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House of a Thousand Lies

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Member Reviews

A psychological thriller like no other. A family full of secrets, the worst is that one of them is a serial killer. Told from many characters , slowly a clear picture emerges. A page turner of a book.
Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my opinion.

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There were a few things I really liked about this book and a few things I didn't. The last half of the book was especially good while the first half was good but a little slow. The book also jumps around a lot and makes it little difficult to follow. Diana Wolf has a rock star husband, a gorgeous house in Tennessee she had built, and two sons she would do anything for. But her boys are both grown now and she hasn't had contact with them in a while. She decided to hire someone to map the land for her, Kerry Perkins. While Kerry was surveying the land, he came across a skull with two wolves carved into it, a human skull. Now Diana has to face some facts that she has even trying to ignore since her sons were children. Thank you NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for this ARC.

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This debut novel was a slower build told through several characters' POVs. Typically, I love books written this way but here, it felt a bit confused. Cutting down the number of viewpoints would help to tighten up the story and keep the flow easier to follow. While there are good bones to the story, the author tried to do a bit too much for my taste and the plot became a bit unwieldy. Not a bad read, but not a particularly memorable one, either.

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Thank you so much for the advanced copy of this book. It definitely lived up to its hype. This author has become a must read.

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Ok, so this book takes focus but it’s worth it. There are time jumps and multiple POVs - I want to say maybe 7 or 8. But that keeps the story going and you on your toes! There is also music, art, alcohol, secrets, and of course murder. The story does take a little while to take off, but once it does you’re in for a ride. I did feel like the ending was rushed, but it didn’t leave anything out. So I’m not mad about it. Overall this was a terrifyingly good read.

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If I can make one bet (and I am a betting girl), I will tell you that there will not be a soul on this planet that will give this book less than 5 stars.

Cody Luke Davis, has set the bar for all thrillers to come with House of a Thousand Lies. He came out swinging with this psychological thriller and has left me with permanent chills down my spine. I am flabbergasted that this is a debut novel..

Throughout reading House of a Thousand Lies, I was continually left in suspense, while anticipating what would come next. Never in my life could I have seen all the twists being thrown in my direction. As I flipped each page, I became addicted to the storyline and how the secrets were being exposed one by one.

Davis did an incredible job developing such authentic and layered characters. Everyone felt so real, I found myself talking about them in conversation amongst friends as if they really existed.

The one question I can ask you is, how far would you go to protect your family legacy?

Tune in to find out.....

5 stars

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A very good book about very bad people.

I must say, this was not my type of read per se, as it was a lot on the heavy side of the family trauma, abuse, serial murders of innocent people, violence and general depravity and denial.

However, the writing is compelling, and heavy and drags you down with it a very dark rabbit hole.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC!

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I really struggled with this book. It was like reading a very rough draft of a paper trying to meet a word count. It seemed very chaotic and all over the place. There were a lot of things that didn't make sense and never got explained. I did like the story once the "email" got involved and the hunt for the door. The story really started to pick up and I was hopeful, but then it all just fell apart again. This book just wasn't for me. However, if you're into that chaotic, unreliable narrator thriller it might be a good choice for you.

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Based on the synopsis of House of a Thousand Lies, it sounded dark and creepy, and definitely my kind of thriller. Sadly, by about the 32% mark, I decided to DNF. The plot was moving so incredibly slow and by that point, I expected something really jarring to happen. I was simply bored.

I will say, Cody's writing style is engaging. He uses a lot of description to bring you into his scenes. From what I read, I could see it set as a movie or TV Show when there are a lot more visual elements brought into the fold.

Based on other reviews, I'm probably in the minority here. Some people have really loved this book. It's just not for me.

Thank you Crooked Lane and NetGalley for the eARC!

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I think it's a good debut, a very dark and twisty story that brought me to very dark places and kept me on the edge.
There's a lot of potential and I think it's an interesting book even if a bit overcrowded at times.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

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This book was crazy! Crazy, good! I found myself so engrossed in the story, hours would go by before I realized it. Full of intoxicating suspense, Cody Luke Davis has written a book so dark and deadly that it makes you realize things in the book could actually happen. It probably does! That's the scary thing about it. Told with multiple narrators, you have a hard time figuring out who to believe. Some of it is just jaw dropping. This family lives with so many lies, so many things pushed under the rug, and secrets that are mind blowing. What would you do if you thought you had the perfect life? What would you do to preserve it? To the Wolf family, it's the unimaginable!! I give a huge round of applause to Cody Luke Davis for this book. It takes you to places where you know bad things are going to happen, yet you just can't put it down!

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A creepy maniacal book. A fractured family of an aging rock star live in seclusion in rural Tennessee.
The wife hires a cartographer who discovers a body.
Slowly the real story emerges.
The book has a lot of people with serious issues.

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House of a Thousand Lies by Cody Luke Davis was more than I thought it would be. A tale of generational truama, murder, mental illness, addiction, and lies, lies, lies. The end wasn't shocking, but it did make me think. About the privilege of money and being able to spend your way out of trouble and into deviance. I would definitely recommend this book.

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Diana's sons Cy and Jonah signed things with two wolves so when Kerry, who she hired to survey her very large property, finds the skull of a young woman with two wolves carved into it, well, that's a clue that something's very wrong in her world. Davis has tried to do a lot in this novel told from multiple, possibly unreliable perspectives. There's Diana's struggles with drink, her crummy relationship with her husband and sons, and most of all the search for truth, There's too much going on and it gets a tad confusing, Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This was a miss for me but I'm sure others will enjoy it.

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Based on the description, I was really looking forward to reading this book. I was a little worried that I’d built it up too much but it exceeded my expectations! This was a dark & twisted tale of family gone wrong and the consequences that follow. I thought it was expertly crafted, with reveals slowly pulling you in to make you realise how rotten the Wolf family really was. I loved the multiple points of view over different time periods - they made me keep guessing as to what was going on and who was doing it. Once you get into it, you start to see how everything links together, and it starts building up speed to an epic conclusion - parts of which had me yelling at the book! This was a fantastic debut & I can’t wait to see what Cody Luke Davis does next.

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Look. This book takes a lot of focus. There are jumps in time, moving back and forth, between multiple people and various situations. There are art and biblical references, there is music and alcohol, there is blood.

There is also a family and a lifetime of secrets.

House of a Thousand Lies by Cody Luke Davis is a terrifying story of just how far one family will go to protect themselves.

Diana Wolf loves her children. She has a tendency to drink herself into blackout and wake up having purchased insane things. This time, it was a map of her property. When Kerry Perkins arrives, he's tall, handsome....and a con-man. What Kerry finds, however, it's a skull. Diana knows that it's only the beginning.

This is a book that unfolds slowly and the last 25% unfolds at lightening speed. I read the last 100 pages on a plane and couldn't stop to even pay attention to the snacks, I was so intrigued. Just know that the skull on the property is just the very tip of the iceberg. This has a 'Most Dangerous Game' feel.

This book should be read with all the lights on and with no one in the room. It's haunting and terrifying. It's fantastic.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

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"Perfect for fans of Julia Heaberlin's We Are All the Same in the Dark and Megan Collins's The Family Plot, Cody Luke Davis' debut psychological thriller brings a sinister serial-killer tale to life with hair-raising twists and chilling turns.

How far will some families go to protect their legacy?

Diana Wolf likes to think she has it all: a rock god husband, an empty nest, a wine cellar, and a dream home in the woods. Life is good. It has to be. But when she hires a cartographer, Kerry Perkins, to survey and map her estate in rural Tennessee, she pulls back a frayed corner of the lie that is her fairytale life. On his first night at Wolf Hollow, Kerry stumbles across a young girl's skeleton buried in the woods. But what really scares Diana is a familiar symbol carved into the girl's skull: two wolves.

A week later, the cops are digging in her backyard. Diana begins to question how good her life really is. How good of a man is her husband and how good a father? She's not the only one with questions. Kerry Perkins can't shake what he saw in the woods that night. He suspects that Diana recognized that symbol, that she lied to the police; that someone is watching him, and that whoever it is, they desperately want him to keep his mouth shut.

His search for answers leads him to Pink, a deeply disturbed man obsessed with the Wolfs' celebrity. Pink knows the family better than they know themselves - and he knows that the more he and Kerry dig, the more bones they will find.

Told through the eyes of multiple narrators, none reliable, this is a story about parents, the lies they tell their children, and the lies they tell themselves."

Unreliable narrators and wolves carved on a skull? YAS!

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Went into A House of Thousand Lies not knowing too much about it. Overall, I sort of enjoyed it, but really did not connect with any of the characters.

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A family that has everything from wealth to fame could surely want for nothing, right? Well, House of a Thousand Lies shows us that this is very much not the case. Moving through various storylines, Davis shows us the complicated history of the Wolf family and the way it affects the lives of those around them. Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sometimes a book tries to do the most. In House of a Thousand Lies Davis works his way through the Wolf family but does so by hopping between different moments in time and different perspectives. While this gives the reader as broad a view of his story, it also runs the very high risk of confusing your reader. There is Diana, the mother, who is a confused and confusing woman, consistently torn between the picture-perfect existence she wants and the messy life she has. There is also Kerry Perkins, a cartographer who is hiding more than you might expect but is in no way prepared for what others are hiding. There are Diana's two sons, deeply conflicted, very talented, and estranged. There is the fiancée of one of the brothers, who wavers between happiness and concern. There is Pink, who is way to obsessed with the Wolf family and, despite all his oddities, my favourite character. There is also an FBI agent and probably a few other narrators I'm missing out on. It is a lot to keep balanced as a reader, especially as the skipping back and forth in time was not always signaled clearly in my e-Book.

It was hard to figure out what exactly the main story was at the heart of House of a Thousand Lies, in part due to the various narrators. Is this a story about the unraveling of the dream of a perfect family? Is it about police trying to figure out a horrible crime? Is it about two nobodies trying to find the truth? All of these stories are fascinating and there are many amazing moments in House of a Thousand Lies that totally grabbed me. A lot of what Cody Luke Davis does in this novel are things I have never read in a thriller or suspense novel before and he has a knack for that fine line between the Gothic and Suspense genres that I adore. I think the main thing that didn't resonate with me for House of a Thousand Lies is that too much is happening and attempted. A strict editor could perhaps have removed some of the elements and extra storylines and extra details that, while interesting, mainly make for a very complex novel that is difficult to oversee, even after having finished it. However, I am absolutely on board with reading more by Cody Luke Davis who absolutely has an eye for the creepy and the fascinating and the human in the dark.

House of a Thousand Lies does a lot, probably too much, but much of what it does is also excellent. If Davis sticks to a tighter storyline his next novels will be absolutely winners for me.

Will update with links once I put the review life.

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This is quite a good first novel with so many twists! Every time I was sure I knew who the baddest of the bad was, something would happen to change my mind.
It was difficult to like any of the characters, though I did have a soft spot for Pink.
I almost gave up on this book several times in the first half. I found it more interesting as the story started to develop. I feel that there was too much background in the earlier parts. Having the story told by various characters as well as jumping around in the the timeline was a bit too confusing at times.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

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