Lie in Plain Sight - Maggie Barbieri

I'm a mood reader, I will read 7 titles in a row from the same genre and with the same themes, but sometimes I hit a slump and this past week I went 4 days without picking up a book. Per a suggestion from a friend, I found a random title in my Kindle that had an upcoming or recent publish date and just started reading. I didn't think I was in the mood for a murder mystery, but it turns out I was and I ate up Lie in Plain Sight in a matter of hours.

Rating: 4 Stars
Published: March 2016
ARC provided via Netgalley

Amazon Goodreads

Maeve Conlon agrees to let her employee's teen daughter walk home from school when her mom is out on delivery, but when she's not home hours later things turn sour. She's just vanished and there's no solid leads. Maeve feels responsible, she feels guilt, and she knows there's more to Taylor's disappearance than meets the eye. Maeve takes things into her own hands and finds that the small town of Farringville has more secrets than one would ever expect.

What a perplexing mystery! Color me surprised when I couldn't put it down. Not only is the story-line complex, but the characters were so secretive that I couldn't stop turning the pages in hopes of getting farther beneath the surface. The mystery was not one I could have easily guessed, while there were times I thought Maeve was on the wrong track, nothing could have prepared me for the twists Maggie Barbieri inserted into this book. The characters were all very realistic, like anyone you'd meet in your local coffee shop, but with masks hiding the reality. As I read I found myself really seeing and feeling what Maeve saw and felt; she's a character that's too impulsive, but has the best of intentions. Her past is definitely dark and I actually liked that her past haunted her so much that it drove her to fight for justice and revenge. I enjoyed that Maggie Barbieri really showed how Maeve and her family fell apart as Maeve got obsessed, it felt realistic and I had a lot of compassion for her. And I seriously can't get over how many secrets were uncovered in this book, they just never stopped, and they affected everyone, it was a big spider web of lies.

I didn't have any idea that this was the third book in a series about Maeve Conlon, amateur sleuth, but I certainly want to read all of them. While it didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the book, I do think the previous novels would be better to read before picking up Lie in Plain Sight. This was a great suspense mystery and I would absolutely recommend it.