I'm clearing my shelf. I've not read yet but will.

Another terrific twisty tale from the writer who is becoming my go to author when I want to be certain of a damn good chilling read and a guaranteed shiver down my spine.

A different take on the psychological thriller with two unique viewpoints and so many smokescreens to blind me to the truth I could smell the smoke on my clothes.

Melanie waves goodbye to her young teenage daughter Beth one evening as she heads to her best friends house, little knowing that a living nightmare is about to begin and the next time she holds her daughters hand she will be in a coma, following a brutal attack which left Beth for dead lying in the dark and lonely fenland of Lincolnshire. Why on earth was she even there at the dead of night?

There are so many mysteries surrounding this crime its almost difficult to keep track of them but the authors skill makes the story flow so deliciously you hardly notice you’re being sucked deep into the story until you’re so wrapped up in it, it feels as though you’re living it.

The remote watery location of the Lincolnshire fens is full of atmospheric description this is where Beth has birdwatched and enjoyed the scenery all of her young life. It soon becomes evident that everyone, but EVERYONE in this close knit community has secrets. In a series of flashbacks it’s immediately apparent that Beth has been hiding something. Then we hear Melanies voice as she speaks to her unconscious daughter and watch her crumble and stumble towards self destruction in her desperation and grief.

There is husband and Father, Jacob, what is he hiding? Many, many characters, childhood friends and neighbours and amongst them there is nobody Mel feels she can really trust, she begins to harbour suspicions as she takes on a quest to uncover her daughters attacker and unwittingly uncovers a whole can of squirmy worms




as she jumps to conclusions, lets her grief blur her judgement and make ill advised rash decisions.

Threaded through the book is a dark voice, an unnamed nasty character, who keeps piping up and you just know they have more to hide than anyone but you don’t know who – or even why!

The author delves deeply inside the mind of a grieving, angry and confused mother and takes us on a journey we never want to go on! And surprises the reader, over and over again and just when you think you’ve had that OMG moment, along comes another!

A wonderful thrilling read, very original and different, exciting and scary.

This was a well constructed thriller that had me questioning all the characters

This was just an okay read. Way too much detail and unnecessarily drawn out. Quickly went from a five star read to just barely making it to three stars.

The Darkest Lies

I really enjoyed Barbara Copperthwaite's previous book and so really wanted to read this!

The subject of this book is every parent's worse nightmare, Melanie's daughter Beth goes missing. When Beth is found broken, battered and almost dead, Melanie wants answers.

This book totally enveloped me, I really couldn't put this tense and breath taking thriller down, totally recommended! 4* from me!

I was really excited to be approved for this book, and my expectations were not disappointed. The story is fast-paced and cleverly plotted. The story really grabbed my attention from the start and I felt for Melanie and her desperation to know the truth. Definitely an author keep an eye on!

4.5 stars
The Darkest Lies grabbed my attention from the very first page. The author has clearly mastered her skill with words, bewitching the reader with beautifully descriptive language... ' a moon hangs so fat it oozes an aura into the sky that almost blots out the stars surrounding it." Love it!

This addictive story will take you on quite the tense, dark and emotional journey, that was the cause of quite a few lump in your throat moments for me.

It deals with secrets, lies and deception, having me look at everyone in the small town through the lens of suspicion.

However the Oak family were instantly likeable, especially when the author made it clear that Beth had a ( seemingly) close relationship with her parents. Perhaps having what I hope is a close relationship with my teenage daughter, meant that I could easily relate. I love the way mom and daughter would say " I love you to bits and whole again."

The book is written from three points of view - mom, daughter and attacker.

Majority of the input was from the mother, Melanie. The description by mother to daughter as to the happenings, and of her emotional turmoil after she discovers her daughter is missing, was cleverly done by the author in my opinion. I felt I was experiencing it first hand myself, drawing me in, having me emotionally invested.

The description of the attacker's thought process was disturbing yet I couldn't help but be sucked in even further.

This was an engrossing page turner as I lapped up the red herrings everywhere, although it did get long winded at times.

And that twist....bravo to the author on such clever trickery!

I was rewarded with an immensely satisfying sense of justification at the end that not all authors give their readers the pleasure of experiencing.

This is my first book by this author yet it won't be my last. Congratulations on a wonderfully captivating read.

Many thanks to Netgalley, Bookouture and of course the author for allowing me the pleasure of providing an unbiased review.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. This is my honest review.

The book is a who-dun-it searching for the person responsible for gravely attacking a teenaged girl. I was invested enough to want to find out the ending but wasn't impressed with the writing. The main character, the daughter's mom, just isn't very likeable. She sets off to find the person responsible but is written to be a bit of a crazy drunk. There is a bit of a twist that seems too "staged" and fit in oddly with the rest of the story. With that said, there were some surprises that I didn't see coming and I was satisfied with the ending.

I really enjoyed this story, very intense with so many lies being told it was truly hard to guess who had hurt this child and left her for dead. The ending was very well done and quite surprising! Highly recommend!

This was a taut and gripping page turner set in the fictional village of Fenmere. That the author could create such a vivid and colourful village based on a real are is testament to her prose writing skills.

The plot concerns itself with a mothers increasingly frantic attempts to discover exactly what had happened to her daughter when she is found after having been assaulted on the marsh. Although obviously in a desperate emotional state the central character of Mel, who narrates much of the book, came across at first as a bit irritating but that feeling soon dissipates as she tenaciously begins her own investigation.

Copperthwaite is very skilled at describing the people, relationships and historic squabbles that are part and parcel of a small village community and again I easily related to it. I guessed quite early on the identity of someone who also partly narrates the novel but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of it.

This book had me so engrossed that I hated for it to end. This is the story of Melanie and her daughter Beth. They are victims to a tragic incident and the story takes you on twists and turns to find out who did it and why. All of the characters were well developed, as well as the story. Loved it!!

When I finished The Darkest Lies late last night, it took me about 10 minutes to decide if I wanted to rate this book 3.5 stars or 4 stars. I know on Goodreads you can’t really do half a star but that’s not why I chose to pick 4 stars. I chose 4 stars because not only was this book a very well written psychological thriller, it also made me cry and hit me in all the feels.

I want to start from the beginning though. Meeting the main character Melanie Oak. A mother to a 13, soon to be 14 year-old daughter, Beth, and a loving wife to her husband, Jacob. Oh and you can’t forget their beautiful dog Wiggins. They are, like the synopsis said a beautiful family. The perfect family. They love each other unconditionally, they take silly pictures together, they make dinner together, they have girl nights together where they pamper each other. Yes even Jacob participates in these girl nights.

But one night, their world is turned upside down when Melanie walks her daughter to her best friends house and ends up letting her walk the last few feet to the house. What Melanie didn’t realize was that the second she turned her back on her daughter and walked back home that Beth would disappear into the night and be found brutally beaten the next morning.

Then you meet another main character named Glenn. He used to live in Fenmere but moved and recently came back to reside. He through this whole story rubbed me the wrong way. Ever since I met him. He seemed sketchy, and to me very annoying. When he and Melanie reconnected, he learned all about the case and been her go to guy. Everyone else in town couldn’t even look her in the eye when it came to the subject. She learned she couldn’t talk to Jacob without him really listening to her so she chose to confide in Glenn. They decided on solving the case together and bounced different ideas when it came to her daughter. He used Melanie and constantly pushed her into being a drunk and more a less a laughing stock of town while she desperately was trying to figure out what happened to her daughter.

Something else that bothered me was Melanie’s outbursts. After Glenn got in her head to solve the case on her own she was racing all over town trying to convict someone. It didn’t even matter if they were life long friends of hers. In my eyes it was very distasteful and psychotic. I wouldn’t have the first clue about what she was going through but I know that I would trust in the police force enough to solve a crime and know that any information I had, I would hand over. Not just go on some wild goose chase.

I loved Jacob’s character. What a loving and supporting father and husband. Even though he gets caught doing something that he shouldn’t have, I have so much respect for him in his time of disaster and even after the crime is solved. His character hit me hard and definitely had me shedding a few tears.

Another thing I really loved was the setting for this story. The book opens with an unnerving description that draws you in perfectly to a beautifully and isolated area of marshes that are both home to the Oaks and where they find death.

The other characters in this story were perfectly written. They were the type of villagers who stuck closely together, while knowing so much information about what happened to Beth but yet no one ever steps forward. They are frustrating, yet caring. The one thing that trumps all is the fact that everyone has a secret they don’t want the town to find out about.

This book is filled with many chapters. 106 to be exact without counting the prologue and epilogue. They are short chapters but hold clues to help you solve not one but two crimes that should not have been committed in the first place.

Thank you to Bookouture, NetGalley and Barbara Copperthwaite for letting me read The Darkest Lies for an honest review.

A very descriptive book but I found some of it quite predictable. Still worth reading though, and I will look out for other books by this author

I enjoyed this book on the whole except when I wanted to shout leave it to the police. I bit different story from the norm so I would recommend it.

I am thrilled to welcome you to my stop on the The Darkest Lies blog tour which I share with the fabulous Kate over at Bibliophile Book Club. The Darkest Lies is written by all-round lovely person and talented author, Barbara Copperthwaite. I read Barbara’s self published Flowers for the Dead last year and fell in love with her writing (along with her incredibly likeable serial killer, Adam). If you missed that review or would like a recap then please click here. So I was very excited to hear that not only had Barbara been snapped up by brilliant publishers Bookouture, she was also about to publish a brand new crime thriller.

And what a thriller! Flowers for the Dead left such a lasting impression on me that I was maybe a little harsh in my ‘bar-setting’ for The Darkest Lies. It had to be good, and I mean really, really, unequivocally, stupendously good to merit a five star rating from me (sorry Barbara Copperthwaite, us readers have pretty high, almost unachievable standards sometimes. It’s not just me, is it…?). This book took me on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. The lies, the deceit, the secrets and the fear. It was all beautifully done. But what I loved the most, and what hasn’t happened to me while reading for a LONG time is that I bawled my eyes out. It was one of those big, ugly cries that is uncontrollable and very snotty. Now I only tend to read crime and psychological thriller novels so I’m pretty used to bad things happening to good people. And I’ve read some pretty difficult and heartbreaking stuff over the years, but this book…..this book!!! This book was the one to convey the characters pain and turn this badass tough-nut reader into a smushy pile of tears. Amazing stuff!

Thirteen year old Beth Oak plans to spend the night at her friend’s house. Mani/pedi’s are on the agenda, lots of giggly girlie talk about boys and a sickening sweet midnight feast. Well, that’s what Beth is telling her mum anyway. Beth has other, much more mature things planned for her evening. But first she needs to escape her mother and make it to the cricket pavilion in time for her date.

Melanie Oak, Beth’s mum is completely oblivious to her daughter’s hidden agenda. She leaves her outside her friend’s house and heads home to husband, Jacob and her warm bed. Only in the morning, when she starts to question what time Beth will be home does she realise something is terribly wrong. Beth is missing. Beth’s BFF doesn’t know where she is and no one from the village has seen her (despite someone, somewhere always seeing something). Melanie begins to fall apart, drinking herself into oblivion and pushing friends and life-long neighbours away. A chance encounter one evening in the local pub gives her the idea to start her own investigation. After all the police, headed by DS Devonport, aren’t doing anything constructive so what harm could it do? Will Melanie be able to discover what dark secrets her daughter was keeping and exactly what happened to Beth that fateful evening?

One of the first things which struck me about this book was the use of the second person narrative. I’ve been pondering on this for a while now, trying to remember the last book I read which took this approach and I can’t think of a single one. It’s unusual and made the book feel immediately different to other missing child stories.

I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. There I was watching this once happy and content woman unravel before my eyes. The anguish, the fear, the fading hope all eating away at what was once a strong family-centred woman. Oh, and the suspicion. I loved how suspicious Melanie became of everyone around her. The turning away of neighbours when they saw her coming down the street. The strange flickering looks on their faces when they couldn’t escape Melanie’s interrogation. The guarded sympathy, all wonderfully written to cast suspicion and doubt on most of the villagers.

Despite trying hard to work out what had happened to Beth, I didn’t succeed. I was surprised (in the best way possible) by the reveal as I certainly didn’t see that one coming. That however, is not the end of the story. I had certain suspicions about one aspect of the book so when those suspicions were confirmed it made up for my sleuth powers letting me down in the first instance.

Would I recommend this book? I loved The Darkest Lies and will heartily recommend it to anyone who will listen. I adored the closing chapters which made me give a little cheer despite something quite horrific happening. Although good doesn’t come out of this book completely unscathed, it does eventually win in the end…..just with a little rust and mud taking the shine off of its halo.

Five out of five stars.

I chose to read and review an eARC of The Darkest Lies. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Gripping? Jaw dropping twists? Not exactly how I would describe this book, but anyway.

Melanie is living a wonderful life with her husband and her daughter, when suddenly her daughter Beth is found battered and left for dead. This is the story of Melanie stopping at nothing to find who did this to Beth.

I felt like each character was really unlikeable and annoying, especially the lead character Melanie. I mean for me (and this is personal preference) Melanie's chapters (which were more than half the book were a painful read - talking as if she is talking to her daughter, I just could not get into that. Unfortunately this book was just not for me.

There is nothing perfect in this world, especially the perfect families who live in perfect villages, having daughters who have the perfect best friends, etc., etcetera. And when her daughter disappears to be found near death, Melanie realizes that such perfection doesn't exist and that everyone is willing to say piles and piles of lies to defend their own small private perfection at the expense of that others'.
Despite the interesting plot and some good ideas, the book has more weak points than strengths. First of all, the choice to make constantly talk Melania with her daughter, first dying and then dead, is forced and irritating; The introduction of a pedophile serial killer is an overwhelming and all his background is unreliable, as is the relationship between Melania and her country fellows.
What a pity.
I thank Bookouture and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

When Melanie's daughter, Beth, goes missing after lying about spending the night at her friend's house, Melanie is distraught. Then, her daughter is found beaten, seriously ill and in a coma.


So the question is what would you do? Would you curl up and die? Would you spend your time at your daughter's bedside willing her alive? Or, would you try to find the person who hurt your child?

The Darkest Lies is full of rage and despair and tragedy. It is poignant, yet honest. It is the story of the lies we tell, whether in fact or merely by omission.

Melanie, the main character, unravels as the story progresses... and who can blame her? Her only child lies in a hospital bed and the prognosis is bad. So, Melanie enlists the help of an old school friend and spends her time in an alcohol induced fugue on the bleak fens where she feels closer to her daughter.

This book is all about secrets and lies and omissions and misconceptions. It challenges our certainty that we know our loved ones inside and out. It exposes the fragility of a small community in the midst of tragedy. But what it does best is make us question ourselves.

This is a great read that will leave you reeling by the final twists. Throughout your emotions will be engaged. Long after you've finished reading, your mind will keep flitting back to the story and the question on your lips will be... 'What if...?'

Gripping and well written book. Definite page turner