Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2009
288 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
It all started with the yard sale. Ivy was eight months and one week pregnant when she insisted that she and her husband, David, clean out the junk they'd inherited with the old Victorian house they'd bought three years before. Call it nesting, call it nerves—she just wanted it all gone: the old electrical fixtures, the boxes of National Geographics from the 1960s, the four black wool greatcoats.
Neither she nor David recognized the woman at first. But it turned out that the customer asking about the lime-green glass swan dish—the woman who looks just about as pregnant as Ivy—was none other than Melinda White, a former high school classmate of David and Ivy's. When Melinda was a child she used to play in their new house, she explained. It looked like they'd been doing some work. Would it be all right if she took a look around? David took Melinda inside. And she never came out.
Now David's under police suspicion, and Ivy finds herself digging deep into the past to clear his name. But David's history, she begins to discover, is not necessarily the history she remembers, and before long Ivy has uncovered a twisted web of deceit, betrayal, and lies, both the ones we tell those we love and the ones we tell ourselves.
"Starred Review. Ephron doesn't miss a searing beat as she plunges the Roses into an abyss of suspicion." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Although fans of the suspense genre won't be surprised by the plot twists here, this is an entertaining read with a strong ending and a great lead character in Ivy." - Library Journal.
"Mild creepiness is overly scripted with workmanlike prose into a blend of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and a humorless Monk." - Kirkus Reviews.
"[T]his is an entertaining read with a strong ending and a great lead character in Ivy." - Library Journal.
This information about Never Tell a Lie was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Hallie Ephron is a writer, book reviewer, and writing teacher. She can be found online at hallieephron.com.
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