Not To Be Missed Monday: Behind Every Lie by Christina McDonald @Christinamac79

It’s no secret how much we love Christina McDonald. She is one of the kindest authors out there who loves to share her time with her readers. We had the pleasure of her joining us twice for an author Q & A. She joined us in our Behind the Pages Goodreads group and talked a bit about Behind Every Lie. At that time, we hadn’t read Behind Every Lie. Today we are excited to share our reviews with you all!

Behind Every Lie is available tomorrow February 4, 2020 and we suggest not missing this one if you love a fast-paced, head spinning, twisty domestic thriller with a bit of drama to it.

We loved The Night Olivia Fell and highly recommend if you haven’t read that one to read it. It’s one not to be missed. Behind Every Lie is quite a bit different from The Night Olivia Fell and it’s best going into it knowing that and trying not to compare the two. I found The Night Olivia Fell to have more emotional depth to it and Behind Every Lie to be a twisty and suspenseful mystery with unreliable characters.

Brenda’s review

Behind Every Lie is a domestic thriller with all the elements that make for a readable, fast-paced, intense and suspenseful one. The characters are unreliable and interesting and left me guessing who to trust and not. There is quite of bit of drama here that left my head spinning and I felt like I was doing the twist with those layered twists and turns in all that drama. There are a few things explored here within this mystery and the mother-daughter relationship and there is plenty to unpack here with the secrets and lies that add some tension to the story.

Norma’s review

Unsettling, illuminating & wholly absorbing!

BEHIND EVERY LIE by CHRISTINA MCDONALD has quite the opening scene and a premise that definitely hooked me and kept me entertained and completely invested in. It was such an emotionally intense, suspenseful, enjoyable, and entertaining mother-daughter domestic thriller. It is packed full of drama and atmosphere. The vivid descriptions added to the tension for me and definitely helped to set the mood.

CHRISTINA MCDONALD delivers a complex, captivating, dark, character-driven, gripping, intriguing and well-written read here that is told in alternating perspectives from Eva’s after being hit by lightning and Kat’s mysterious past. I thoroughly enjoyed our main character here and it was extremely fun trying to figure out if her memory was affected by being struck by lightning or if there was something else going on here. My absolute favourite is an unreliable character.

I absolutely love it when a book starts out with a bang and has plenty of questions for us to ponder but gives me this firm grasp that I know exactly where the story is headed. These types of stories are so satisfying for me as I like it when an author guides us to the conclusion and then throws in a surprising twist ending that totally works then I’m one happy reader. She writes these emotionally-charged stories that taps right into all your emotions as well as this deep sense of foreboding to make it quite the suspenseful storytelling.

Norma’s Stats:
Cover: Impending doom, ominous, foreboding, haunting, eye-catching and a fitting representation to storyline.
Title: Intriguing, suspenseful, affecting and an extremely fitting representation to storyline.
Writing/Prose: Engaging, taut, readable, beautiful, and well-written.
Plot: Steadily-paced, complex, fascinating, foreboding, vivid, atmospheric, suspenseful, and moving.
Ending: A dazzling, clever, and twist ending that was extremely satisfying! There were some aspects to the storyline that I felt were easy to predict but that ending totally took me by surprise!
Overall: An emotionally charged & intriguing storyline, realistic & believable familial dynamics, and a well-crafted & intense mystery. Would highly recommend!

Expected Publishing Date: February 4, 2020

Thank you so much to Christina McDonald for our copies to read and review.

From our Q & A with Christina McDonald

Brenda Can you give a sneak peek into what Behind Every Lie is about?

Christina BEL is about Eva Hansen, who wakes up in the hospital after being struck by lightning and learns that her mother, Kat has been murdered. Eva was found unconscious down the street, but she can’t remember what happened, which of course makes the police very suspicious of her. To clear her name and to find out if she is capable of something so terrible, Eva heads to London—Kat’s former home—and begins to unravel the mystery behind her mother’s murder.

Brenda How did the idea for Behind Every Lie come to you?

Christina There were two things that really factored into the idea behind BEL. The first is I randomly saw a picture of Lichtenberg figures, which are the branching electrical marks sometimes left on the skin of people who’ve been struck by lightning. I was so fascinated that I began researching more about lightning strikes, particularly how it affects short-term and long-term memory.

During this time I read the impact statement for Emily Doe, who was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner at Stanford University. It really impacted me and I thought: how do you go on after that? Your self-trust and worth would be eroded.

Now I know that sexual assault in a story can be incredibly unsettling for some readers (I don’t show it, but do reference it in this book), but I felt it was so important for women (and men, of course) to know they have a voice. Sexual assault has often been covered in stories, but not often is the pain explored through the victim’s eyes. It’s so common to see men presented as both attacker and savior, while women as powerless, and I wanted to flip that around, to show a woman taking control after that trauma and learning to trust herself again.

So I wrote BEL, which takes a thriller concept and places Eva, my protagonist, around a similar past. Now she’s been struck by lightning and can’t remember if she murdered her mother, and this further erodes her self-trust. So she embarks on a journey to find out who she really is and what she’s capable of, while trying to solve the mystery of who murdered her mother.

For more of our Q & A can be found here on our blog or in our Behind the Pages Goodreads group here