Welcome to the first installment of the FTHS Lit Alive Book Club Book Reviews! For this month, I will be reviewing our October pick: Never Lie by Frieda McFadden.
Summary:
The story begins with newlyweds Tricia, our narrator in the Present Day, and her husband, Ethan. They are searching for the house of their dreams—one where they can even hope to grow a family—and think they have finally found it when they, by chance, stumble upon the isolated mansion of the mysteriously vanished Dr. Adrienne Hale. Dr. Hale, as explained by Tricia, had once been a renowned psychiatrist and New York Times bestselling author—her terrifying, true write-ups of the stories of her former patients awarding her weeks at the top of the Bestsellers List and a reputation she will fiercely protect at all costs. When she went missing without a trace, the public had been infatuated with the case. However, three years later, the case went cold, with the public suspecting her current boyfriend as the culprit, but a lack of sufficient evidence to convict him of the crime.
When an ongoing violent blizzard traps Tricia and Ethan at the house, the couple begins to question the manor they had once been enamored with. As Tricia grows bored, stuck inside the house, she discovers a hidden collection of audio tapes from Dr. Hale’s sessions with her patients. As she listens to the tapes, the true chain of events that led to Dr. Hale’s disappearance begins to unravel. By the time she reaches the final cassette, a whirlwind of paranoia, second-guessing, and shock later, Tricia finally has her hands on the last tape—but is it already too late? What is the truth?
Review:
In every sense of the word, this book is a thriller. A psychological, mindbending, plot-twist-full thriller. I couldn’t put it down—I flew through the first one hundred pages in a day, and finished the book in less than four. Even though the story was generally fast-paced, as a lot of Frieda McFadden plotlines typically are, according to reviews of her other works, it was very engaging and never boring for a second. Every page I turned made me read deeper and deeper into the lines—Can I trust this character? Is this a clue to what happened to Dr. Adrienne Hale? Wasn’t the portrait hanging above the fireplace taken down and covered by Ethan just a few hours ago?—I was questioning the truth and the reliability of the very characters I had been set up to trust.
I absolutely loved reading this book; it took me out of a reading slump I had been in for almost a month, and made me question why I ever stopped reading in the first place. The way the characters were written, from Tricia to her husband, Ethan, to Dr. Hale, who is the narrator for the “Before” chapters of the novel, to her boyfriend, Luke, and everyone in between—even minor characters—was something I had been longing for in a thriller book like this one. It is one of those stories where everything, everyone, is connected, and the pieces will not come together until the very end, when the mystery is finally revealed, and you, the reader, are left flipping through the pages—looking for all the signs you might have missed. Every plot twist and turn was crafted to add just the right amount of suspense and the sense of “I think I’ve got the ending figured out, right?” lingering in your mind at the end of every chapter. There is enough emotional depth to her characters—from the way Tricia and Adrienne narrate their lives, to the way they narrate and describe those around them. I found myself rooting for multiple characters several times, and was taken through a rollercoaster as the dual timeline and dual points of view started to come together.
Overall, Never Lie by Frieda McFadden fits the theme of October perfectly: spooky, mysterious, and, most of all, thrilling. This was my first McFadden novel I have read, and I was even inspired to read one of her other best-known works, The Inmate, afterwards (which I finished in just two days!). I would definitely recommend this book to any reader—especially those who prefer an engaging, tension-packed, easy-to-read story or lovers of thriller novels!
