#BlogTour-‘The Lies We Told’ by Niki Mackay

HUGE thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and Orion for my gifted paperback review copy of ‘The Lies We Tell’ by Niki Mackay which is published on 27/06/19!

About the book…

Last night I betrayed my husband.

This morning my daughter disappeared.

My husband may have forgiven my first mistake. But he will never forget this.

And so I have to find her.

Before it’s too late. For all of us.

Madison Attallee, ex-police officer turned Private Investigator, returns to solve a missing-daughter case that is not as it might seem . . .

Miriam Jackson is a famous radio presenter. Married to a successful film director, she has created the perfect life for herself.

Then her daughter goes missing.

Miriam is desperate to find her before her husband finds out and her perfect life crumbles around her. So she calls the only person who can help: Private Investigator Madison Attallee, who has just solved the biggest case of her career.

Can Madison find Miriam’s daughter? And will Miriam share the truth about her past?

First, an apology-I am late with this review and unreservedly apologise to Niki, Tracy and Orion, I am in the process of not being at university after 3 years of studying and apparently that means a ridiculous amount of unplanned sleep and disorganisation have set in, falling asleep reading a book, upright, has become a default position at stupid o’clock, so  my other half has begun have chucking a blanket over me, budgie style, and left me alone. That has led to frantic early hours waking and panic setting in about what day it is, but I resolve to do better!new

Anyway, on with the review.

I admit to finding this a slow burner which may sound odd given that it begins with a 16 year old girl going missing. That sounds eventful and alarming, but this novel does not rush things, the scene is set up slowly with intense characterisation until halfway through and such an abrupt twist in the tale occurs that you need a neck brace. And the revelations just continue to rain down to the very last page.

Tabitha is a 16 year old girl, her parents are well known,they are in the public eye and she has gone missing. Her mother, Miriam (or Mim) is a radio show host who wasn’t there to notice Tabitha had gone because she was having an ill advised dalliance with a ex. Her father, Nick,a film maker,is in L.A filming, and hasn’t a clue what is going on as Miriam hasn’t told him Tabitha has gone. To do so would bring her marriage down around her ears.

After ringing around Tabitha’s friends, it soon becomes clear that Miriam’s daughter has been telling more than a few mistruths over the week leading up to her disappearance, so she turns to the police for help-as Miriam has reported Tabitha missing before but she turned up safe and well, she is turned away and told not to worry. This is where Niki’s heroine, Maddie Attalee, ex-cop, P.I and recovering alcoholic steps in.

I did struggle to start with in seperating Miriam and Maddie’s voices, the chapters were very short and it resulted in almost simultaneously listening to two conversations at once. These narratives, both first person, were then joined with a third, that of a girl named Ruby, set again in first person in the 90’s whose significance to the story quickly becomes apparent.

There is quite a bit of repetition in terms of plot details which at first I struggled with in the terms of ‘was this new information ?’ and so I ended up flipping back and forth between parts of the book. As readers of these blogposts will be aware, I am dyslexic and this is very likely on me as a reader. I found it hard to engage with to start but then something clicked and I am so so glad that I persevered.

I think as well, sometimes you read an awful lot and the expectation of a reader coming immediately from a 5 star book that you ‘got’ straight away is to demand, emperor like, ‘ENTERTAIN ME!’ from an author and you forget the value of a slow burning, character driven novel.

Miriam has secrets from her past which she only viewed through a rose tinted haze and Maddie’s race to find Tabitha becomes intensified when she realises what is truly underneath a seemingly ordinary teen rebellion and runaway.

At the same time, Maddie is facing her reality as an ex-cop in a budding relationship with a cop, her upbringing with an alcholic mother and her struggles to be a good parent to her daughter,Molly. On top of this she is building her business as a P.I on the back of her first major investigation covered in Niki’s debut, ‘I,Witness’ ( a must read after this).

Both mothers are so well written, they have layers of complexity which are built up, as they are simultaneously stripped away across the hunt for Tabitha, leaving them raw, vulnerable, yet determined to uncover the truth. And it is extremely unpleasant. What an absolute gem of a novel, one I am so so glad to have stuck with as it does not give up its secrets easily.

To conclude, I thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Lies We Tell’, I was on the edge of my seat racing to the finish, fell asleep reading it several times and am about to shove this book on any and all of my bookish friends!

About the author…

Niki Mackay studied Performing Arts at the BRIT School, and it turned out she wasn’t very good at acting but quite liked writing scripts. She holds a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Drama, and won a full scholarship for her MA in Journalism.

Links-https://nikimackay.com/

    https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

Twitter @NikiMackayBooks

             @orionbooks

             @Tr4cyF3nt0n