The town of Whistling Ridge guards its secrets.
When 17-year-old Abigail goes missing, her best friend Emma, compelled by the guilt of leaving her only friend alone at the Tall Bones party that night, sets out to find the truth about what happened to Abi. But as the details unfold, the festering secrets and longstanding resentments of the people of Whispering Ridge, Colorado, begin to surface with devastating consequences.
Among those secrets are those harboured by the members of Abi's family: her older brother Noah, who has an unworldly yet horribly dangerous love for the handsome Rat, a Romanian immigrant who recently entered town; her 12-year-old brother Jude, who is filled with a shining goodness yet walks with a stick because his father threw him down the stairs while their mother Dolly turned away; and, Dolly, who married the bible-bashing Samuel on a whim, and now, with a frozen heart, watches her children unravel.
When a teenaged girl disappears from an insular small town, all of the community’s most devastating secrets come to light. Filled with stereotypic characters, Where the Truth Lies is a slow burn character-driven mystery that is not quite worthy of your patience.
Bailey's use of flashback for her big reveal is anticlimactic—the story doesn't feel fully fleshed out. Although she captures the small town dynamic and the difficult lives of her characters, Bailey misses the mark. The shifting perspectives and time periods are problematic, they interrupted the flow of the story and the reader is left dependant on what feels more like hearsay versus what actually happened. The chapters are short and jarring, again, interrupting any cohesiveness.
Where the Truth Lies is dark and atmospheric, crushing and claustrophobic.
ANNA BAILEY studied Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and wanted to be a journalist, but ended up moving to Colorado and becoming a Starbucks barista instead. In 2018, she returned to the UK where she enrolled in the Curtis Brown Creative novel-writing course and wrote her first novel Tall Bones, inspired by her time in the US.
Bailey currently lives in Cheltenham, where she writes for Cotswold Life and Good On Paper magazines.
No comments:
Post a Comment