By the time you read this review, I will be finished with my Christmas shopping!!!! I hope. Because right now it’s November and instead of starting it or thinking of it, I spent the afternoon reading The Perfect Liar by Thomas Christopher Greene. Wow, another author I was blown away by and then realized after I finished the book that he has several titles under his belt already.
I’m totally not the only one who loved this book. Check out what some of the trades said about The Perfect Liar.
“Keeps readers riveted. . .This novel creates a slow burn with not one but two shocking climaxes.” – Library Journal
“[A]n absorbing mystery about who is predator and who is prey.” – Booklist
That’s one of the things I just love about books. You can uncover treasure troves of books by an author you have just recently discovered. And you can consume them quickly because they are just sitting on the library shelves like Corduroy at the department store, just waiting to go home with an eager reader. And finding your next amazing book is easy for a little while. A very short while. Until you’ve read all the books and it’s time to either wait for one of your favorites to release a new book or find another author who has also alluded you up until this point.
The worst part? These mysterious authors are never easy to find. Actually, you pretty much only find one when you aren’t looking. Hence why it is necessary to read 75+ books a year.
Reading, as Dickens would say, “it’s the best of times and the worst of times.”
From the Publisher:
A seemingly perfect marriage is threatened by the deadly secrets husband and wife keep from each other.
Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her fifteen-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. Strong-willed and attractive, Susannah expects that her life is perfectly in place again. Then one quiet morning she finds a note on her door: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon thereafter, a second note appears on their door: DID YOU GET AWAY WITH IT?
Both Susannah and Max are keeping secrets from the world and from each other —secrets that could destroy their family and everything they have built. Thomas Christopher Greene’s The Perfect Liar is a thrilling novel told through the alternating perspectives of Susannah and Max with a shocking climax that no one will expect, from the bestselling author of The Headmaster’s Wife.
My Review:
Right off the bat, I can tell you one thing that I loved about The Perfect Liar by Thomas Christopher Greene, is that the book copy did not give away everything before I even cracked the cover. Was it interesting? Did it entice me to pick up the book? Yes and yes. But, only about three chapters in I was thrown for a twist. It was amazing. Usually I feel like the first couple of twists are alluded to or given away and I so appreciate that they did not do that this time.
Of course, now I must also work very hard to tell you first of all to definitely pick up a copy of The Perfect Liar, without telling you too many details on why that would be a good move. I can tell you that both Max and Susannah are richly imagined and multi-faceted characters. They take turns narrating the book and both have kept secrets.
I can tell you that things will happen that you don’t suspect, but that you will find very believable and these things will leave you feeling very satisfied that Greene has written a good, sound and solid thriller that you thoroughly enjoy reading. This one is out January 15–pick it up and start 2019 off with a great read!
Special thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced e-galley in exchange for my honest review.
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