Review: Every Last Lie

Title: Every Last Lie

Author: Mary Kubica

Publisher: 1 June 2017 Harlequin (Australia), TEEN / MIRA HQ Fiction Australis

Pages: 336 pages
How I Read It: ARC book
Genre:  fiction, suspense, adult, contemporary, crime

My Rating: 4.5 cups

Synopsis:

New York Times bestselling author of THE GOOD GIRL, Mary Kubica is back with another exhilarating thriller as a widow's pursuit of the truth leads her to the darkest corners of the psyche.

"The bad man, Daddy. The bad man is after us."

Clara Solberg's world shatters when her husband and their four-year-old daughter are in a car crash, killing Nick while Maisie is remarkably unharmed. The crash is ruled an accident…until the coming days, when Maisie starts having night terrors that make Clara question what really happened on that fateful afternoon.

Tormented by grief and her obsession that Nick's death was far more than just an accident, Clara is plunged into a desperate hunt for the truth. Who would have wanted Nick dead? And, more important, why? Clara will stop at nothing to find out—and the truth is only the beginning of this twisted tale of secrets and deceit.

Told in the alternating perspectives of Clara's investigation and Nick's last months leading up to the crash, master of suspense Mary Kubica weaves her most chilling thriller to date—one that explores the dark recesses of a mind plagued by grief and shows that some secrets might be better left buried.

My Thoughts

“The police decided,” she says, as if the police are some all-knowing deity, as if the police never ever make mistakes. “They said it was an accident.”

It has been a goal of mine to read some Mary Kubica, noted as one of the better suspense writers in publishing. My first dabble into her writing was most rewarding. This mystery is littered with plenty of possibilities that will keep you guessing to the very end. For a tale that does not really go anywhere, Kubica writes in a way that will keep you turning the pages.

‘Everyone is sorry. So very sorry. But they’re also relieved it’s happened to me and not them.’

The story is told in alternating perspectives of Clara’s pursuit and investigation into the death of her husband and, her husband Nick and the last few months leading up to his accident. It’s riveting yet also sad to explore how grief can consume someone and totally mess with perspective to the extent that reality and fiction can become mixed. Being a new mother in itself and facing lack of sleep, unable to properly function, many can relate to alone. Mix into that, loss of a spouse at such a critical time and the ability to function would be almost certainly insurmountable.

‘I wish that they would put a Band-Aid on it so that we could all go home.’

This is an entertaining read that travels along at an easy pace with a somewhat, unexpected ending. This is a tale that needs to be slowly swallowed and savoured as it’s about the characters themselves, rather than the action. Clara is emotionally distraught in trying to ascertain the truth, and that accounts for unexpected questions in her search for answers. The way Kubica delves into her thought processes is uncanny and you are swept along this trail of speculation and supposition. Even with Nick, you will begin to feel disbelief, confusion, sympathy, pity and frustration, just to name a few. The dual narrative most definitely helped to build up the tension and backstory offering  a real sense of suspense.

Kubica builds the tension gradually as Clara slowly unravels the crumbs of clues. Don’t enter into this read expecting high paced action or unreadable plot twists. This is a work of slowly peeling away the ‘onion layers’ to reveal precisely what transpired in the weeks preceding Nick’s death and how circumstances collided together to present an unmitigating fallout.

Who killed Nick, or did Nick kill Nick?

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release