Title: So I Lied
Author: Chelsea Ichaso
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Pages: 300
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Rich
Jocelyn Elliott, and middle class Rowan Castillo and Cadence Fletcher have been
close friends since high school. Over the years, however, they have moved on,
busy in their own lives. Rowan is a single mother, raising her child, now
eight, after the death of her boyfriend, Jake Elliott, Jocelyn's twin.
Now
that Jocelyn Elliott is engaged to be married to Landon, her long-time beau,
she decides to treat her two besties to an exclusive bachelorette party at the
bed and breakfast run by her aunt and uncle in a small village in Wales.
There
they meet Magnus from Norway and Valentina from Argentina, two backpackers who
draw the three women into their circle. Soon Jocelyn, Rowan and Cadence are
convinced that there is something off about their two new friends. They wish
they had never come to Wales and encountered them.
The
book begins with the death of one of the two women, and the other two friends
and the aunt and uncle of Jocelyn seemingly distraught. The novel is told from
the 1st person present tense PoV of the three women, in flashback,
describing the events that took place in their lives before they got to this
point, before breaking into single chapters on what transpires after the death
of one of them.
At
first, I could not tell the three accounts apart, but as they revealed more of
their secrets, I got a better understanding of who they were. But the voice
wasn’t very clear. I had to keep checking back to the first page of the chapter
to find out who was talking. After the first set of three 1st person
accounts, the writing got marginally better.
The
voices of the characters were still not apparent though. And because no one
character stood out, I found it hard to like any of them. The thought of one of
them dead was not something I could bring myself to care about.
I felt
that the last first-person chapter of the character that is about to die should
have been in the 3rd person. In the first person, it was awkward and
clumsy.
What
made it interesting at first was that everyone had secrets, not just the women,
but all the characters, but over time even that lost its novelty.
The
men, Jake Elliott and Landon, are flat as cardboard. For one, neither is
present in Wales, and we see them both only in flashbacks. Jake has been dead
eight years when the story begins, and the flashbacks don’t portray him well or
enough. Landon, very much alive, is boring. It is hard to see why he is
considered quite the catch.
There
was no buildup to the mystery. The red herrings were unconvincing and the plot
twist didn’t seem natural. The reasons why a particular character was suspected
and then subsequently considered innocent didn’t seem credible.
DI
Collins, the investigating officer, was drab, completely devoid of personality.
She was in charge but didn’t appear to have the confidence to figure things out.
She kept asking questions but didn’t come to any conclusion at all. The odd
thing was that it seemed as if she were conducting the investigation on her
own. She didn’t have an assistant, no one with whom she could think aloud.
The friendship between the girls didn’t come across as warm and comforting. At one point, Rowan said that that Jocelyn provided her a sense of safety in high school and college. But safety from what? We never get a sense of what might be threatening Rowan.
The
book needed better editing. Character A tells Character B her (B’s) mother’s
name, in the vein of “Your mother, X.” Editing should have weeded out such
clumsy sentences.
It is
unclear why Jocelyn calls her mother’s sister by her first name, instead of
calling her Aunt Helen, particularly when Helen’s husband is addressed as Uncle
Paul.
The
book was okay for the most part. But the resolution fell flat. It seemed
forced, hurried, with characters coming to realisations about the truth in a
way that didn’t feel natural.
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