I loved this book. So well written. I found this book unputdownable!!

This book was just… frustrating. Infuriating. Sloooow.

Paul, our narrator, was a common, privileged, middle-aged white guy who felt that the world owed him everything just for existing. Upon our first meeting, he goes into a bookshop with the express purpose of hitting on the early-twenties girl working at the counter. When she shows exactly zero interest in him, turning away after his first clumsy attempt at flirting, he thinks “Perhaps she was a little too fresh out of school, not quite my audience. Even so. How dare she. Fuck.”

We hear a few pages later that he met a young grad student named Kate at a bar who was trying to break into journalism. Paul, who has published one book to middling acclaim, writes his contact details on her palm, so she can reach him if she needs his advice. Which… sure. The next night he gets a call from a number he doesn’t recognize on his phone, and assumes it’s her. “As I picked up, I was already imagining the meeting (“my place probably easiest”), her breathless deference, the bottle of wine, the gratitude, the tumble into bed.” For the record – it wasn’t her. She never reached out because why the fuck would she?

Paul becomes reacquainted with someone he went to college with, Andrew, and ends up sucked into Andrew’s group of friends, eventually dating one of them, Alice. His relationship with Alice, with the entire group, really, is just one lie after another. Paul lies about where he lives (he’s just been evicted from his current place and is going to have to move back in with his mother), about his work (he tells them there’s currently a bidding war for his latest novel, when in fact, he hasn’t written anything), his financial situation (there is no financial situation), just anything he can possibly lie about. He thinks they admire him, and he sees their admiration as his due. His due for what? As I mentioned, he exists as a middle-aged white man.

I keep waiting for his lies to come out, for the rest of the group to call him out, but they never really do. Well, at the end, everything comes out, but it’s wrapped up in one of those “twists” that’s become so commonplace these days that’s extremely unsatisfying and so clearly telegraphed that you’re just relieved when it finally comes out.

Paul wants to be part of the upper class, so he starts telling lies so that he will fit in. Soon enough it is hard for the other characters to keep up with his lies, much less the reader. The sub-plot, which should really be the main plot, is about a girl who disappeared ten years ago and now that the family Paul is mooching off of has returned to Greece, a young girl is raped. There is a lot of innuendo about who did what when, and the good news is that the reader knows most of the answers to these questions. The other goood news is that the book is kind of short. That’s really good news because the slow pace of the plot is not very satisfying to the reader. The characters had flaws that were unable to be redeemed and did not redeem my interest in the book.

Lie With Me was a fun read. The main character, Paul, is the perfect narrator. I found myself irritated and annoyed with him at tomes, but I also felt sympathetic as well. This novel follows him on as his "harmless" lies continue to spin out of control. Sabine Durrant kept me guessing until the end, and I will definitely read more of her books.

3 Stars.

Paul thinks he’s gods gift to women: he’s a handsome, successful, published author. He can convince himself of almost anything, even though he’s a has been who hasn’t published a book in years, and is living in his friend’s apartment because he doesn’t have two dimes to rub together. So what does he do when he meets Alice at a dinner party? He embellishes and then seduces her. Paul is sleazy and without a conscience. Everything he has told Alice about himself and his life is a lie and once he starts, it’s impossible to stop. Alice falls for it. Let the manipulation begin.

“Lie With Me” is an extremely slow burn, so slow that the novel only took off at the 85% mark, which was unfortunate. That being said, the characters were quite well developed - I say this because I despised the character of Paul: his sleaziness is what kept me turning the pages.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hodder & Stoughton / Mulholland Books and Sabine Durrant for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Published on NetGalley and Goodreads on 3.10.18.

This is my 3rd Sabine Durrant book. Remember Me This Way I gave an easy 5 stars to while Under Your Skin I gave the dreaded 1 star. Needless to say I was a little hesitant picking this one up.

Need not fear because I thought this book was great.

Paul Morris is a truly despicable character that I enjoyed reading about. There is just something about a snarky sociopath that really intrigues me. If you are looking for nonstop thrills and chills then this will likely not be for you. This is more so a character study of Paul and we are built up slowly to the final conclusion. Ms. Durrant had my head spinning with that ending! So good!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I think 2018 is shaping up to be the year of the “Liar/Lie” in novels. This one falls directly into the middle of the pack. And unfortunately there is nothing concrete to set it off from the others.

Paul has always searched for the easy life. He wants the most beautiful women and of course, if they have money...well, that’s just icing on the cake. As you can imagine, Paul is not a very likable character! When Paul meets Alice he lets a little lie slip in order to step into her world. Of course, he can’t stop at just one lie. He quickly finds himself neck-deep in his deceptions.

Even though this is a short book it’s also very slow paced. It’s not until the final 25% that the plot finally takes off, leading to some major fireworks at the end. Unfortunately, after such a long drawn-out journey it just wasn’t enough to save this book for me. I never felt enough of a connection to the characters throughout.

A traveling sister read with Brenda and Susanne!🤗

Thank you to NetGalley, Mulholland Books and Sabine Durrant for an ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

Finally a book that keeps you engaged until the last page.

The book blurs the conventional definition of what is right and what is wrong ? what makes you an honest person ? is it simply how you see yourself or as others see you ? and the power of little lies in a web of deceit.
Excellent plot, very well developed characters and a story that swallows you in.

I loved the suffocating ‘huit clos’ atmosphere with a small number of characters to follow, almost always in confined circumstances and all bound by past history. Yes the book moves slowly at times but one cannot not feel the tension building, the mystery thickening and not be compelled to proceed.

The book is mostly written through Paul’s own narrative. He is a selfish womanizer whose career is going nowhere, who lives out of other’s goodwill, but always gives the impression that he is more than. His circumstances suddenly change and because of his self-righteousness and sense of entitlement he wont see the signs pointing to his demise.
None of the character are very nice people, some appear likable but then show their true colors.
At times you feel like pulling for ‘Poor Alice’ whose life has not been easy, but then you truly pull for ‘Poor Paul’ who is so lost in his own life.

This book leaves you thinking about justice, about circumstantial evidences, about appearances and how all these marre the perception of others.
How one is being perceived and judged is in no way related to how one sees him/herself.

If anything I would lightly complain about all the British expression sometimes difficult to relate to as they are non existant in the US.
One cannot avoid that this is an British writer writing about British characters with a higher British education.
Still I truly enjoyed it.


Thank you to Sabine Durrant and Hodder & Stoughton for an electronic copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Although I don’t mind a disagreeable main character Paul was such a lazy self-centered liar I almost stopped reading. Even now I can’t pinpoint why I kept going except that the story drew me in to the point where I needed to know whose version of the truth was genuine. A little slow moving in places the resolution happened quickly at the end leaving me profoundly sad for several of the characters and repulsed by the behavior of others. I decided it was an intriguing read in many ways and that I would definitely try another book by this author.

Lie With Me is one of those psychological thrillers that people compare to “Gone Girl” and certainly it has a few twists and surprises that make the comparison more apt than usual. It all begins when Paul Morris runs into a college acquaintance named Andrew who invites him to dinner with his wife Tina, and a family friend Alice

Morris is a bit of a celebrity, though definitely D-list, an author with one literary success on which he has been trading for the rest of his decade. He’s a bit of a jerk, louche and leering, living above his means by relying on the generosity of friends. Unwilling to admit his writing career has fizzled, he lies. Unwilling to admit his straitened circumstances, he lies. And all those lies trap him when he wants to tell the truth.

As he comes to care for Alice, perhaps even love her, he regrets his lies, he wants to tell the truth. Boy does he ever want to tell the truth. Andrew and Alice were not important to Paul when he last saw them a decade ago on a Greek vacation and not important when he first knew them in college, but he pushes the acquaintance, hoping to scrounge a bit, hoping to seduce Alice. He’s a chancer, a bit of a grifter. He eventually gets invited to travel with them to Greece where Andrew with his wife and Alice with her kids vacation every year. We know things do not go well because we get an interstitial leap forward to Paul in jail, waiting for his trial. That foreshadowing was the only thing that kept me from quitting a third of the way in. Paul was unappealing, Alice was flat and discordant, inconsistent in mood and purpose. Andrew was a cipher and despised by Paul, mostly out of envy.

There are hints of why he could be in jail. A dog is viciously killed A young woman is raped, a woman Paul saw on the bus when he arrived. There’s also Jasmine who disappeared ten years ago. Is Paul doing this and lying to us? Is it Alice’s son? Perhaps Andrew? Is Paul being framed? Who would do that? Why?



I don’t have to like a character to like a book. I can deal with morally ambiguous characters, themes, and endings. That is the essence of Lie With Me. However, if your chief element of misdirection and tension is the idea of an unreliable narrator, your narrator has to feel unreliable. We all know Paul is a liar, but how do we know that? Because in his narration of this story he is unflinchingly honest about what a liar he is, he is pointing out his base motives, his crude sexual predatory values, his leering at girls much too young for his eyes. He does such a good job of telling us what an awful jerk he is, it is impossible to accept him as unreliable with us. Yes, he’s lying to everyone else, but no one reading this is going to think he is lying to us.

Too much time is spent driving home that Paul is selfish, self-involved, and a liar. There’s so much detail and in the end, that detail matters in constructing the seeds of Paul’s destruction, but the accumulation of those details, is tedious. These details make the story fair, they are the clues that make it clear who was the spider to Paul’s fly, though only in retrospect which means the author succeeded in misdirection, just not in making them suspenseful.

Frankly, I wish I had just given up on this book, but by the time I was ready to quit, I was nearly half through and didn’t want to waste the time I spent on getting that far. I should have. . I expected to read it in a day and it took a week because I kept finding other things I would rather do than read it, like vaccuming.

***************************** SPOILERS BELOW THE LINKS ***********************

I received an e-galley of Lie With Me from the publisher through NetGalley.

Lie With Me at Hachette Books | Mulholland Books | Hodder & Stoughton
Sabine Durrant at GoodReads
***************************** ***SPOILERS BELOW **************************

I hated this book in the end. Here’s the thing. Paul is a jerk, he was reckless with a young woman’s heart back in college. He dumped Andrew’s sister and Alice’s friend heartlessly and broke her heart. When he runs into Andrew and Alice a decade ago, he was an ass, unaware of their grief or the reason for it. He was an ass, a jerk, selfish and dishonest. But, Alice is a sociopath. While I can understand her motives, I cannot look past what she did to Jasmine’s family for ten years, and what she did is not balanced at all by what he did. Andrew and Alice are just evil, and they drew children into their evil. I could still like this book if it weren’t for the expectation that we would think what happens to Paul is justice well served. There is nothing just about this. Being a jerk might deserve a punch in the nose. It does not deserve this and Jasmine’s family does not deserve this. There is just something foul about this ending. Of course, this is something that makes it more like “Gone Girl” than most books, obsessive evil triumphs over merely the merely selfish and self-involved. In “Gone Girl” though, there was this horror at the ending that is lacking here.

Paul Morris is broke. He is losing the house in which he has been living because the owner is coming back from his absence. Paul had once published a novel that got good reviews and a bit of money, but that was long ago, and holding a steady job is not one of his better talents. Where he does excel, is in seducing women and getting them to do his bidding until a better opportunity causes him to move on. But times are tough right now. He has become middle-aged. Although he feels that he is still very good-looking and attractive to women, his opportunistic lifestyle isn't as easy as it had once been.
By chance, Paul runs into a former classmate from years ago, Andrew, who invites him to a party. He vaguely remembers dating one of Andrew's sisters, Florrie, way back then. Paul isn't interested in Andrew's party, but goes nevertheless. There he meets another sister Alice, a widow in her forties. By this time, Paul has been forced to move in with his mother, has almost no cash, and has become desperate. He views Alice with interest. To impress her, he builds a web of lies about his new novel, his beautiful house, and extravagant lifestyle. Author Sabine Durrant has created a clever noir novel that the reader won't especially like at first, because the characters are not very likable, but if readers stick with it, they will began to pick up clues that not all is what it seems. The mystery deepens. Who are these people? What are they up to? Has Paul the predator, become Paul the prey? Or is he one step ahead of them? The ending is surprising, logical, and satisfying.

Is no one truthful anymore? I found this book to be tough going. It was very difficult for me to get into. I really did not like any of the characters and figured out the story about a fourth of the way in. I was disappointed and would not recommend it.

Lies!!! Wow!!! The main character in this book is Paul Morris, who is also the protagonist and narrator of the novel. While he is not the most favorite character in this book, and his lies just keep piling up as the novel progress, you truly feel sorry for him as the plot unfolds. This truly was a terrific read with an ending I never saw coming. Without giving away spoilers, the other main characters in the book, as the books nears the end are so vile. The book, in the end, doe't have closure but there is hope for the one who is framed.

This was an enjoyable, fast paced book. The mystery kept the story going and by the time the twist came I had been focused on the red herring to miss the leading up clues.

Boy, can this guy Paul tell a lie. Problem is he tells so many that people are confused. I think he even confuses himself trying to just keep up with all his lies. Oh and shocker!!, he's a real loser. HA!!

He's had one book published and hasn't really done anything since except for keeping up with his lies. He lies to his friends, his mother, and even strangers. Why? Even if it's just a little one.

Anyways, while reading this I totally thought "his friends" who took him to Pyros were just as shady as him. However, in a more deadly way. And when I got to the end . . .

This book was cray, cray!! I could see where it was going, but I didn't care. I was totally in for the ride!!! Ready and willing! And, I'm glad I took this journey. Very well done!!!

Thanks to Hodder and Stoughton, Mulholland Books and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

This book was the definition of a slow burner...starts out slow but by the end you can’t stop reading. The author did a great job of completely changing your feelings on certain characters by the end of the book. The descriptions also made me wish I was reading this by a pool in the Greek islands!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Mulholland Books for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review

I wanted to like it, Paul is introduced and you figure this will be the object of my reading wrath so to speak but it was just too slow, I mean the end pace needed to be sprinkled throughout. Sorry

Paul Morris is a jerk. He is the boy-man, age 42, who needs to sleep with women half his age. He's the one who gets inappropriately drunk and says horrible things, the one who never picks up the tab, who floats from woman to woman. He wrote a bestselling novel when he was 21, and hasn't done much since then. Paul Morris has low self-esteem. He' lives with his mother. He has trouble telling the truth, but he loves animals. Hold that thought.

On a chance encounter, he meets up with a fellow he knew at Oxford. Peter invites Paul to dinner at his home, and Paul meets people he may have met before. (It's hard to remember. He was just a little drunk.) Fast forward, they end up in Pyros, Greece together at a family vacation home. with Alice (from the dinner party), her family, and Peter and his family.

Paul is mooching again. He had nowhere else to go, but home to Mum. He sees himself as better than that.

In Pyros, we learn that Paul's girlfriend Alice heads a nonprofit committed to finding Jasmine, the daughter of one of their vacationing friends, who disappeared 10 years ago after visiting one of the local clubs--the same year Paul, Alice and Peter were in Pyros and on the the same they ran into each other and Paul was ravingly drunk.

And this is where the book caught me up and took me on a roller coaster ride!

As a writer, Paul is an acute observer of everything going on around him. His own narration makes sense. He's the odd man out--everyone else has been close for years. When girl is raped and beaten near a nightclub one night, Paul begins to feel as if his fellow vacationers are looking at him differently, as if something is going on among the others that he is not a part of.

But is Paul even a reliable witness? What about the alcohol? The lying. What about him leering at the young girls by the pool? What about him pinching a tenner from the counter--because let's face it--the guy is broke. And paranoid. Walls are closing in around him. Sinister things happen.

Sabine Durrant's Lie With Me is un-put-downable! It recalls Daphne DuMaurier's classic, My Cousin Rachel. What really happened to Jasmine? Was Paul a part of it? You figure it out. I couldn't.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster/NetGalley for an ARC of Lie With Me, which has just been released in the United States.

I was surprised by this book. At first I had a hard time getting into it, but I stuck with it and eventually came to love it. I could not stand the main character, Paul, at first and by the end of the book I came to really like him and even felt sorry for him. I was surprised by the turn of events as the story played out. The author doesn't wrap the storyline up in a neat little bow at the end of the book. It left me wanting more and I loved it!

I was surprised by how much I liked this book. It starts off seemingly tepid, and it reminded me of a number of other English novels about modern-day life and struggles for romance. Another arrogant, middle-aged man who's used to good looks and privilege? Yawn. However... as I got further in, it seemed like there had to be something more interesting beneath the surface. My advice to the reader: keep going. The slow-burning flame might not be warm, but it isn't until the end that you suddenly realize it's a huge bonfire. Well worth it. Fantastic read.

The only thing I didn't like, and still don't, is the cover. And the title of the book, now that we're being honest. Both of them are bland and poorly designed. This book is deserving of much better.