The Darkest Lies by Barbara Copperthwaite

The Darkest Lies by Barbara Copperthwaite
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Melanie Oak is a mother that gets the news that every parent out there dreads the most, that her little girl Beth has been hurt and is in the hospital hanging onto life. Melanie had walked her daughter most of the way to a friends house but as typical of a young teen Beth convinced her mother she could make it on her own but the next morning they find the girl had never arrived having lied to her parents her plans for the night.

Melanie being the distraught mother makes it her mission to make sure that the truth is revealed about what really happened to her daughter that night. Being a small community someone somewhere must have seen something and knows how her daughter ended up broken and beaten alone in the marshes and Melanie is determined she will get to the truth no matter the cost.

The Darkest Lies is a psychological thriller that takes a reader on quite a journey to get to just what happened to a young girl who is now hanging onto life. A lot of the story is told from the point of view of Melanie, the mother, who is doing a lot of internal talking to her injured daughter Beth about how she is going to find what happened that night. Now I’ve read books of this nature before but for some reason at times in this story Melanie would irritate me a bit with her internal monologue to Beth, perhaps because I questioned that her child is still alive why isn’t she spending time with her?

However, putting aside my doubts of Melanie and her character I found the story within this book quite compelling. There were a lot of twists and turns to keep a reader’s interest along the way in the story. I had my different guesses at the outcome in here and one of my suspicions happened to be true but then the author throws another twists at the reader and completely adds more to the story I don’t think anyone would expect. In the end I thought this one was a pretty good read even with questioning my liking the main character in parts of the book.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.