Blog Tour ~ One White Lie by Leah Konen

Penguin
25 June 2020

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book
and the invitation to be part of this blog tour today

Imagine you've finally escaped the worst relationship of your life, running away with only a suitcase and a black eye.

Imagine your new next-door neighbours are the friends you so desperately needed - fun, kind, empathetic, very much in love.

Imagine they're in trouble. That someone is telling lies about them, threatening their livelihoods - and even their lives.

Imagine your ex is coming for you.

If your new best friends needed you to tell one small lie, and all of these problems would disappear, you'd do it, wouldn't you?

What did I think about it..

Lucy King escapes from an abusive relationship and takes shelter in a small cottage on the appropriately named Shadow Creek Road in the small community of Woodstock in the Catskills area of New York State. Despite her understandable apprehension about strangers Lucy is befriended by her neighbours, Vera and John, an odd couple whose very presence in Lucy's life gave me a scary feeling right from the start. When they make an unusual request of Lucy the tension certainly cranks up another notch on the creepy scale.

What then follows is an interesting psychological thriller which has the necessary elements of surprise whilst at the same time revealing more about Lucy's reasons for leaving behind her life and the dilemma she faces for not always telling the truth. There are twists and turns aplenty with lots to discover as you race through the pages. I enjoyed the the author's easy style of writing as she does this type of domestic thriller very well and maintains the necessary tension with sharp focus. It feels a very modern story with a set of characters who are not always very likeable, but who are believable and who lead you on a convoluted journey until the dramatic conclusion.

Most of the psychological thrillers I have read this year seem to be set in the UK so it's been a refreshing change to travel across the Atlantic to the altogether different scenario of rural Woodstock and hiking in the Catskills with Lucy, Vera and John. I was interested to discover that One White Lie is the author's debut in this genre being more known for her young adult fiction.

Just to point out that One White Lie is also know in the US as All The Broken People.

About the Author

Leah Konen is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied journalism and English literature. She is the author of several YA novels - One White Lie is her first psychological thriller. She lives in Brooklyn and Saugerties, NY, with her husband, their daughter, Eleanor, and their dog, Farley.

Twitter @leahkonen #OneWhiteLie

@MichaelJBooks

Website