An Honest Lie
by Tarryn Fisher
Published April 26th 2022 by Graydon House
“I’m going to kill her. You’d better come if you want to save her.”
Lorraine—“Rainy”—lives at the top of Tiger Mountain. Remote, moody, cloistered in pine trees and fog, it’s a sanctuary, a new life. She can hide from the disturbing past she wants to forget.
If she’s allowed to.
When Rainy reluctantly agrees to a girls’ weekend in Vegas, she’s prepared for an exhausting parade of shots and slot machines. But after a wild night, her friend Braithe doesn’t come back to the hotel room.
And then Rainy gets the text message, sent from Braithe’s phone: someone has her. But Rainy is who they really want, and Rainy knows why.
What follows is a twisted, shocking journey on the knife-edge of life and death. If she wants to save Braithe—and herself—the only way is to step back into the past.
This seething, gut-punch of a thriller can only have sprung from the fiendish brain of Tarryn Fisher, one of the most cunning writers of our time.
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Review5 Stars
Oh Tarryn, thank you so much for finally giving us the cult read we've been begging for. You know, now I'm just going to want more, because there are not enough cult fiction reads out there for me, especially those that capture the truth about cults. That's right, An Honest Lie follows a woman who was once in a cult, a woman who made a brave escape in her youth, but lives her life in fear of the repercussions of leaving. Of course, that's not what her new life is about, at least it wasn't until a fated trip to Las Vegas.
Rainy, an artist by trade, has recently moved to the mountains of Washington for her boyfriend, Grant, exchanging the blur of Manhattan for the quiet life. She wants to give him everything, so she goes along with making friends with the wives' of his friends, even accepting a trip to Las Vegas, a place she never wanted to go back to. The trip, though laced with jealous feelings and the one-upping nature of women, feels almost normal. There's clubs, shots, dancing, and pool time. She feels closer to Braithe, she thinks she might have a break through with Tara, and the other girls begin to show their true personality. There's drunken behavior and bonding moments. There's also a tension there underneath the surface, one that Rainy believes is connected to her past, but it isn't until she receives a text from Braithe's phone that she knows her past has come for her. What follows isn't the Las Vegas trip she planned for, but the terrifying escape from her past that she has spent avoiding.
I love a good feminist thriller and this one has all the makings of one. The girls are naturally catty, I love that Tarryn doesn't lie about the nature of women in a time where we form these opinions so young, she lets the women be, it is their strength when the time comes. There's no faking that friendships are perfect, that there isn't always an undertone of competition and fear laced in it. That the insecurity isn't there. It just so happens that Rainy's insecurity is much larger than anyone else's and it has nothing to do with her looks or her personality. Rainy is insecure about her past and when it comes for her, she cannot allow herself to be the young follower she once was, instead she must step up, for herself and for the women she has befriended and unwillingly put in this position. It's a haunted tail of love, loss, and the things we let slide by using religion as a reason.
I always love Tarryn Fisher's work, I am a true fangirl who believes she can do no wrong, but I will say this is the best release from her out of the past three novels. This one is unique, standout, and emotionally riveting. I couldn't put it down and I hope you won't be able to either.
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