Blog Tour – Between The Lies
Welcome to my stop on the Between The Lies Blog Tour hosted by Headline. Thank you as always to Anne Carter for the opportunity to share my review with you all today. Michelle Adams is easily and firmly taking her place alongside the best psychological thriller writers there are. My Sister was a great novel filled with manipulation and headgames. Between The Lies goes deeper and focuses on the core memories of Chloe Daniels and rebuilds them up to reveal horrific truths. What a novel. I hope you enjoy my review and please make sure you also support all the other fantastic blogs we have on this tour.
12.07.2018 / Headline / Psychological Thriller / Kindle / 336pp / (Paperback 10.01.18)
Target Audience: Readers who love intense psychological narratives with plenty of twists, gut-wrenching moments and a vast range of atmospheres and emotions throughout. If you enjoyed The Sister then you will definitely love Between The Lies.
About Between The Lies
The truth is hiding between the lies.
A page-turning psychological thriller with twists that keep the reader guessing until last page, this addictive read will be loved by fans of Shari Lapena’s A STRANGER IN THE HOUSE and Liz Lawler’s DON’T WAKE UP.
What would you do if you woke up and didn’t know who you were?
Chloe Daniels regains consciousness in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
She doesn’t recognise the strangers who call themselves family. She can’t even remember her own name.
What if your past remained a mystery?
As she slowly recovers, her parents and sister begin to share details of her life.
The successful career. The seaside home. The near-fatal car crash.
But Chloe senses they’re keeping dark secrets – and her determination to uncover the truth will have devastating consequences.
What if the people you should be able trust are lying to you?
Pick up a copy: Headline / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Goodreads
My Review
I have to start this review by saying that I am still dizzy from reading Between The Lies. Michelle Adams caught my attention with My Sister last year and I adored her bold and enigmatic writing, mixing raw emotion with unpredictable narratives. Between The Lies raises the stakes and the intensity ten-fold and I was actually taken aback by the multitude of reveals, direction changes and tone differences there are within. This left my speculation generator on full blast for most of the novel which is fun for me as I love a great guessing game.
Between The Lies is a tense, disorientated and emotionally charged novel about a woman dealing with devastating loss, fractured memories and paranoia that her family are keeping dark secrets about her past. Between The Lies explores the line between deciding what is best for someone and being honest no matter what ramifications lie in waiting.
After Chloe Daniels wakes up in hospital with amnesia from a horrific car accident, she is taken home by a family she does not recognise. Recovering in a house that she cannot recollect, Chloe is desperate to piece together memories of a life she lost. Chloe’s father is a psychiatrist who specialises in the field of memory recovery and with his help she hopes to remember the person she used to be and what happened on the night of the accident. Chloe feels that her family is hiding things from her. The memories her father recovers don’t feel real, as if they are warped and don’t sit correctly within her mind, and with her own fractured flashbacks contradicting his truth, Chloe thinks he might be trying to change her mind.
As time goes on, Chloe begins to remember and once the memories start creeping back, Chloe discovers she lost a lot more than just her memories on the night of her accident. When it is clear that Chloe’s family have been lying to her all this time, she decides it is time to leave. But with nowhere to go, no memory of a life outside of her father’s house, where can she run? Each shred of her past she collects re-arranges her understanding of what happened and who is actually to blame for her suffering. How is Chloe supposed to find out the truth when she can’t believe a word her supposed loved ones say? How can she find out who she was if her family won’t let her leave the house? Trapped, disoreintated and unable to understand the inconsolable grief she harbours within her, Chloe must escape and find answers for herself.
What a story! Michelle Adams is all about the journey of discovery and here we have a unforgettable one. Between The Lies has everything you would expect from a psychological thriller and more. Michelle Adams’ writing is unsettling, gut-wrenching and mentally challenging to say the least. Chloe is a clean slate at the beginning of the novel and by the end she fully comprehends the severity of her decisions and the cost of mistakes. It is a turbulent narrative populated with characters that the reader cannot trust one bit. MA knows how to push a reader’s buttons, she spares no details, and though I did not expect certain developments, MA handled the harsher moments beautifully and I was able to connect with Chloe and her pain. The atmosphere changes with Chloe’s emotions which makes for a stormy read.
I enjoyed the rapid, almost delirious, first act and the seriously unpredictable second act but after all the facts where out on the table, I felt the third act was the weakest. After the intensity, devastation and loneliness I experienced with Chloe towards the start, I was slightly disappointed with the novels final moments. It was great to find out what really happened that night but it was an almost cliche and convenient finale. But ultimately it was certainly a meaningful ending and that counts for a lot in my opinion. I am trying not to mention to many details about the story, but I wanted to mention how much I enjoyed the short letter based interludes between chapters that really altered my understanding of Chloe’s story. They were a great addition by MA and kept me guessing even more.
Other than the certain aspects of the last act, I don’t have a lot of negative things to say about the novel. I enjoyed the fact that absolutely no-one, even Chloe, could be trusted and the reader is left to make their own conclusions. I found MA’s insights into the psychology behind memory loss/recovery and how our brains try and compensate for gaps in our recollections jusy brilliant. I love the subject of memory, and it paints an interesting picture of the future of psychiatry when it comes to grief, control and fear. The themes present in the novel are well suited to the genre too. I appreciated the unity of themes such as grief, pain, memory loss, lies, truth, love, hate, secrets and fear; each altering the meaning behind the narrative. Decisions have consequences and that the past is the past and our mistakes are there to help drive us forward.
The strongest element of Michelle Adam’s novel has to be the development and overall execution of the narrative. Between The Lies easily has the most twists I have ever seen in a psychological thriller and it was MA’s superbly panicked and guilt ridden delivery of Chloe’s past that left my head spinning on multiple occasions. As Chloe Daniels tugs on the loose threads of her memory, she unveils truths that drastically change the landscape of the narrative and I found it almost impossible to guess the outcome of the story. As I said before, I’ll admit that when the (narrative) dust settles in the last act it was much easier to solve the mystery but by then I was much more interested in the how instead of the who or why. It was only in the novel last moments was I bit disappointed, but I was too busy wiping the tears away so I barely noticed at the time.
Michelle Adams is a valuable addition to the psychological thriller and it would be a huge mistake to miss out on her novels as they are re-invigorating the genre with a fresh and engrossing intensity. Between The Lies shows us that Michelle Adams is just getting fired up and she has a potential to be a heavy-weight in the genre in the coming years.
About Michelle Adams
Michelle Adams grew up in the UK and now lives in Cyprus, where she works as a part-time scientist. She read her first Stephen King novel at the tender age of nine, and has been addicted to suspense fiction ever since. BETWEEN THE LIES is her second novel following the acclaimed psychological thriller MY SISTER.
Always Trust In Books 
Love that this book is so unsettling! 🙂 Fab review!
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thanks so much for the amazing Blog Tour support!
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