pretty good debut! However, I do think this book could have been cut down a lot or maybe some scenes enhanced to just improve pacing. It's really important for a thriller to NOT drag, and this dragged a bit in some parts. However, overall, I think it was a pretty good thriller with a pretty good concept. I liked the book in general, but there were times when it felt like I started to skim to just get through some of it. 3.5 rounded to 4

This was an easy fast read and a solid mystery. I did not guess the ending which I love in a suspense.

LIES MAKE PERFECT is a good suspense novel. Banks' writing flows well and the pace is good. However, I just couldn't get into this one like I wanted to. The characters weren't pulling me as much as I tried to connect.

I loved the setting of this novel, at a high ranking university. I enjoyed they back and forth between decades among sisters. This added to the unknown. I thought this was a well played out novel and had a very unexpected twist. I enjoyed it and did not expect the outcome.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of "Lies Make Perfect" by Ellie Banks. This thought-provoking thriller delves into the complexities of truth and deceit with a crisp, immersive writing style. Banks skillfully blends suspense with introspection, vividly portraying the protagonist's internal struggles as she unravels a web of lies. While the pacing occasionally lagged, the psychological tension and intricate plot twists kept me engaged until the satisfying conclusion. The novel offers a compelling exploration of the consequences of deception and the quest for redemption, making it a worthwhile read for fans of psychological suspense.

Another great thriller from Ellie Banks (aka Maisey Yates). This was a great thriller and I really don't want to give too much away, but I highly suggest you read it.

Margo, a true crime author, starts investigating a missing person’s case which was also her childhood friend. Her friend disappeared at 16, leaving a note that she was running off with her teacher. She was never heard from again.

During this time, Margo’s husband and daughter disappear. Believing that her husband took their daughter and ran, Margo fears she’ll never see her daughter again.

After a body is recovered from deep in the water, secrets are unearthed, leading to more questions..

What happened to 16 year old Sarah and her teacher? Where is Margo’s husband and daughter? How will Margo get through it all?

My thoughts:
☁️☁️☁️
I really enjoyed this mysterious and intriguing thriller. It was fast-paced, held my interest and completely baffled me! I was pleasantly surprised by the many twists!

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc!
I can’t believe I put off reading this for as long as I did! I loved it so much that I immediately searched and found one other book coauthored by Ellie Banks and purchased before writing this! The writing style had me hooked - there was the overall current day story that lined up with a cold case from years ago that they kept uncovering things about while searching for her daughter. I had never once had things figured out and was shocked at the end. I loved it! 10/10 recommend!! And I’ve followed this author for any more she writes! A new fav!

DNF’d at 47%. Ooooomg this is one of the most annoying main characters and repetitive books I have ever read. I didn’t even get halfway in and I’m already so tired of hearing about how this mother isn’t crazy, her daughter isn’t dead, she got distracted by her writing a lot but wasn’t a bad mom, and she may have wanted to cheat but she didn’t so she was a good wife. Just around and around and around those thoughts and statements over and over and over again. I truly could not care less about the resolution of the mystery of her missing daughter, the progress of her writing career, or her fascination with true crime.

Margo has the perfect life in the perfect house with her perfect husband. She has made a living off of her bestselling book which she wrote about her experience in solving a large missing persons case. What made her famous quickly becomes her own reality when her husband takes off with her daughter. The story starts six months later with Margo in a deep depression and going through the motions each day. Unmotivated to write or do much of anything, Margo finally finds the push she needs to focus her attention on something other than her missing daughter when finding a book by her favorite author with a mysterious note in it. The note is a possible reference to ANOTHER missing person’s case where a teacher ran off with a student, neither being seen for 18 years. (How many missing people can one town have?!)

The search for Sarah quickly turns even more personal as the story spirals in another directions than I thought. Two plot lines here- the old missing person case or Margo’s friend and the recent case of Margo’s family.

I felt this was well written, fast paced, and constantly kept me guessing ! Great read !

Margo is a true crime writer, maybe not by choice but as a healing mechanism. Her husband vanished with her daughter years ago, and she has been filled with self blame and guilt ever since.
When she finds an odd letter in a book, it hints to clues regarding the disappearance of her friend Sarah years ago…as she dives deeper into this mystery, she can’t hall but notice a possible connection between Sarah’s disappearance and her daughters…could they be linked?
Great debut by Ellie Banks!

3.5 stars, rounded up. The beginning of this one feels a little messy and slow, and I considered DNFing. However, once they really started connecting the characters and the crimes in this story, it became a pretty propulsive read, and I was too invested in hoping for resolution for these characters to put it down.

This book was just ok for me. For some reason, never got involved with the story emotionally. It was interesting but didn't grab me in any way, was a bit flat to me. A woman whose child is missing, taken by her husband, finds a connection between that and a missing friend from her high school days. I would try others of this author

Lies Make Perfect started out a little slower for me, I love when a book pulls you in immediately, this book took a little longer for it to pull me in, but once I was sucked in, I was invested. I kept wanting to know what happened and loved that some of the chapters would end in a cliff hanger. I was so conflicted the whole time on who I could trust since there were so many characters involved. I loved that this book had two different cold cases, it made it interesting to know what happened in each and different ties the characters had to each case. I loved how descriptive the book was, I could really imagine myself in each scene, very easy to imagine! The friendships in the book were so good too, you don’t always see good friendships in books, so I appreciated that.

Thank you to Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing, Canary Street Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. This book officially publishes on 6/11/24!

As someone who is a fan of both mystery/thriller novels and true crime, I enjoyed the blend of the two that this book provided. Told from one POV, readers are taken along for the ride as two mysteries, one old and one new, are revealed. Despite the single POV, I believed the characters were well-developed and did not pick up on any flaws within the character interactions. Giving this one 4 stars because at times I found the pacing of this to be off in that it would be fast paced, and then lull, to pick back up again later on. Additionally, at the end I was not surprised but rather had the understanding that the ending made sense given the context of the book. This one was an overall good read though, one that I would recommend! If you do decide to pick it up, please check any relevant trigger warnings before doing so.

Thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for a DRC of this title.

This was interesting! Would definitely recommend this one for those who aren't looking for a super-dark or gritty thriller. Will be looking for more from Maisey Yates under this pen name. 3.25/5.

Some things are better left alone doesn’t apply to people whose young daughter has gone missing. True crime author Margo Box should know where to look for clues and connect the dots, but she gets tripped up along the way.

Though the premise for this one was excellent and the pace clipped along, I felt some elements made it feel disconnected in some parts. It didn’t help that Margo wasn’t my fave as a main character, and I never like romance as a subplot in a thriller/mystery unless it adds to the story, and in this case, it did not.

I liked it ok but didn’t race through it but would read another from this author in the future.

Lies Make Perfect by Ellie Banks is a new thriller novel. The story in Lies Make Perfect is one that covers not one, but two cold cases that are close to the main character with one from the distant past and the other from only months before.

Lies Make Perfect also may look to readers as a debut novel by the author however Ellie Banks is the pseudonym for bestselling author Maisey Yates, who has written over one hundred novels which are usually more from the contemporary romance genre with a few romantic suspense being the closest to this new novel.

Margo Box is a popular true crime author having helped solve cases she’s studied. Now however Margo is living her own true crime nightmare when six months ago her husband vanished without a trace taking Margo’s five-year-old daughter, Poppy, with him. When Margo comes across a clue to the disappearance of an old friend twenty years before Margo dives right in to investigating that case after having no luck finding her own daughter but Margo soon finds that both cases seem to be connected.

Lies Make Perfect was a solid thriller read incorporating the really popular true crime movement of today. This one however wasn’t without a few flaws that I noticed a long the way while reading. One thing was that some of it seemed a little repetitive where I was thinking haven’t we mentioned that a few times, lets get moving. Which then leads to it seemed to really take a while to take off making the beginning very slow moving which may tie both things together. Overall I finished this one at the three and half stars mark and knowing who the author actually is I will undoubtedly read her work again in the future.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

For popular true crime author Margo Box, the past six months have been a waking nightmare. Ever since her five-year-old daughter, Poppy, vanished—abducted by her own father—Margo has tortured herself the way only a mother with unrelenting blame. How could she have let this happen? Had she been working too hard to see the signs? Despite the guilt and unanswered questions, Margo holds on to the hope that Poppy is somehow still alive. Yet after years of solving other people’s cold cases, her own case proves impenetrable. That is, until she finds a cryptic letter hidden in a secondhand book in her neighborhood library box. In this letter are clues that someone in the community knows something about the disappearance of Margo’s school friend Sarah nearly two decades ago—the disappearance that drove Margo into true crime and haunts her still. To distract from the pain in her life, Margo throws herself into Sarah’s case, desperate for closure of some kind. But as she digs deeper into her friend’s history, she unearths a disturbing connection to her daughter she never expected to find…

What a great book for a debut author! This book grabbed my attention right away and kept me intrigued. I tried to guess the ending and had it wrong. Some of the parts were a little repetitive but over all this was a good book for a new author.