Thank you SO much for the opportunity to review this book, The Lies You Told by Harriet Tyce. 

This book is awesome! I really like psychological thrillers, and this book blew me away. I am a new fan of the author and will be on the lookout for new books. Despite the fact that there are multiple plots (seems to be a common characteristic of new publications nowadays), I think that this book did a great job of interweaving them effectively. Particularly, I liked the modernity of the situations and callbacks to other characters. I thought the lack of trust in characters was also realistic and not cheesy/forced on the reader.

Great book. Thanks again for the copy.

Sadie Roper moves back into her childhood home in London with her daughter Robin under complicated conditions after the death of Sadie’s terrible mum. Sadie is hoping everything will be okay even though she did not want to move back. Having ended her career as a barrister after Robin was born, she gets back to work on a high profile case involving a teacher and his alleged affair with a student. Meanwhile Sadie enrolls Robin in the school she attended as a child. From the start, the moms there are competitive and unaccepting of Sadie and her daughter, the newcomer. After a bad start lasting a few weeks, things turn around when the queen bee of moms befriends Sadie, but she must not turn her back on these moms, not even for a second. 

This is my first Harriet Tyce novel, and I loved it. The high profile case and the uppity moms had my attention from page one. I highly recommend this book.

This was an excellent read. Well paced and good plot. Easy to follow with the suspense building in all the right places. Definitely recommend. 

Sadie moves back to her mother’s house after fleeing her marriage. There are conditions in which she must go through to remain in the house. Her daughter Robin must attend Asham Sadies’s old stomping grounds. After being treated poorly by the moms, Sadie then becomes befriended by Julia. The most competitive mother at the school. With jealousy flying, Sadie slowly begins to learn more about Julia and the need to protect her daughter.

This book was a bit of a slow burn for me, but tolerable based on the strong character development.  I enjoyed the multiple storylines and how they were woven together - with the common thread being the effect lies have on us.

Not a bad thriller, it had a lot of chilling moments and I was very intrigued to finish it. But I definitely went into this with high expectations.

Sadie and her daughter Robin have returned to her childhood home  in the UK , after the death of her mother and her marriage falling apart. Robin is enrolled in her old  private school to comply with her mother’s wishes in her will, if she fails to do so she loses her childhood home and the money that comes with it. Right away Robin doesn’t feel like she fits in, the parents of the school are competitive and bullies, they view Sadie and Robin as interlopers and when Robin begins to get better grades than the head mom Julia’s  daughter it gets worse. With the stress of the school and the move Sadie decides to go back to work as a lawyer, she lands a scandalous high profile case a teacher who supposedly groomed a student. The story line was a slow burn and very character driven. In between each chapter we see a glimpse into the future as Sadie is frantically trying to find her daughter. As the tension grows we the readers can feel something is about to happen. The ending was a shock and had me saying what! I’m giving this book four stars!

The Lies You Told by Harriet Tyce is an intersting read.  Distance from her husband causes Sadie and her daughter to move back to London following their split.  Working toward getting her career back on track, Sadie is soon brought to terms with her past when her personal and professional lives collide.

Last year, I read and enjoyed Tyce's debut novel, Blood Orange, so I was quite excited to dive into her second book. Told from Sadie's point of view, the book opens in two timelines: a breathless future that intrigues as it helps pull the reader through the first part and the background, starting with Sadies' return to childhood home in London with her daughter, Robin. Sadie's husband has remained in America and Sadie must deal not only with the state of her marriage but also her own past as she placed her daughter in the same school that she was so unhappy in.

Alongside the constant social drama of the school -f rom the cliquey mom's groups to some grotesque hazing of her daughter, Sadie's also struggling to reclaim her own legal career and is thrust in as junior on a high profile case of sexual misconduct. Sadie makes some head-shaking choices, but remains sympathetic despite them.Needless, to say, there's a lot packed into these pages, which certainly keeps the pacing both quick and consistent throughout. The plot definitely has some unexpected turns (and there's some purposeful author manipulations here too!), but there are also some more obvious turns as well. Needless to say, it's a riveting read and certainly a strong sophomore novel. I am definitely curious to see what Tyce's third novel will be about!

An excellent addition to mommy-noir. A recommended purchase for collections where thrillers and domestic suspense are popular.

This was a fast, suspenseful read with multiple layers. There was an intriguing all girls school drama that led to a kidnapping. There was also a courtroom drama, a very controversial and ultimately heartbreaking case. I loved all the dimensions of these, which made me think. The twists kept on coming, to the very last paragraph.

Thanks Netgalley for a copy of THE LIES YOU TOLD by Harriet Tyce, for a honest review.
This book was a really quick read, it took many surprising turns especially the ending.

Harriet Tyce is honestly such a great writer, so I went into this galley with the utmost expectations of what I read with Blood Orange. Maybe it was me and just where my headspace was but I just couldn’t get into this book. I got to about 40% and couldn’t force myself through anymore.

I read this book cover to cover in one day;!7 could not put it down. The story sucked me right in from the beginning: a mother and daughter fleeing the US to London to start a new life for themselves. The characters were well defined. 
I loved the idea of the school moms ganging up on the newcomers; it sounded so realistic. I haven’t attended a private school myself, though I’ve heard how competitive and hard it can be for the students. And I can only imagine the parents wanting their child to be at the top.
There was so much to love about this story; I’m so glad I read it and look forward to read more by the author!

I am huge fan of domestic thrillers. Always have been and lately I have been reading more and more of them. This was one I had a hard time to put down because I had to know what was going to happen next. I was up late two nights to finish this book, and I loved every fast paced and crazy minute. I was just blown away by the story and can see why so many people are talking about it. 

This book contain layers and my best advice is to just read it. This is one that if I talked about all of the things going on, something would be ruined. Just the words on the cover alone should be enough to hook someone, and the rest of the story will keep you going until you are done. I was very intrigued by how this book played out and look forward to more from this author in the future. 

This is a great thriller for parents and non parents. It deals with real life issues and how to live in the world we are in. How it is hard to be a parent who works and all of that pressure kids are under all of the time. Tough and important issues I was glad were brought up in this book. 

Highly suggest to fans of domestic thrillers and those who want to try out the genre. This book was great, and I cannot wait for more from Tyce in the future. 

Thank you NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest Review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I was really looking forward to this one, but am stopping at 14%.

I was repeatedly confused and disoriented by the complete lack of character.. dimensionality? A character is introduced with almost no context, no physical description, no history; it felt like being dropped in the middle of a scene (not in a good way, where things are eventually clarified) and I had no opportunity to develop a sense for the character, let alone determine whether I cared about them as as character, or whether it mattered if I did. The first time this happened I was certain I’d made a mistake - missed or skipped something. But then it happened over and over again. I’m not sure that I’ve ever, in any review, used the phrase about a character, “one dimensional” but this book seemed the epitome of that concept to me. I couldn’t imagine the locations or images of the characters, I often couldn’t determine their purposes, and many came off as a sketch of one simplistic emotion (typically anger), overblown and comical. I was annoyed by actions that didn’t make any sense to me; in the beginning the protagonist (whose name didn’t show up until about the third chapter? - this is only one reason why she felt completely flat and unsympathetic in any way to me, just like the rest of the characters) decides to start clearing out her mother’s home, where she hasn’t been in 15 years and the woman seems to have been a hoarder. She throws some things in a few bin liners and.... dusted her hands off and got dressed to go and try and find a job, proclaiming things to “at least be clean” now. It was... insane! There’s no way in hell a hoarder’s filthy house - yes, it was conveyed as pretty much the whole house, not just one room - could be tidied up so quickly (although it was, like everything else, vague, the time conveyed seemed like a couple hours or so?).

I just....ugh. This book made me mad. Mad and frustrated and disappointed. I’m not giving a rating or review online because it seems unfair to rant when I DNF’d at 14%. But starting to wish I hadn’t bought the author’s previous book, Blood Orange, which I haven’t yet read...

I have two favorite genres—domestic thrillers and “mean moms” women’s fiction. Luckily for me, U.K. author Harriet Tyce has married the two in her sophomore release, The Lies You Told. And I’m happy to report that the genres go together as well as the much-lauded chocolate and peanut butter combination.

To read the rest of the review, click on the link below:

The Lies You Told is Harriet Tyce’s second domestic psychological thriller.

Frightened by the recent uncharacteristic behaviour of her husband, Sadie Roper does the one thing she swore she never would and returns to London to take up residence in her late mother’s home. The terms of her mother’s will insists that for Sadie to take occupancy, her daughter, eleven year old Robin, must attend the same elite girl’s school, Ascham, that Sadie did. Sadie has very few good memories of her alma mater, and the events of the first few weeks do nothing to change her mind. The mothers are judgemental and hyper-competitive, and Robin is ostracised and miserable, but until Sadie can relaunch her career as a criminal barrister, mother and daughter have no other options. Just as Sadie can bear no more, the worst school-gate offender, Julia, unexpectedly apologises, and suddenly Sadie, and Robin, find themselves in the inner circle. It’s a relief for Sadie when both Julia, and Nicola, extend their friendship and offer to look after Robin while she is working, but are these really women she can trust?

The main plot of The Lies You Told is focused on the relationship Sadie develops with two Ascham mothers, Julia and Nicola, which begins, and ends, in extremis. There are several dramatic events that play out between the women, and their daughters, and though I felt the motivations were greatly exaggerated, there is a kernel of plausibility at the heart of the tale. Exclusionary ‘school-gate’ mothers are all too real, particularly in a privileged setting, and there are plenty of mothers willing to do almost anything to ensure the success of their children, though thankfully few who are willing to go as far as Julia and Nicola.

The secondary plot is a loose variation on the theme, with Sadie hired on as an assistant to defend a young, white teacher from a ‘good’, wealthy family who is accused of seducing his teenage student. His overbearing mother insists on micromanaging the case and is venomous towards anyone who suggests her son is anything but perfectly blameless. Rather improbably the accused’s father was responsible for a sexual assault against Sadie when she was a law student, adding another layer to the plot, and this, is in addition to the mystery surrounding Sadie’s relationship with her mother, and her husband, feel forced.

Despite all this, the pace of the first two thirds of the book was fairly slow, though to her credit, Tyce does establish, and grow, a tense, foreboding atmosphere, and I was furiously flipping the pages during the final third of the novel, caught up in Sadie’s frenzied behaviour.

Unfortunately though I never really warmed to Sadie. Though she’s obviously under quite a lot of stress from the opening pages of the novel, she makes some unforced gaffes that make her seem like a flake. All I could think, as Julia screamed at her without cause, was that Sadie’s unwillingness to defend herself didn’t  bode well for her skills as a barrister. Sadie then goes on to get over involved in the court case she in a part of, and seems to forget her role as a member of the defence. She also makes some decisions with regards to her daughter that didn’t sit well with me, and can’t wholly be blamed on her distress at the time.

While The Lies You Told has some strong and thrilling elements, I have mixed feelings about the story as a whole. Another reader may feel differently.

This book has two plots and a lot of characters that leave you wondering who did what. I loved the slow burn of the character development and trying to figure out all the different roles characters played in the novel. The Lies You Told is a solid psychological thriller that leaves you guessing until the very end.  This is my first book by Harriet Tyce and I would absolutely read another!

The author wrote a compelling thriller that has a touch of humor in it!  The suspense built at a great pace and the ending was the perfect way to tie the story up!  I am definitely going to read more by this author.

Your back in your estranged at best, verbally abusive at worst, late mothers home with your 10 year old daughter and your separated from your husband who's a whole sea away. Could this get any worse?

For Sadie and her daughter Robin, yes, it definitely could. Sadie's former all-girls private school seems to be just as bad as it it was back then for Robin, but now she has the wrath of the "Mean Moms" to deal with on top of it. Throw in that you're trying to go back to work, while also trying to make a good impression with these women who already seem to hate you. This is a nightmare. 

But when the mom's seem to start to take you in, and your daughter has made friends, everything must be looking up. Right?

This book was a DOOZY. I loved every page. I found myself not wanting to go to sleep to find out what was next for Sadie and Robin. Not only was the pacing enough to never want to stop, but the drama just kept coming! You know when you're dealing with a book having do with a private school, it's going to be juicy! And many books like to say it, but only few actually live it... this book will keep you guessing until the VERY LAST PAGE.