Lie lie again by Stacey Wise.
3 very different women living in an apartment complex in Los Angeles.
Embry, a young sweet southern belle married with 2 kids, Riki, an elementary teacher who doesn't know what she wants and Sylvia, a no nonsense, devious woman with serious daddy issues in her mid thirties.
All 3 woman have their own secrets and the books starts with a dead body at the bottom of the stairs to this complex.
This book was not what I expected. Not so much a thriller but more of an easy to read, feel good read despite the dead body, which if I'm completely honest, I forgot all about until the ending.
This book was like having coffee with friends. I loved and cared about the characters and the more I read the more I wanted. It has a lianne Moriarty feel to it and I will definitely be recommending this to all my female customers.

Thank you Netgalley for an ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review. Personally I thought this book to be ok not much more. After I had finished reading I was not left with that feeling you get when you finish a great book.

LIE, LIE AGAIN • by Stacy Wise .
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 4.5
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I completely adored this book 💕
I stayed awake until the sun came up to finish it last night ☀️
I’m a huge Big Little Lies fan and it definitely has that same kind of vibe. It’s domestic fiction, not a thriller, but I do deviate occasionally. .
I loved this story and was deeply invested in the characters. I have honestly missed them since finishing the book. .
There were some genuinely kind characters that you immediately connected with and there were also some characters that did some devious and reprehensible things, yet you still found yourself rooting for them. To me, that is a hallmark of talented writing. There were also characters that made you want to claw their eyes out. The relationships are complex, complicated and interesting. It’s a storm of cheating, lies, betrayal and revenge
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I had to put a MAC lipstick in the photo because one of the characters uses her MAC lipstick as a weapon of her warfare 💋 .
❓Do you have a favorite lipstick❓
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✨Due out November 17, 2020✨

This was such a deliciously written, entertaining rainy day novel that had me hooked and wanting more from the very start!

Seriously, this was such a fun and easy to get into book. As soon as I started reading it, I snuggled up in bed with a cup of coffee (and it was indeed a rainy day while I was reading it BTW) and I then proceeded to read the entire thing in one sitting.

I love the entire Melrose Place-esque feel of the novel, as the setting certainly had a very similar feel to the TV show, as it took place in an apartment complex in California that had a very similar sounding set up. There are the neighbors, who are all friends (or are they?) who appear happy and successful enough on the surface, but underneath, are secrets and deceptions that they are all hiding.

The book starts in a juicy, dramatic way, with a dead body at the bottom of a staircase in the apartment complex (okay I just gotta mention Melrose Place one more time: Hello? Floating body in the pool in the middle of the courtyard of an apartment complex? Ring a bell to anyone?)

Although we learn of the body right away, the book is still a deliciously fun thrill filled with anticipation, as we learn from each of the women how the body ended up there in the first place by the end of the book.

The book focuses on three main characters, each chapter told from the point of view of one of these women: Embry, Sylvia, and Riki. All three women are neighbors as well as friends in the apartment complex, and each of the women is dealing with her own secrets as they all come together to form a united front in order to try and keep the apartment complex from being sold.

Each of the women have their own unique voice and add their own enthralling mix of drama into the story.

Riki is a second grade teacher in a private school, struggling to make ends meet. She questions her position and professionalism within the private school day after day, as she struggles to meet the demands of the snooty parents of the kids she teaches. Meanwhile, her personal life is also a bit of a mess. She’s in a relationship with a guy named Chris that she constantly second-guesses, much like her job, and is secretly harboring a crush on her neighbor/friend Embry’s husband, Brandon. Will she cross the line and betray her friendship with Embry in order to get the man she’s been wanting since forever?

Embry is a seemingly happy stay-at-home mother of two with a devoted, loving husband who has movie star good looks. Although she seems to have it all with her happy family unit, she feels the weight of the world begin to weigh more and more heavily on her shoulders as her husband continues to struggle to book an acting job while working a bartending job at the same time in order to support their family, and she conceals from him the fact that she’s pregnant again as the bills pile up.

Sylvia doesn’t have the best history with men, but starts to let her carefully placed shield down around the man she has been seeing, Hugh. When she discovers that he’s not who he says he is, and breaks her heart, she decides to take revenge into her own hands and won’t let him get off easily.

I found Syvlia to be the most interesting out of the three women, but when it comes down to it, I was so engrossed in the story as a whole that I was pretty compelled by each of their narratives much the same.

Each characters’ stories and drama filled lives flows seamlessly, and the more the tale unfolds, the more the lies start to unravel and un-spill and its so much fun to bear witness to.

Stacy Wise definitely has a way of weaving a juicy, engrossing story that will pull you in and keep you reading until you’ve sat and finished the entire thing in one sitting. This was the first book that i’ve read by Stacy Wise, but it certainly won’t be the last!

Highly recommend!

This book had a lot of potential and kept me intrigued.

My only issue was that none of the characters seemed likeable. There were a lot of too big coincidences and then the end all just seemed to be wrapped up too quickly.

It was a quick easy read and a lot lighter and than the intense thriller I had expected but still enjoyable.

I love a good book with some female leads, and stories about the dynamics of friendship are my favorites. I had high expectations for this book! It took me a while to learn each character and underlying motivations and really comprehend the plot and where the book was headed, so the it starts pretty slow. In the end, I was hooked and wanted to know how things ended for Embry, Silvia, and Riki. I found myself getting caught up in the webs weaved by these characters, and I had to know how things ended up. Overall, I enjoyed this book, but since it took me so long to get into it, it was not my favorite that I have ever read. Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for a copy of this book for an honest review

Surprisingly delicious writing that kept me wanting more even when the plot seemed a bit stagnant in some areas. While reading I could feel the build of the plot like the simmer before a boil. I connected deeply with characteristics of each character and I felt that they became close friends of mine. This book perfectly displays the light and darkness within us all and it was a gripping read. The ending surprised me by being a happy ending that I didn’t know I needed, but I was also not disappointed by the plot’s climax with the dark tone and build up. Overall it was a really fun read and I look forward to more work by this author.

Lie, Lie Again follows the lives of three women, all neighbors, as they walk through their daily struggles. Sylvia is a strong, lone, career driven women that will only interact with men on her terms; Embry is a young mom married to her high school sweetheart turned aspiring actor; Riki is a single, pining teacher that struggles to succeed as a private school elementary teacher. Each of these women come together to deal with the fact that there is a potential dead body outside of their doorsteps.

Overall, I thought this story had a lot of potential--it had varied, interesting female leads and there are elements of mystery and betrayal. But honestly, I toiled my way through this book; I finished because I genuinely liked Embry and wanted to know how she ended up, but I struggled to connect to both Sylvia and Riki. Sylvia's scathing view of men, while I'm sure is not Wise's view of men, didn't sit well with me, and I felt that Riki tried too hard to convince herself that she wasn't responsible for her actions, which I felt to be disappointing.

I liked the set up, and I would try another one of Wise's books, but this one just wasn't for me.

Easy to read book although I was expecting a psychological thriller. Easy to like character's apart from one or 2. I didn't like the Sylvia character, way too manipulative despite her background. Not a very sympathetic character. Plot was a bit simple and not very deep. Ok for a quick easy read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows one of my favorite formats for thrillers/suspense: you start the book knowing that someone has died, but you don't know who. The book opens with the three main characters looking at a dead body at their apartment complex, and the majority of the book is the events leading up to that mysterious death. At times it's a little hard to keep up with the plot and the character motivations, but overall it was an entertaining read.

Review posted on Goodreads on April 19, 2020.

Characters that came alive a story that kept me involved.Really enjoyed this novel an author Inwill be following.Sat down to read a few pages and found myself so caught up I read for hours.#netgalley#lakeunionpublishing,

Addictive book! This should definitely have its own show. 3 women in the same apartment with difference secrets.This is a page turner! I couldn’t put it down.

This was a joy for my first NetGalley book. An easy read thriller centred around three residents of an apartment building. As the title suggests there are plenty of lies plus a death, secrets, obsessive behaviour and revenge. The story is easy to follow so there’s no flicking back and too thinking you’ve missed something. There are also just the right amount of characters albeit pretty unlikeable ones for the most part but that’s the point of the story. I read this in 24 hours and would happily recommend it.

I really enjoyed this novel! Each of the three women, Sylvia, Riki, and Embry had their own reasons for their actions and I found the plot really captivating. Wise does a good job of giving each characters voice some space, which I think can be hard with so many people inter-connecting. While I don;t think I would want to live on Mockingbird Lane with these women I did enjoy peeking in on them as a neighbor might.

I also really love the cover layout with the tiny windows. I will look forward to this novel being published and will be recommending it to my friends and family.

Such well-drawn characters and an interesting premise. I actually didn’t want it to end. A great read that I highly recommend.

This book had a lot of promise. The characters were varied and interesting, and each POV was discernible from the other - fantastic work by the author. However, I believe the description of the book let it down. I went into this expecting a bit of a thriller and I instead encountered a story about female friendships, which was enjoyable but not what I was expecting. Great writing from the author, the storytelling was engaging and maintained my interest.

Really enjoyed this book! told from the perspective of 3 neighbors - each harboring their own secret that lightly binds them to one another.

I appreciated the ending and how each character grew.

Lie, Lie Again by Stacy Wise is a book about women living in the same building in California and their lives intersect. I kind of pictured it like Melrose Place, did you ever watch that show?

Three women, three secrets. On Mockingbird Lane, Sylvia, Embry, and Riki all harbor secrets and personal decisions that could affect other people. For Sylvia, she is dealing with the fact her boyfriend Hugh has been lying about some pretty big things, like being married.

Embry is pregnant with her third child, not great timing since her handsome husband’s acting career is going nowhere and money is tight. Riki has a boyfriend but can’t stop thinking about Embry’s husband. She’s a second-grade teacher who must contend with demanding parents who make life miserable for her at school.

Sylvia is the most devious of the bunch and I kept reading, looking forward to how she was going to confront her boyfriend about his huge lies. I went into this thinking it was suspense, it’s really not. This is another slow read, not a thriller about evil people, rather it’s about how the women they handle their problems. There’s also a subplot of them uniting against the person who wants to sell their beloved apartment complex.

Synopsis:

All three women who live at 1054 Mockingbird Lane have secrets…and with a body at the bottom of their apartment building’s staircase, those secrets need to stay buried.

Sylvia Webb has a plan. And a potential Mr. Right. He’s sweet, simple, and dependably clueless about what she’s up to. The only thing unpredictable about him is his needy ex-girlfriend, who is this close to shattering Sylvia’s dreams. But Sylvia’s not going to let that happen.

Riki McFarlan has a good career and an amazing boyfriend who wants to settle down. If only she didn’t have feelings for her neighbor—who happens to be her close friend’s husband. With everything going so right, why is Riki flirting with something so wrong, so…dangerous?

Embry Taylor is as devoted to her children as she is to her husband, who’s a bartender by night, an aspiring actor by day. She is his biggest fan. But with his career not taking off and tensions high, even sweet Embry has something she’s desperate to keep hidden.

Lies, secrets, and revenge. For three neighbors with stakes so high, someone is headed for a downfall.

This was an entertaining read that flowed well and had a tidy ending (I always like a good ending). It will be out on November 17, you can pre-order here for only $1.99 and then be happily surprised when you get this on your Kindle in the fall!

I received this arc in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley.

Somebody contact Lifetime and tell them to make this book into a movie, please! Three women, three narrations- one epic tale!

I am all down for a strong and powerful woman who knows what she wants and takes charge of her own destiny, but I certainly was not prepared for Sylvia Webb and her plotting and downright diabolical plans for finding her Mr. Right. Sylvia has an extremely clinical approach to finding a life partner with merit being based on their physical features, ability to father children and financial income rather than trivial matters such as those of the heart. Hugh, her latest victim, devastated her with his betrayal and rather than sweep it under the rug, she embodies the old phrase "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

Mockingbird Lane seems to be the epicenter for drama as we meet Riki McFarlane who has a "do-gooder" persona but is harboring a dirty little secret, Forever in the shadow of her big sister who is thousands of miles away, Riki struggles with mounting pressures of work and a man whose face is replaced by another during intimate moments.

Embry Taylor and her hubby Brandon are the quintessential small-town couple (a talented good looking guy and beautiful girl) who move out to Hollywood to make it big. So far Brandon has only gotten some small roles and works as a waiter while Embry struggles with trying to be the perfect wife and mother. As Brandon feels pressure to catch his big break with mounting insecurities he will soon realize he isn't the only one with a secret to hide.

As Sylvia serves as the catalyst of this story, her actions create ripple effects for all the inhabitants of Mockingbird Lane. The book really brings to light the struggles faced by women who are never really happy with their lot in life. The honesty of their emotions was very raw: jealousy of beauty and age, insecurities at work, forbidden desire for your best friend's husband, childhood abandonment issues and how they potentially impact the adult psyche, desperation for love and more importantly the destructive power of a woman with revenge on her mind.

It was a good book. I was intrigued by the synopsis, but expected a little more. Partway through the book, I described to my friend as “I’ve never read a book where so little happened, but I’m completely absorbed.” The book follows 3 women who live in neighboring apartments and explores the secrets that they are trying to keep. This book could have easily been 5 stars with a better ending, but instead I was considering giving it 3. I thought about it though and the characters were so well done, and their backstories so fleshed out, that I was not bored during this book at all.