She even featured Leinster House's secret tunnels as a setting in her second novel, Beneath The Surface. He's on sabbatical but I reckon he's got life in him for another couple of books yet," adds Spain, who somehow also manages to juggle her career with bringing up four children, ranging in age from six to 15. Another timeline follows Erin, after Danny's death, as she hits brick walls trying to find out what was going on in Danny's life that would cause him to be under investigation at his job.

The Perfect Lie: The addictive and unmissable heart-pounding thriller The Perfect Lie: The addictive and unmissable heart-pounding

Spain knows how to construct a multi-layered mystery, and I thought she did a great job in keeping me in the dark. It seamlessly switches between the 3 plot parts - The Lie, The Truth and The Whole Truth, and the 3 time periods: Then (July 2019), Now (December 2020) and Harvard (December 2016) and each strand combines to create a thoroughly engrossing and exciting read. Well of course nothing is straightforward here and you’ll soon be immersed in a labyrinthine plot that will keep you turning pages long into the night. In one moment, her life as she knows it will be destroyed, following that fateful act one normal morning, and she will question everything she thought she knew about the man she loved. The premise is good, it’s well written, the plot is clever and it builds with suspense and intensity.For me, the Harvard chapters were repetitive and if there had been half as many of them, we would have been treated to a shorter book and a faster pace.

The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain | Goodreads The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain | Goodreads

December 2016 – Ally Summers, a proctor at Harvard University is worried about Freshman student, Lauren Gregory. Instead, I would have liked to see a bit more background about Erin and Danny’s relationship, as I wasn’t totally convinced by their great love story.

When the door bell rings one morning and it’s the police, her life is thrown upside down and shattered in a matter of minutes. With a story told through the past and present and from multiple points of view that all come together in the end, this is a book that will leave you wanting more. The construction of this narrative is perfectly episodic, slowly revealling information, building to a range of plot peaks, rather than slowly building towards a single one. I spent a large percentage of the book in wonderment, puzzling how all these timelines could possibly connect in the end and why Erin was in court accused of murder.

The Perfect Lie: the gripping new psychological thriller from the The Perfect Lie: the gripping new psychological thriller from the

At times I was convinced I knew what had happened and then something else was disclosed which blew my theories out the water. One morning Erin answers the door to Danny’s police colleagues and everything appears to be no different to any other day. An editor at a publishers in New York City, 32-year-old Erin Kennedy resides in the resort town of Newport, Suffolk County and is part of the seemingly tight-knit community on Long Island. She dedicated The Perfect Lie to 'the Irish diaspora, who were far from home when Covid entered our lives'. S. Now living with her detective husband, Danny, she opens the door to his colleagues one morning, and upon seeing them, he walks out of the French doors of their fourth floor apartment and jumps to his death.The Perfect Lie is a contemporary suspense novel about a young Irish woman living on Long Island, New York, who is left devastated by the inexplicable suicide of her police officer husband.

Perfect Lie - Play Perfect Lie Game Online - Lagged Perfect Lie - Play Perfect Lie Game Online - Lagged

They are now happily living in New York, far from Erin’s parents and the family dynamics that have split them apart.

Two of the timelines involve two college women who are wrestling with the aftermath of the rape of one of the women. There were no awkward transitions and she keeps the mystery plot ticking along nicely before tying all the strings together seamlessly in the end. I intended to read Spain’s popular standalone release The Confession in 2018, but unfortunately it has been sitting on my shelves begging to be read. Spain seems to have a good handle on the justice system in the US as we follow Erin’s trial closely.