“Sometimes I Lie is a rare book, combining helter skelter twists with razor sharp sentences. Make sure you read it in a well lit room, Alice Feeney’s imagination is a very dark place indeed.”
CONTAINS SPOILERS!
This book just left me with a craving for more. It messed with my head so much, I do not know what and how to review this!
This is a fast-paced, racy, psychological thriller which never lets you down. The twists keep coming and the turns leave you wondering.
This is a story of Amber Reynolds, a radio-jockey on a popular show. A lot of people would have thought she had a dream job, but nightmares can be dreams too. The story opens and is told from the view point of Amber, who is in a coma, following an accident.
However, she can hear everything, but she can’t move or talk. She cannot remember why or what happened. She believes her husband doesn’t love her and may have something to do with her being in a coma.
Told alternately between the now, the then (the incidents leading up to the now) and the before (diary entries of a 10-year old child), we follow her thoughts, as she tries to piece together her life. She is in ICU, in a hospital, with a few members of her family visiting her (Claire, her sister and Paul, her husband) and the hospital staff providing care.
How did she get there? The cops have some idea, but eventually you find out that a certain person is keeping her captive in her comatose state, by injecting appropriate drugs. Who is he and what’s his motive?
Despite her internal cries, on the outside, she was voiceless and perfectly still. In real life, she was paid to talk on the radio, but now she’s silenced.
As Amber slowly brings back her memory, you’re shocked, you’re repulsed and you’re left confused. Sometimes the right thing to do is wrong – but that’s just life. But, lies can seem true, when told enough.
We all need to have something or someone to love, otherwise the love inside us has nowhere to go. There are different kinds of love – and different kinds of hate.
It takes a lot of love to hate someone.
I will leave you with some thoughts:
- There are no such things as accidents – everything happens for a reason.
- Sometimes stuff just happens when you don’t mean it, and just because no one believes you, it doesn’t mean you did it on purpose.
- Life can be more terrifying than death.
- There’s always a moment before an accident when you know you’re going to get hurt, but there is nothing you can do to protect yourself.
You can raise your arms in front of your face, you can close your eyes, you can scream but you know it won’t change what’s coming. - Fear of the unknown is always greater than fear of the familiar.
My rating: 4/5
Only because, the ending left me craving for more. It left me confused, and perhaps the ending suggests there may be a sequel.
Reviewed by:
Ranjini Sen
Added 21st September 2017
