Amanda Reynolds: Lying To You

Amanda Reynolds' psychological thriller Lying To You is a completely pointless book.

Plot description: Ten years ago, something terrible happened between a teenage girl Jess and her male teacher. The teacher went to jail for a while. And now Jess has to return to her former home village to organize her mother's funeral. Old grudges sit deep, and what really happened on prom night?

The narrative style is even more boring than boring. 95% is completely useless description of things that are of no interest to anyone. Like when the main character cleans her dead mother's gross cabin. Only a small part of the text is the kind that really moves the plot forward.

There is no tension or plot twist in this book at any point. No surprising revelations. Nothing to make this a thriller.

 

Only after reading the book to the end did I check if I had read anything by Amanda Reynolds before. So why did I pick up this book? And yes, in January 2023 I read Reynolds' book Close To Me, and I think I liked it more than this one. Even a tv-series has been made of this book, it's on Viaplay and I intend to watch it.

Few authors who write psychological thrillers really know how to write engagingly. Most of them focus too much on the description of boring everyday life, which I don't think belongs to thrillers.