The Lie in Our Marriage
Anna-Lou Weatherley
329 pages
Bookouture
published January 18, 2023
About the book:
On a warm spring evening, guests gather in a perfectly manicured garden to celebrate Maggie and Len’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Maggie leans against the apple tree, watching her fun-loving husband and darling children as her heart swells with pride. As the joyful party atmosphere disappears into the night, close by, the lifeless body of a young woman is pulled from a river.
Slipping upstairs to find the special gift for her adoring husband, Maggie stumbles across something else hidden amongst the dusty boxes of family keepsakes…
A printed pink silky scarf that doesn’t belong to her. She holds it up to her face, breaths in the sweet sickly perfume, it’s scent familiar, and tendrils of fear snake through her body. The scarf is stained with blood.
As Maggie rejoins the party and tries to ignore her churning stomach, she pours herself a glass of champagne to toast the man she’s enjoyed decades of happy marriage with. Then she catches a news flash of the local girl’s murder. She stares at the girl with the beautiful face, long ice-blonde hair and, draped loosely around her neck, Maggie recognises it instantly. She’s wearing the scarf.
An utterly addictive and twisty read about the complex web of secrets within a family that will have you racing through to the mind-blowing end. If you love Lisa Jewell, Gillian Flynn and Behind Closed Doors, you won’t be able to put this down!
My Review:
I’m not easily stunned, but this one did it. A twist out of left field. Well, to be honest the clues were there but I wasn’t expecting it. Other than the detective, I am not sure I liked or related to any of the other characters. But I had an idea early on who may have killed and I needed to know if I was right and kept reading. I actually read this in about a day. The writing style made it easy to read and the plot moved along from one suspect to another.
It seemed to me to be a little bit of a study into how well you can know another person. I was slightly concerned with how quickly Maggie thought the worst in her husband of 25 years and how she jumped to conclusions on a lot of the happenings in the book.
It is part family drama and part murder mystery, with the murder mystery taking a slight back seat to the family drama. This is book six in the detective Dan Riley series, but is easily a stand alone book, as there is more of a focus on the family in the book, then the police solving the crime. But every fourth or fifth chapter is from Dan’s point of view. This was a little bit of a change from the normal murder mysteries I’ve read.
If you like both murder mysteries and family dramas, you should give this mesh of the two a try.
About the author:
I was born in Hampshire but grew up in London where I still live today with my two children. I was originally a dancer who re-trained after a ‘disco accident’ in Ibiza to become a journalist – I’ve even won some awards, though I don’t like to talk about them – ha! I’ve been a women’s lifestyle writer for over fifteen years and am the former editor and acting editor of the fabulous J-17 magazine and Smash Hits respectively and have written for all the major glossies including Grazia, Company, Marie Claire and More, where I was their resident tell-it-like-it-is advice columnist – loads of fun! I’ve also written for NME, Loaded and Front magazine (I can be down with the lads too!).
During my journalistic career I’ve seen and done some amazing stuff, highlights include becoming a nun (for a day), rally racing with the late, great Colin McRae, bunjee jumping off a 350 ft bridge in designer heels, whiskey tasting for a week in Kentucky (don’t remember much of that) and hanging out with all manor of A-list celebrities (er, Take That and Jordan, anyone?).
After I had my son I started to write novels (having children does strange things to a person) and had my first young adult novel, Ibiza Summer, published in 2004. My first adult novel (it is a little racy) Chelsea Wives was published in 2012, followed by Wicked Wives in 2013.
When I’m not writing, which isn’t often, I like to hang upside down on a pole – I’m a qualified pole fitness instructor, and drink fancy wine (though not necessarily at the same time, that would be dangerous). I adore creating exciting, three dimensional, glamorous and flawed characters against a backdrop of exotic locations. Revenge, sex, sin, glamour, excess, crime and intrigue is my speciality. My next novel, title to come, promises all the above and more!
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