To Tell You the Truth by Gilly Macmillan introduces us to Lucy Harper, bestselling author and creator of beloved the beloved DC Eliza Grey series. Her husband Dan, who is an aspiring writer, is so confused when Lucy decides to remove Eliza from her latest book. Lucy's editors are not very happy with that decision either. But neither Lucy's husband or her editors know the truth about the character Eliza. Eliza's voice is always in Lucy's ear, and has been with her since Lucy was young and her little brother Teddy disappeared. Eliza has been constantly whispering clues about Teddy's disappearance to Lucy - but maybe they aren't clues - maybe they're memories! Now, when Lucy's husband Dan goes missing, Lucy must confront what really happened in her past.

This book started off strong with a definite unreliable narrator, which I kind of love. But the story soon became repetitive and Lucy's behavior became increasingly irrational. I also thought that the ending was quite rushed and completely crazy and I didn't connect with what was happening - it definitely wasn't an ending I could see coming!

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I love all Gilly MacMillian's books! To Tell the Truth has excellent character development! It is fast paced. Highly recommend going in blindly and planning to read in one sitting.

Amazing! I just loved this one so much. The ending seemed a little bit rushed, but that's okay. It answered most (not all) of the questions.

From the outside, Lucy Harper has the perfect life. Her mysteries, starring a female detective, sell like hotcakes and her husband, Dan, has had to quit work just to manage their money and property. Dan is the first man she ever loved and she loves him still. Rich, famous, in love, what a life.

But under the surface, things aren't so good. What no one except Dan knows is that when Lucy was a little girl her brother, Teddy, disappeared one night when she took him into the woods and then left him sleeping to go watch a bonfire. Teddy was never found and the family ended up moving away to escape the notoriety. Her books are selling but she is trapped into writing nothing but mysteries and she is tired of her main character. Dan is getting more and more remote; when they met he thought he would be the one to break into publishing and that never happened to him.

Now Dan has gone out and bought a house without asking Lucy. She is appalled to see that it abuts on the woods where Teddy had gone missing. Dan is doing lots of things without telling Lucy. She suspects that includes having an affair with their gorgeous neighbor. Then Dan disappears and Lucy knows her perfect life is about to come down in tatters. Can she survive another disappearance?

Gilly Macmillan is a British writer who specializes in female characters who have encountered a disaster in their lives. Lucy is a good example. While the reader may want to just shake Lucy and tell her to stand up for herself, Macmillan does a good job of making her life and decisions seem inevitable. The writing is fast paced and there are surprises along the way. This book is recommended for mystery readers.

To Tell You The Truth by Gilly MacMillan was a lot of fun to read, so much so that I read it in one sitting!

There was a lot to like about To Tell You The Truth.  Lucy, a successful mystery writer, has been bending the truth and making up stories since she was a child. She's become very adept at blending enough truth with her fictions, so it's hard to tell if what she's saying might be false. I especially loved that even she was losing track of what was real and what wasn't. By doing this, MacMillan does a great job creating a lot of tension throughout the story, which kept me wanting to read it. I was constantly wondering what was the truth, who was good, and who I could trust. In a story where everyone has a reason to lie, it certainly kept me on my toes!

But while I really enjoyed reading this book, I will say that it was nothing earth-shattering, especially in light of the slew of unreliable female main character thrillers that have gained popularity in the past few years. Because of the unreliable narrator, there were a lot of ways I could see the book ending. I was ultimately very surprised by the direction it went in, which can be frustrating to me, as I typically like to look back and see the breadcrumbs that set up the big reveal.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading To Tell You The Truth by Gilly MacMillan, and will definitely be picking up additional books from MacMillian.

Many thanks to William Morrow, Gilly MacMillan, and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Really good mystery had me going in different directions on the whodunit. Lucy Harper famous writer of female detective series with huge fan base is hiding a secret. Her husband is missing and his burned out truck is found, but not him. Is he hurt or dead? Lucy has reinvented her self with name change and new town after her little brother ended up missing when Lucy was nine and Teddy was six. Lucy took Teddy with her in the woods while sneaking out the house as he whined to do and to keep him quiet so their parents wouldn't hear she dragged him with her. Secretly watching the bonfire of gypsy like folks and pagans, Lucy is enthralled to quiet Teddy who is ready to go home, Lucy leaves him asleep in a bunker she secretly visits in the woods, but now Teddy is missing. As her husband's disappearance is in the news, Lucy past life comes up. Is Lucy mad and lost her mind years ago as her famous detective series featuring Eliza is actually someone she sees and talks to that no ones can see. Really really good mystery.

To Tell You The Truth has an unreliable narrator. From the beginning we know that Lucy has an imaginary friend, Eliza. Eliza is a featured character in her novels (Lucy is a crime writer), but Eliza is also the voice in her head. She "appeared" when Lucy was very young, and gave her advice even when she had the not-so-brilliant idea to bring her young brother into the woods on summer solstice. The brother disappeared and Lucy was never fully honest about what happened.

In the present day, Lucy is married to Dan (who seems to be kind of a jerk, in a lot of ways). She has no idea what is going on in her marriage or in life, it seems. She lives in a writing bubble and acts like a moron. Dan disappears and Lucy panics. That's about the gist of the entire book.

There are so many things that are brought up, never to be returned to again, chalked up to the unreliable narrator. People are introduced and then not mentiond again. I had questions throughout and they were never answered. I'm not sure what this book was suppoesd to be, but it wasn't it for me.

I really enjoyed this book! Highly recommend! I was disappointed that Lucy didn't find out what happened to her brother, but sometimes the missing stay missing. I liked the character interactions. The pace was good and kept me reading to find out what happened next.

I enjoyed reading this book and loved the plot. It was a great thrilling read that I brought on vacation!

There was definatly a unique premise for the book, weaving imaginary friends/stories into the real life that just added to the confusion of the story. The writer made it very obvious that this is intentional confustion, and I love that in a book. To Tell You the Truth is a very slow burn of a book, so be prepared.

I have come to the conclusion that this author is just not for me. After an argument, Lucy's husband goes missing. This book was honestly kind of confusing as there are two mysteries being told throughout. By the end I just didn't care about either one and was very unsatisfied.

I like thrillers just as much as the next person, but after a while, they really start to all feel the same. This was fine but just nothing exciting or stand-out!

This was my first reading of Gilly Macmillan, and wasn't disappointed. Took awhile to get going, but that worked. I liked the main character, and as we worked toward two mysteries, one years ago, and one today, the main character's state of mind kept me guessing how each story line would end. Will need to find other books by Gilly Macmillan. #ToTellYoutheTruth #NetGalley

I personally had no idea what was going on for most of the book. I was about 250 pages in and still had no clue what was going on. The ending was a let down, as nothing really happened. Nothing was wrapped up or concluded, the book just kind of ends.

Good read. I enjoyed the book. even though it seemed mediocre and somewhat repetitive in spots. Surprisingly I was about to complete the book and I liked the ending.

I couldn't deal with the annoyingly timid and passive main character and noped out pretty quickly. Maybe another time I'd have liked it better.

To Tell You The Truth was an interesting story line about a writer who was simultaneously facing and hiding from her own demons.

Lucy is the author of the best-selling Eliza series, but Eliza is more than just a character in a book for her. Eliza has also become a part of Lucy and at times takes over to get Lucy through difficult situations. Eliza has helped Lucy get through the memories of when her little brother Teddy disappeared when they were kids, and now, many years later as an adult, Eliza is helping Lucy deal with the disappearance of Lucy’s husband.

Is Eliza really a fictional character and imaginary friend to Lucy, or is there something more sinister about Eliza?

I had a hard time staying invested in this book. There were some very interesting parts, like when the backstory of Lucy and Teddy was explained. All of the moments leading up to Teddy’s disappearance were interesting and had me hooked on that part of the story.

I was less interested in Lucy’s life as an adult and her writing career. I get like adult Lucy was whiny and entitled. I thought her husband was very manipulative and mean. I can’t say I was surprised or upset when he disappeared, and frankly, I didn’t care why he disappeared. He was such an awful character that I was happy that he was gone. I also felt like that opened the story more because it made Lucy’s past and present collide in ways she hadn’t expected.

Eliza was a strange character for me. I couldn’t tell if Lucy was trying to turn her life into an Eliza story, or if Eliza was an alter ego that helped Lucy evade trouble. I thought throughout that Eliza was a sign of mental illness in Lucy but it didn’t seem like any other characters in the book noticed this.

I wasn’t thrilled with the ending. I don’t think it tied together very well and it felt rushed and incomplete. I don’t know that many of the questions I had throughout the book were answered.

Overall, this book had a lot of potential. As I said previously, I really enjoyed the story of Teddy and Lucy as kids and would have liked to see that developed more, or been the main focus of the story. There were some things I really liked, like the alternating timeline between past and present, but overall this book was kind of disappointing for me. Maybe I just didn’t connect with this story, but I will read more from this author in the future in hopes of finding a book that I love. Maybe I just wasn’t the right audience for this one.

3 stars, I would recommend this book to those who like alternating timelines and mild thrillers.

(3.5)

This book was good. It had some parts that had me trying to speed read but then it had some parts that had me debating putting the book down (but only for a little bit).
This story starts out with a missing boy, Teddy. His sister comes home very late at night and her mother is in a panic. She asks the girl "Where is Teddy?", to which the girl replies, "Isn't he home?" (or something similar to that, I'm not sure of the exact wording). The story then goes to the present but it does jump to the past all throughout. In the present, Lucy is an author who writes very popular books. So popular in fact she and her husband live quite well. Her husband, Dan, tries to write but he's just not as good. He also tends to be on the jealous petty side.
One day, Dan goes missing and since this isn't exactly the first time some one has gone missing in Lucy's life things don't look good for her. Her brother Teddy's disappearance, no matter how much she's tried to hide from it. Lucy has spun a wild tale around his disappearance when she was a child which you see in flashback chapters. This time though, Lucy can't wind her fantasies around reality, no matter what her inner voice is trying to get her to do.
I can't really tell you a lot about this book because I'll ruin every single thing for you. The book is a step book, in other words everything happens in order so if I accidentally slip up somewhere I could ruin this whole entire book for you! I'll tell you that this is definitely one that gets you at every single turn. You think you know but you probably don't.
This is a twisty tale with many characters that you just can't get a full read on until they let you. Everyone has something to hide it seems and they hide it well. There are surprises just waiting for you to find and when you do you won't be disappointed.
However, I didn't really love the very end! I hate to say that but part with the... I'm trying to leave a hint but non-spoiler so you'll only get it once you read it. The part with the art. I wasn't a fan of that. Unfortunately it's a pretty big part. I did like the rest of the book though and it's very well written.
I recommend you consider reading this book if you are at all, even remotely, interested in this story. It's worth it to see if you like it.

Thank you so much to Netgalley, the publisher, the author, and anybody else out there I may have missed for the chance to receive an advanced reader copy. I can't thank you enough. You're all awesome! Thanks!

Bestselling mystery novelist Lucy Harper has reached publishing success most writers can only dream about—including her husband Dan. His books never reached Lucy's level of fame and fortune, and this forms a wedge in their marriage. After a particularly petty argument, Dan storms out, never returning home. His sudden disappearance evokes dark memories of Lucy's chilling past. Thirty years ago, Lucy's younger brother disappeared, never to be seen again. Now, decades later, Lucy is at the forefront of yet another missing person report—and time is running out. With all eyes on her, Lucy must delve into her past if she wants to save her future.

Gilly Macmillan has written a solid mystery novel in this latest standalone story. While not quite edge-of-your-seat gripping enough for me to feel comfortable labeling it a thriller, TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH offers a hefty dose of suspense to keep the reader engaged until the very end.

Rather than a fast-paced, twisty plot seen in typical thrillers, this story is much more slow-burn, focusing on Lucy's inner thoughts as she searches for answers surrounding her mysterious past and ominous present. I recommend TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH to new-to-the-genre readers who might not be ready for the intense, high-stakes conflict often found in traditional thriller novels.

This book was awesome!!! I could not put it down! Gilly Macmillian is an amazing author. Her books never disappoint! Can not wait for the next one!