#BlogTour ‘Tell me Your Lies’ by Kate Ruby

About the book…

‘A gripping page-turner with a flawed protagonist you can’t help rooting for’ LAURA MARSHALL

‘Subtle, sly and suspenseful – a deliciously twisted psychological thriller’ JP DELANEY

You think she wants to help.
You’re wrong.

Lily will do anything to protect her picture perfect family. She’s made ruthless choices to make sure their secrets stay buried, and she’s not going to give up control now.

Rachel is her middle daughter. When her partying tips into addiction, Lily hires renowned therapist and healer, Amber, as a last resort. But how much are Rachel’s problems down to the very secrets Lily is determined to keep locked away?

Amber is the skilled and intuitive confidante that Rachel desperately needs. But as Rachel falls increasingly under her spell, pulling even further away from her family, Lily grows suspicious that there is a far more dangerous reason for Amber’s arrival in all their lives.

Loosely based on a true story, this is perfect for fans of Sabine Durrant, Teresa Driscoll and Kate Riordan – the perfect read to be devoured in one sitting, bursting with tension, layered characters and relationships which are never as simple as they first seem . . . 

My thanks to the awesome Fiona at Midas PR for the blog tour invite, and gifted e-arc review copy of ‘Tell Me Your Lies’ by Kate Ruby published by Simon and Schuster UK on 12th May .

This book is a vortex of manipulative women who drag you in, like Charybdis, a monstrous creation of their own making which often leads to death of others who get caught.

From the very start you get a specific perspective from Lily-her name denotes a purity and association with being ‘whiter than white’, so her authoritarian stance confers her a certain sense of trustworthiness-where she casually drops the hint that what has happened to the Appleby family made newspaper front pages.

With her daughter, Rachel, seemingly undermined in the minds of the reader, we move to her perpsective of a daughter who is always made to feel ‘not good enough’, someone who takes refuge in drink and drugs to an excess.

After the latest hospitalisation, Lily brings Rachel home and enlists the help of therapist, Amber, to once and for all heal Rachel.

But what if, in the process, terrible secrets are revealed at the heart of this picture perfect family?

Lily clearly has an image to protect, and is so highly caught up within the maintenance of it, that she is prepared to overlook the ‘failures’ of her daughter to represent the life she feels she has been handed on a silver platter.

Rachel’s rebellion is cantered in a world of very real trauma, and a sense of being a less than grateful daughter, especially when compared to her high achieving brother.

And then there is Amber, the third side of this toxic triangle-she has a part to play in all of this, beneath her quotable notions and ease of reaching Rachel, there is a woman who you cannot quite weigh up. What is her perspective? Does she genuinely want to make Rachel better and in so doing create a situation which leads to a permanent fracture between mother and daughter?

It’s such an interesting read, and a highly underrated (in my humble opinion) approach in how Kate makes these characters slightly opaque and off, you are looking for a symmetry in them which just does not exist and as the story unravels to it’s shattering conclusion, all the pieces fall into place and it makes you want to read the book all over again!

I wasn’t personally invested in solving the mystery, I was interested in the portrayal of 3 very distinct phases of womanhood and what constitutes a lie-does it matter if it is in the interests of the wider good?

I very much enjoyed the way the author plays with commonly held myths about being a mother, and the weight of the responsibility we have towards our daughters, to bring the truth into the light and damn the consequences. Superb and so engaging, I thoroughly recommend it to those who enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s ‘Gone Girl’

About the author…

Kate Ruby is a producer and screenwriter, with a highflying career in television. Tell Me Your Lies, a psychological thriller, is her debut novel and is currently in development for a major TV show.

As an executive producer for drama, she spent a decade at the BBC, working on shows including Spooks and Being Human.

Currently Head of Television for a global production company, she has worked on major Netflix shows including Watership Down, Traitors and The English Game. She worked on the BBC/HBO adaptation of JP Delaney’s bestselling thriller The Girl Before, starring Gugu Mbatha Raw and David Oyelowo.

Twitter @KateRubyBooks @simonschusterUK @MidasPR