Who can you trust could be an alternate title for The Liar's Child. Buckley's novel follows a troubled family living in a large apartment complex on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Whit's wife Diane is struggling and neglecting five year old Boon and twelve year old Cassie. Adding to the chaos is their new neighbor, Sara. Sara has recently enrolled in the witness protection program. Although the plot is grungy, the story is suspenseful. Buckley's latest novel is a definite page turner.

This novel is set in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where a woman in witness protection is moved into an apartment next to a very dysfunctional family, alternating between the perspectives of the woman, the twelve year old girl next door, and the father next door, each of whom have their own secrets. It's not really a thriller, but more of a character novel with very slow burning psychological suspense. I guessed a twist or two, and the book definitely leaves a lot of stuff not quite resolved, but I definitely enjoyed reading it. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4.

What a strange and disjointed story this was. The supposed moral dilemma that Sara faces doesn't even show up until 70% into the book. Witness protection, child endangerment, dysfunctional families, and yes, even murder. And then there is a hurricane. And some strange outlying character named Hank who only peripherally fits into the story, almost an after thought.

Beautifully set in the Outer Banks, The Liar’s Child is a solid family drama that hooks you in early on. With a hurricane on the way, Sara encounters a couple that, for many reasons, should not have children. Does Sara risk everything in her new life to save the couples children from their parents? Or does she flee the hurricane, left to wonder what if. Many Emotions come into play, on both sides. It makes you wonder what you would be willing to do to save another, and what you would give up.

3 1/2 ⭐️‘s
While Sara is on the run from the Feds she finds herself uncharacteristically rescuing two neighbor children from a hurricane. As the hurricane hurtles towards them, an Amber Alert is issued. When Boon becomes sick she leaves them at a small town hospital in the middle of the night, but will she save herself from the consequences if she is caught, or will she finally do the right thing for once in her life? This was a fast and easy read filled with well fleshed out, believable characters. My only regret is the end felt a bit rushed and left me longing for just a bit more.

This is a suspenseful and entertaining story that takes place in North Carolina and is narrated from different points of view.

In one of the storylines, we have Carla. She's a young woman who is entering a witness-protection program and in her new life works as a cleaner, something she never envisioned for herself. The other storyline follows her neighbors, a dysfunctional family living next door to Carla that is going through their own problems.

When a hurricane threatens the coast, Carla makes a quick decisions that affects them all. This is the premise, I don't want to go into more details as not to spoil anything.

I enjoyed the novel, the characters are intriguing, the beginning is set at a slower pace that picks up after the halfway point. I recommend the book to those who enjoy reading contemporary fiction.

Received ARC from the publisher via Netgalley

Love Carla and was excited for this book! This was definitely a page turner with a shocking twist. Buckley knows how to grab her readers and keep them up all night.

This book is a 4.5 ⭐️ read (rounded up). It’s really good, moves quickly, intrigues you and has characters you really like. It’s my first book by Buckley, but I’m going to look into some of her others bc this one was very enjoyable.

The Liar's Child is a quick, entertaining read filled with complex characters and situations. Carla Buckley weaves a good story told in 4 voices (Hank, Whit, Sara and Cassie) in alternating chapters.

Sara has been relocated to a small town on the shores of North Carolina as part of the Witness Protection Program. We never really get a lot of background about Sara, but we do know she isn’t a people person. She prefers to keep her head down, and not engage with others. One might argue that this would be the case of anyone in the Witness Protection Program, but Buckley has written her in a way that the reader knows this is her natural personality. She also doesn’t like where she has been placed, doesn’t like being checked on, and plans to get away as soon as she can.

Whit is the husband of Diane and the father of Cassie, a 7th grader, and Boon, 5. Diane is unfortunately, a person who shouldn’t have had children, but did. Her pattern of neglect towards her children is hard to witness and almost turns deadly. Upset that Child Protective Services is now involved in their lives, and unable to bear the unforgiving talk of the townspeople, she disappears. Whit is left to try to hold things together for his children. Unfortunately, as a working Dad, with no one nearby he can rely on, he must leave the children alone much of the time. Trying to meet the needs of a 12-year-old Goth girl who has an attitude bigger than she is, and a young boy having a hard time dealing with his Mom’s actions, isn’t easy, especially with CPS constantly checking in; neither is dealing with aging parents with health problems, having unresolved issues with his father, and having had to relocate his family to a broken down motel to make ends meet.

Sara finds herself living next to Whit and his children in the unfittingly name Paradise Inn. She comes to know the children after seeing them unattended multiple times. Like it or not, the children have called on her for help at times and she finds herself keeping an eye out for them when she’s home.

Hank, the former sheriff of a small town, has never stopped mourning the kidnapping of his 10-year-old son 37 years ago, nor grieving the death of his beloved wife. He now keeps track of every missing child story he comes across, hoping to save a child though he couldn’t save his own son.

When a hurricane bears down on the state, the lives of these characters will be brought together and changed in ways none of them could have expected, and the fury of the storm will lead to the exposure of many secrets and lies.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for allowing me to read an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. All opinions expressed here are my own.

The Liar’s Child will be available to the general public on 3/12/19.

2.5 Stars I am a big fan of an earlier book of Buckley's, The Good Goodbye, but this one was a miss for me. The plot swirled around a dysfunctional family, a young woman trying to escape the witness protection program, and a retired sheriff still grieving the loss of a child. The first half was a bit slow for me, the second half definitely created more tension for this thriller, but the ending left me rather disappointed. The characters just did not gel for me, lacking significant development and the plot seemed rather implausible so nope, hard to recommend this one.

Nifty little thriller that might make a pretty good movie. Sara is in the Witness Protection Program and she's got more than just crime in her past- she's carrying a load of family issues (no spoilers). She's living in the Paradise Motel (not!) as she tries to build a life. Her neighbors seem to have a very unhappy marriage and their kids- Cassie and Boon-have challenges in living there as well. Cassie's in that awkward 12 year old stage and got an attitude but Boon, the kid his mom left unattended in a car, he's a sweetie. Their dad Whit tells Sara that their mom took off (but where is she?) so when a hurricane is heading their way and an evacuation is ordered, Sara opts to scoop them up and take them with her. Good idea? Questionable but at the same time, better to move out of the storm. There's good characterizations, tensions, and the classic secrets and lies to keep you turning the pages. Thanks to Netgslley for the ARC. A good read.

Thanks to NetGalley, Ballantine Books, and Carla Buckley for the opportunity to read and review this book - this is the first book I've read by this author and very much enjoyed it - tough to put down.

There are 2 intersecting story lines - Sara is in the Witness Protection Program and is relocated to the Outer Banks. She is placed in an apartment in a run-down complex near the beach called Paradise. Her next-door neighbors are a family with 2 children - 12-year-old Cassie and 6-year-old Boon. There are definitely issues going on with this family - the mom had been charged for leaving Boon in the car and now she has disappeared again, leaving Whit to try and work and figure out how to control the kids. When a hurricane bears down on the island, Sara is trying to escape and makes a sudden decision to take both of the kids with her.

This was a tense drama and I had a hard time putting it down. I would have liked to see a little more info about Sara's background but you got enough glimpses to put everything into place. That ending? Both unexpected and a tad unsatisfying - I wanted to know more! But this is a great thrill ride of a book.

Five intersecting characters, each holding secrets and trying to cope with the hand they’ve been dealt. The story first caught my attention as it referenced the witness protection program, an area in which I worked many years ago.

About midway, when a hurricane moves in, the story’s pace quickens and the storyline became more enjoyable. The first part of the story is decent but I would have enjoyed more had there not been so many relationship/family problems. I loved Boon, 6-year old boy who is trying to cope with a previous trauma yet continues to have to live in a wildly dysfunctional environment. He touched my heart.

I wanted to like this book- I really did. The book seemed to fight me every step of the way. The more I tried the harder it got.

There were no really sympathetic characters in this book and without someone to root for it just became a chore. A woman in witness protection is moved into a shady apartment complex where she semi-befriends the two kids from the apartment next door. The children’s mother exists in some sort of fantasy land where sometimes she has children and sometimes she doesn’t, and the father seems to believe things at home are fine just because he wants them to be. But then one (actually) dark and stormy night the children need to be rescued from the storm and their parents are no where to be found. Their neighbor comes to their aid, whisking them away while news of their parents actual fate blares from tvs.

So what happens next? I won’t spoil the ending for you other than to say I found it a letdown. There was a lot that could have been filled in but instead was just glossed over. Sad. It certainly didn’t make me want to pick up another book by the same author.

Fast paced, character driven . picture of life in the witness protection program in NC Sara Lennox has been on the run, and is in an apartment complex called “The Paradise” on the outskirts of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

This was an easy read and it was written from the perspective of serveral different characters which made it more interesting in my opinion. Sara Lennox was taught to be a liar and scammer and really never had a family. When she moves to Outer Banks, her neighbors end up with a terrible situation and ultimately a terrible family life. You really feel for the 2 kids, Cassie and Boon, for what they had to go through. I definitely will look for more of Carla Buckley’s work.

I have reviewed this novel for New York Journal of Books where it will be posted on the eve of publication date.


"The Liar's Child" by Carla Buckley
Ballantine Books
March 12, 2019
10-1101887125
978-1101887127
Suspense
288 Pages

Twelve-year-old Cassie Nelson, her six-year-old brother Boon, and their dad Whit, live in Paradise, a transient apartment complex in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Mom, Diane makes a grave error one day when she leaves a sleeping Boon in her car while she's at work. He almost dies from heat exposure but is rushed to the hospital where he is treated and survives. To Diane's disbelief, her misdeed is reported to Social Services.

Ashamed by her carelessness, Diane is more worried about what others think of her than about her son's health, so she flees. She is known to leave and always takes the children, but not this time. With her departure, Cassie becomes rebellious and hangs around with an older crowd of kids, wearing Goth-like black clothing and painting her nails and her lips black. Though she is in charge of Boon while Whit works, she abandons him to be with her new friends.

FBI agents move Sara Lennox into the unit next door to the Nelson's where she is being secreted in the Witness Protection Program. Sara gains employment cleaning rental units in the touristy area and, hating being monitored by the Feds, she plans to escape.

Whit becomes overwhelmed and worries about his kids as he's forced to work long hours as a hotel assistant manager. One option is to bring Cassie and Boon to his parents, but his dad is quarrelsome and Whit does not want to expose them to his temperament, making him depend on Cassie to keep things together.

Boon strikes up a friendship with Sara and though she has no experience with youngsters she feels sympathy for them. She also endured a sad and motherless childhood being raised by a father with a questionable history, but she doesn't want to take on someone else's problems.

Sara buys another car; one without the FBI's tracking device and plans to furtively depart Paradise and change her identity. When a hurricane is in the forecast, she believes that's the best time to go.

Whit must remain at the hotel to prepare for the storm, so the kids wait at home. Sara takes them with her knowing to stay would be dangerous. She figures having them with her will be a benefit for the Feds would be searching for a single woman. Unable to contact Whit that she has his children, they head out making it to a motel far from home.

With cell towers down they cannot reach Whit, which makes Sara overly anxious. The three stay in the room and watch TV. When a news report announces Whit has been arrested and charged with murdering Diane, they are bewildered. What will happen to the children now? Sara doesn't want to be responsible, though if she turns them over to the authorities, the FBI will find her.

Meanwhile, Hank, a retired police officer who lives next to the motel never recovered from his young son's abduction. Constantly vigilant, he surmises something is peculiar about Sara, but should he pursue his concern? He questions Joyce, the motel owner, about her:

"What exactly do you know about that family?"

"What family?" She stepped into the lobby, glanced around."

"You know what family. The only family staying here." . . .

. . ."No record of their registration. No charge slip."

"She pressed her lips together. 'You checked?'

"'There's something off about that woman. She's hiding something."

It is hard not to empathize with Cassie and Boon, yet Sara too is a character in need of compassion. "The Liar's Child" conveys a powerful psychological plot with heartbreaking emotion and well-fleshed-out characters that are thrown into an unwanted situation, bestowing them with an unexpected bond.

Set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, The Liar’s Child is a family drama with tension and pacing that makes it engaging and surprising.

Sara Lennox moves to the Paradise, an apartment complex with a transient and not necessarily friendly group of occupants. She moves there for the change of pace and to hide, so the Paradise is perfect for her.

Her newest neighbors include a 12-year-old named Cassie and a 5-year-old named Boon. The thing is, rumors are swirling about this family and some tragedy they have experienced, and she can’t keep herself from worrying about the children.

Whit is Cassie and Boon’s father, and he’s doing the best he can to hold his family together. Is it even possible at this point?

A hurricane is on its way to the Outer Banks, an area completely vulnerable during storms like these, and Sara has to make a split-second decision to rescue these children from both the storm and their difficult family life.

But this move comes at a cost. A serious one.

The Liar’s Child is a book full to brim with lies. It’s hard to know where the truth lives. There are surprises, great tension, skillful dialogue, and two intersecting plot lines that merge in a masterful way. Well-paced and astutely written, The Liar’s Child is an a compelling and emotional story of family.

I received a complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

Buckley is a force to be reckoned with, an established writer, but she is new to me; I wasn’t done with this grab-you-by-the-hair thriller when I lurched over to my desktop to order two more of her novels from Seattle Bibliocommons, a thing I rarely do. Big thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. You can get this book March 12, 2019, and you should.

Sara Lennox is starting life new under the witness protection program. She has a new name and a dull new life, working as a cleaner—seriously, her a house cleaner?—and living in a damp, dull one-bedroom at the Paradise Apartments on North Carolina’s outer banks. It’s sweltering here. She asked to be placed on the Pacific Ocean, but no, she’s stuck here. Welcome to Paradise!

To top it all off, her handlers tell her not to go anywhere for a while; don’t take risks. It’s like telling a fish not to swim for a few months.

Meanwhile, the family next door is in crisis, but then for them, that’s not new. Whit and Diane Nelson have a stormy relationship; they know how to yank each other’s chains, and they do it constantly. Diane is gorgeous, a stunning woman that’s accustomed to owning every room she enters. She’s also completely irresponsible, devoid of even the most basic maternal instincts, and this came to a head when she snapped their little boy into his car seat, then went to work without dropping him off first. She forgot he was there, okay?

But it’s not okay. In the end, little Boon did come out of that coma—but psychologically he’s a mess, and once he is home, Diane is no better a mother than she was before. Add to this the ensuing visits from Robin the social worker and the intrusion of the state into their lives.

Why can’t that woman just mind her own business?

Whit loves his kids and knows he should leave Diane, but he can’t. They are the codependents from hell. So as twelve-year-old Cassie develops, she is burdened with many of the tasks that Diane ought to be doing; she’s the one Boon comes to when their parents’ raging battles scare him. Cassie has a right to be a preteen, but she can’t have a normal adolescence because Diane is doing that despite her age. It isn’t fair. What's more, it's making Cassie mean.

Sara meets Cassie when Cassie breaks into her apartment. It sat empty for a long time, and Cassie had become accustomed to thinking of it as her own space. Leap across the balcony railing onto the one adjoining, and there you are. Cassie is a ball of rage, furious at her mother’s abdication and her father’s inability to set boundaries. Angry kids get into a lot of trouble.

And then Diane disappears. She’s done that before, taken off in a huff with no warning, abandoning her children and then reappearing after days, a weekend, a week or more. But this time is different. Her car and her purse are still here, for instance. And as the story climbs toward its crescendo, we get the sense that something sinister has occurred. Oh, Whit. What did you do?

Despite her disinclination to be involved with this family, Sara is pulled into the lives of the children. When a record-setting storm hurls its fury down upon the Outer Banks and the Paradise Apartments and evacuation is the order of the day, Sara sees Boon, then Cassie as she leaps into her car to peel out of there. His father’s car is gone. Though it’s the last thing she wants to do, Sara gets back out and lets Cassie and Boon scramble into her car. They’re off, and nobody knows who these children left with.

Buckley is absolutely unerring in her development of Sara and all of the members of the Nelson family. When an inconsistency appears, later in the story we see why the author put it there in order to move the story forward. Psychological fiction can be written without deeply layered characters, but it’s a lot better with characters like these, so achingly real.

So in the end, which character is the liar’s child? Every single one of them.

Those that love a true thriller, one that makes your pulse race and your breath stop from time to time should buy this book and read it. Buckley is a master storyteller of the first order, and you won’t want to miss it.

I knew I was in for a treat when I read that one of the main characters was given a new identity from the witness protection program and the other main character was dealing with Child Protective Services. What did they do and how do their paths cross? I had to keep reading to find out.

With a hurricane bearing down on the Outer Banks, the story reaches a pivotal point for both characters. Also at this point, Hank, a retired sheriff, has an opportunity to prove his obsession with finding missing children is not misguided.

I really enjoyed the story, but I would have liked more closure, which is the only reason I’m giving it 3 stars instead of four. I had the sense that the story was wrapped up quickly and it left me a bit unsatisfied.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for allowing me to read an advance copy and give my honest review.