proved to be unreliable narrators in the past...is Verity following in their footsteps and become another?
Told from the perspectives of primarily Verity, Serena and Poppy, this captivating sequel reveals a twist that you may or may not see coming. But one thing is for sure - you will be left questioning if what you read is true, or if they are all just lies?
Once again, abuse is the running theme throughout though it is far easier to stomach than the first book. There are a few flashbacks to both Poppy and Serena's time with Marcus Halnsley and their memories of him. While we, the reader, were privy to the identity of Marcus' killer at the first book's end, others were not. It seems though the story as a whole has come full circle this time, concluding it all once and for all.
This book, like "The Ice Cream Girls" was around the 500 page mark, but it never felt like it dragged or was too bogged down in any way. I was thoroughly enthralled throughout with an addictive storyline that continued to shock me until the end.
Another five star read that was a pure delight to read.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
At the grand old age of 13, she wrote my first novel called "There’s A Thin Line Between Love And Hate". She would write a chapter every night in her exercise books then pass it around to her fellow convent school pupils the next morning.
Dorothy grew up in London and then grew up again in Leeds when she went to university at Trinity and All Saints College (as it was then). She later returned to London to study for her masters degree in journalism at Goldsmiths University. She had various temping jobs and eventually became a journalist and editor working on various women’s magazines and national papers.
While working as a journalist, Dorothy continued to write short stories and novels in every spare moment – like on the train to and from work – as way to achieve her goal of becoming a published novelist. In 2001 she had the idea for "The Cupid Effect" and signed up with her first publisher a year later. In 2003 "The Cupid Effect" went on sale and her career as a published novelist began.
In 2006, her third novel, "My Best Friend’s Girl" was published. It was incredibly successful – selling nearly 90,000 copies within its first few weeks. Six weeks later, it was selected for the Richard & Judy Summer Reads Book Club and the book went on to sell over 500,000 copies. Because of its huge sales, it won an award. Her fourth novel, "Marshmallows for Breakfast", also won an award for selling over 250,000 copies.
In 2005 Dorothy moved to Australia and spent two years living in Sydney. When she returned to England in 2007 she moved to the south coast, namely Brighton. She love living by the sea. There’s nothing like a good walk along the seafront to clear your head or to work out the knots in a plot.
Those who’ve read her later books will know that a lot of them have been set in Brighton and its surrounding area, often with a good dose of Leeds and South London thrown in.
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