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My thoughts: Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

Spoilers ahead in this book review.

Sometimes I Lie does not lack suspense or thrills. I binge-listened to it via Audible for 5 straight weeknights. Why Audible you ask? I stare at a computer for work, so this is my gift to my eyes.

The setting is England. A woman, Amber, lies in a coma on a hospital bed. She seems to be able to think and hear others but isn’t able to open her eyes or move and her frustration about this is palpable. She tries painfully to piece together how she got there. To do this, the author adds two flashbacks. The first is a childhood account done while writing a diary, and the second is from the week before the accident that sends her into this comatose state. All that is known of that accident is that Amber was in the passenger seat of the car belonging to her husband.

Right away, you see how conflicted she is about the two people she loves most in the world: her husband Paul and her sister Claire. She doesn’t trust either. This is puzzling because they both seem to come religiously to visit her in the hospital.

The childhood flashback is chilling and you can’t believe that that child has matured into the emotive main character Amber. Until you’re told late in the book, that it’s really Claire’s account. As a child, Claire detests her parents because they’re depressed and drink a lot. Honestly, she’s made to seem almost autistic. During a fight, she pushes her mother down the stairs causing her to lose her unborn child. But yet feels zero remorse.

Things get worse when Claire discovers a girl, Taylor, in her school, who has a propensity to get bullied. It seems Taylor keeps an alter-ego called Jo, who she talks to occasionally. Claire falls very comfortably into the role of a guardian angel for Taylor, warding off the bullies. This ingratiates her to Taylor and Taylor’s parents. Claire thinks of them as model parents and detests her own parents even more. If ever I can think of an argument against sleepovers for children, it’s that vulnerable immature minds compare family situations between theirs and their host’s and feel they got the short end of the stick.

When her parents decide to leave town, Claire decides that she never wants to leave Taylor and her family. Being the feeling-deprived psychopath she is, she burns down her house while her parents sleep. She then moves in with Taylor and is adopted by her family. Taylor watches all this happen but apparently never says a word about this to anyone, not even her parents. It’s almost like she needs her guardian Claire, to be around her. And of course, we now know that Taylor is really the childhood Amber. Taylor is Amber’s middle name and she decided to use her first name when she was an adult.

This powerful hold that Claire has over Amber, since childhood, is the backbone of the book. It takes decades but Amber eventually starts trying to leave Claire’s shadow. When she finds out she’s pregnant, she doesn’t tell Claire, but that only makes Claire livid when she eventually finds out. While driving Amber to the hospital, Claire brakes suddenly, causing Amber to crash through the windshield and out of the car. Nothing happens to Claire and she supposedly returns the car which is Paul’s, to Amber’s house. The police suspect Paul of trying to kill his wife and Claire keeps mum.

Amber eventually comes out of her coma and goes back to daily life cautiously, worrying about Claire. But she strikes first, and kills Claire and her husband by poisoning them and then setting their house on fire, for poetic justice. The book makes no pretense that Amber is psychoses-free.

There are a few twists in the story:

1. Throwing the reader off when the narrator starts off with Amber, but is later revealed that the childhood narrator is actually Claire. That needed some mental recalibration on my part, although i suppose the author is trying to keep you on your toes.

2. A bracelet that Claire steals from Amber as a child, is magically sent to her hotel room post Claire’s death. Oooooh scary. Sounds to me like a hook for a sequel.

3. An ex-boyfriend from college re-enters her life 10 years later and is now suddenly brimming with so much resentment that he tries to date-rape her. I would call him a “filler” character, his role is inconsequential to the plot other than to thrown in a little suspense.

4. An entry in the childhood diary is revealed at the very end of the book. Claire writes that “Taylor made me do it”. The arson that is. That makes no sense to me. Why would Taylor tell Claire to kill Claire’s parents? She gains nothing from it, Claire gains everything. I have to admit this one threw me off.

5. Amber implicates Claire’s aunt Madeleine, when she kills Claire and her husband, and police arrest Madeleine. Again, what does Madeleine gain from killing her niece?

The best part of the book is not the plot. It is a page-turner no doubt, but the story doesn’t feel plausible somehow. The best part is really the writing. Alice Feeney has poignant observations and a magical way with words. It was an absolute pleasure reading Amber’s thoughts while comatose, the depths she fell to and how she kept floating back up to the surface.