Rating: 4 / 5
For October’s #spookathon, I added SOMETIMES I LIE by Alice Feeney to my TBR and since I didn’t quite get a chance to read it during that readathon, I prioritized it for the Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon. I have seen quite a few recommendations for this one, so I had high hopes that it would keep my attention during the redathon and I wasn’t disappointed.
In SOMETIMES I LIE, Amber comes to in the hospital. She can’t move and she can’t speak, but she can hear the people around her. Amber doesn’t know how she came to be in the hospital, but she thinks her husband may be to blame. The narrative follows Amber in the present as she listens to the people talking around her and tries to piece together recent events. It also follows Amber in a series of flashbacks to the days leading up to her hospitalization. We also get a series of diary entries from Amber’s childhood which show that this isn’t the first time trouble has found her.
I really enjoyed this novel. The blurb on the back spells out three things Amber knows: she’s in a coma, her husband doesn’t love her anymore and sometimes she lies. The novel takes a unique twist on the unreliable narrator. The mysteries surrounding Amber are spelled out slowly over the span of the novel through the different timelines and the narrator’s limited capacity in the present day. Things you believe to be true (and those that Amber believes to be true) are called into question as the book progresses.
This isn’t a book where the characters are overly lovable. They are very flawed and often untrustworthy. That can sometimes be a drain for me in my enjoyment of a book, but here I didn’t mind it too much. The book is definitely more a slow burn mystery than a real thriller for me. The concept of being locked away in your mind as Amber was in much of the novel is frightening concept though, for sure!
Overall this was a fun, quick read and perfect for keeping my mind on my reading during the readathon!
DG Reads 