There are two thrillers unfolding here, the one that Liza Jones is writing to meet a deadline and the one that she is living. Both stories kept me turning pages to see what would become of the characters. Chapters alternate between the fictional author's life and the book she's writing, but it was always clear which of the two stories I was reading and I didn't come close to figuring it all out.

I love the idea of a Book within a book. Cate Holahan did a great job in creating a dual story line, alternating between the life of Author Liza Jones and her fictional character Beth. There was a bit of confused switching between the two characters. At times the stories blurred together, as it became clear that the two live parallel lives.This didn't cause too many issue and grabbed my full attention throughout.
LIES SHE TOLD was a nice little Mystery - Suspense thriller, well written with great detail. Enjoyable read

This was a well-written book that kept me up because I wanted to finish it!

It starts off super strong and held lots of promise for me. I was a bit disappointed in the ending, as it felt too rushed and wanted to know more, but then a book that I don't want to end is a good book! I wanted to know more about their lives!

More twists and turns than a spiral staircase! Author Liza is writing a book and between her book details and her own personal life, there are plenty of very suspenseful and thrilling plot twists. This is a hard book to put down and it is one of the best books I have read this year.

I wasn't able to finish this book. I kept getting confused and frustrated as to whether or not we were in the character or the "reality."

The line was blurring to much for me. I will continue trying at a later date.

Cate Holahan has written a book within a book. LIES SHE TOLD is the story of Lisa Cole, a woman trying to get pregnant and start a family with her husband David, who is distracted by the disappearance of his best friend Nick and more interested in finding out what has happened to Nick than in fulfilling his wife’s needs.
Adding to the stress of dealing with her declining marriage and her failed attempts to become pregnant - Lisa, once a relatively successful writer, has fallen into a period of stagnation and has just been given an ultimatum by her publisher Trevor - - “one month to produce a trendy new book that will sell”.

In answer to her publisher’s demands, Lisa begins a book about Beth, a recent new mother, who suspects that her husband is unfaithful and sets out to catch him in the act. It is here that the reader enters the parallel worlds of Lisa and her creation Beth.

Author Holahan, is a fluid writer, observant of the world that shapes her characters’ lives and the psychology involved when reality and fantasy become inextricably intertwined. As the twisting plot unspools and the lines between fact and fiction begin to blur, Holahan is in total command of what she’s doing as she explores the overt and subtle ways that trauma, grief, buried secrets and the inability to face the truth can affect minds, hearts and motivations.

Psychological thriller where a novelist, Liza, creates a character, Beth, and their parallel lives alternate chapters. I found it a bit difficult to follow until I made a point to stop at every chapter in order to remind myself which woman's story I was going to read about.

Liza's desperation to have a child leads her to experimental hormone therapy. When Liza's husband's law partner goes missing, David's mourning for Nick displaces Liza's cyclical needs.

Meanwhile Liza's latest novel is about a new mother, Beth, who suspects her husband, Jack, of having an affair. Between newborn exhaustion and postpartum hormones, Beth isn't as rational as she thinks she is.

As Liza begins to trace Nick's last days, her blocked traumas begin to resurface and telling truth from fiction is a blurred line.

Thanks everyone for letting me review the book. This started off very slowly and then picked up and had me hooked.

Lies She Told by Cate Holahan is a fantastic novel. The characters are interesting and flawed, which make them realistic and genuine. Holahan's writing style is descriptive, without being wordy, and clear, without being obvious. I really enjoyed Lies She Told and highly recommend it.

Well, I didn’t see THIS one coming, but what a twisted ride! LIES SHE TOLD Cate Holahan is dark, very dark, very twisted and wickedly blends the lines between fact and the fictitious world of a suspense author. Hang on tight, because Cate Holahan is taking no prisoners and neither is Beth, or Liza.

Struggling to end her best-seller dry spell, Liza Cole’s world is anything but mellow. Filled with hormones in an attempt to conceive, dealing with a husband wrapped up in his high-pressure job and on a rapidly approaching deadline, Liza uses her heroine, Beth as an escape, and the lines between Beth’s fictional implosion begin to blur as a murder of passion in reality and Beth’s commitment of a murder of passion become intertwined in a mind that has too many hidden secrets from her past.

Edge-of-your-seat reading all the way as readers will struggle to separate Beth and Liza’s lives, actions and their very essences. Taut, dark and filled with page after page of high tension action, we become immersed in the minds of two characters, almost forgetting they are not one in the same. Or are they? Just when you think you have it all figured out...you discover you don't! THAT is an excellent suspense!

An excellent thriller that will test the limits of one’s imagination from start to finish!

I received an ARC edition from Crooked Lane Books.

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (September 12, 2017)
Publication Date: September 12, 2017
Genre: Thriller | Suspense
Print Length: 288 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews & More: http://tometender.blogspot.com

I received a free copy from Net Galley for reviewing. I liked the way the author told this story ..the story within the story. However, the ending was predicted half way through. Some of the subject matter was a bit too much to have all in one book which also messed with the belief factor. However, I do enjoy the author's way of telling the story which is why I gave it 3 stars in the end instead of 2.

THIS WAS INCREDIBLE. It was a rush of thrilling what-ifs and a mystery of what is real and what is not. I couldn't put this book down for a second, it was a gripping tale of suspense that I was not disappointed.

This book switches between the real life of Liza, a romantic suspense author, and the new manuscript that she is working on. As is typical with writing, her story starts to reflect reality as she steals traits from people she knows to create her new characters and new character situations.

As the story progresses, pieces of Liza's past are revealed, things that even she couldn't quite remember. I loved how the author took both parts of Liza's life (her reality and her writing) to create one narrative. Definitely recommend!

I was a bit torn by this latest book on my search for the 'next great thriller.' On one hand, I found the writing to be rather 'meh,' occasionally causing me to roll my eyes or laugh aloud. Yet, it is also quite a unique story line that definitely fulfills the definition of a page-turner. Once again inhabited by wealthy white folks (what is it with the stereotypes?!), Cate Holahan has created a dual plot structure, switching back and forth between the story of an author who is fighting to write another bestseller after some clunkers and the draft of the new book itself. We see the author, Liza, struggle with infertility treatments, a distant husband, and the mysterious disappearance of his best friend, as well as her attraction to her editor. At the same time, Liza's fictional character, Beth, struggling with the newly discovered affair of her husband while she fights the attraction to her therapist for postpartum depression. Real life begins to merge with the fictional life, as the author begins to wonder what is real and what is make-believe. This is a solid vacation, beach-read that will definitely keep you guessing.

I usually pride myself on guessing the twist before everybody else, but this time I was so wrong. A great thriller. So good, that I made myself finish it, even though I had a cracking headache. I did not want to close my eyes and rest before knowing what happened in the end. And it was worth it.

"Liza Jones has thirty days to write the thriller that could put her back on the bestseller list...struggling to start a family with her husband, who is distracted by the disappearance of his best friend...Liza escapes into writing her latest heroine.

Beth is a new mother who suspects her husband is cheating...Angry and betrayed, Beth sets out to catch him in the act...But before she realizes it, she’s tossing the body of her husband’s mistress into the river.

Then the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur."

Lies She told is an entertaining, light, and fast paced domestic thriller. Though I could tell the difference between the character's voices straight off, it sure was fun playing along, and trying to figure out who was really who. Honesty, I spotted one of the twist a long way off, with that said, I loved the concept of how this story was told. It alternates points of view of between fact and fiction, author and protagonist. The author's real life crosses and blends with that of the lead in the novel she is currently writing making it a pretty fun ride!

It's a smooth thriller with a good storyline and steady pacing. I enjoyed the twists of the character's development, as the plot thickened. As we dive deeper into the story, layers are stripped from what seemed at first to be basic characters. Once again here is a novel with a cast we mostly dislike. The difference in this book compared to other recent releases is that the characters are realistically flawed. There's no beating a dead horse with the unlikeable, morally corrupt, unreliable personality types. This theme was defined just right.

It took me a while to get into the book and for things to pick up, but once they did, it was very interesting, and overall a quick read. I'm definitely a fan of a "book within a book," and lines so blurred between fiction and reality that it's hard to know what is actually taking place. The author did a smash up job. I enjoyed how this story unfolds so much. I definitely recommend it.

Lies She Told is like getting two stories in one. One story about the author's life and another story that the author is writing. Cate Holahan does an excellent job of making each story you're reading feel like the important one. I can't wait to read more by this author. I was given an early copy to review.

This fast-paced psychological thriller is sure to please fans of Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware, and Lianne Moriarty. Told in alternating chapters, Holahan takes readers on a trip down the rabbit hole of life imitating art imitating life. Liza, a romantic suspense author, is struggling to write her next big hit as well as how to hold her marriage together when her husband is more concerned with his missing best friend and law firm partner than he is with her fertility treatments and creating a family with his wife. Beth, Liza's female fictional protagonist, is struggling with her new motherhood status and her crumbling marital status as her husband carries on an affair with another woman. Their two paths collide in ways the reader may never see coming.

This book was an AMAZING thrill ride that kept me securely fastened in my seat. I know that I was bellyaching in a few reviews months ago that the publishing world was going a little bit overboard with the unreliable female narrator. But Cate Holahan made me a believer by sucking me into the life of author Lisa and her book character, Beth, and their parallel stories. So many twists and turns, I swear my head was going faster than a bobble head on a dashboard coming in first at the Indy 500. A whole lot of cray-cray in this story!

Highly recommended!

I've noticed that recently I've rated almost all of the thrillers I read pretty bad or with just average ratings. I assumed that it was simply because I had read a fair amount of similar books in such a short time. But when I took "Lies She Told", it turned out that there was still room in my head for a good plot, and that good book found its way to a good rating even in the biggest crowd.

Cate Holahan brings us an interesting story of a colleague, writer Liza Cole. Liza wrote a successful first book - a bestseller, but it seems that her later works can hardly reach the same level. We meet Liza in moments when her life is quite complicated; the editor gives her a month to submit her new book, she's struggling with infertility and decides to be subjected to experimental treatment that makes her suffer from various undesirable side effects, while her husband David is physically and mentally absent due to the disappearance of his business partner and best friend Nick.

Liza's story is intertwined with the story of the protagonist of her new book, Beth. Beth is a young mother who becomes a witness to the affair of her own husband, Jake. This cognition breaks down her illusion of a perfect life, but Beth decides to preserve the debris of her marriage, and instead of confronting her husband, she switches all of her anger to Colleen, a young policewoman, her husband's associate and mistress.

While the plot is progressing, two completely separated stories reveal common elements, and the boundary between them is irreparably clouded. Beth is increasingly influencing Liza and it becomes clear that she is not just a book character. Cate Holahan leads us to unexpected places in the thoughts of her characters and creates a thriller that you'll hardly drop out of your hand before you finish reading the whole book.