The Lying Room grabs your attention from the beginning with an intriguing whodunnit. It keeps the reader hooked page after page wondering what will come next, who is responsible and worrying about the fate of the protagonist. Many differing story lines keep the reader questioning the outcome while still revealing little secrets along the way. While the main character seems a little bit too gullible and certainly too wrapped up in the drama of others, she is likable and credible as a wife and mother who has lost her way being sapped up by the needs of her husband and children.

The beginning was the most fast-paced and interesting part to read; it lagged a bit in the middle. The narrator was unlikeable and so were a lot of the characters. This kept me from fully investing in the story. Also, tell all those drunk friends to just go home already!

I don't normally read "thriller" books, but I had the opportunity to do so and I'm glad I did. "The Lying Room" was suspenseful and kept me wondering what would happen next.

I really enjoyed this book. It definitely grabbed me from the beginning with this intriguing story line. Your lover summons you to his flat and you find him murdered. The main character walks a very fine line and it kept me on the edge. I never saw the ending coming and that to me is one of the most important things when reading a suspense novel.

Secrets and lies and lies and secrets!! Boy does Neve have them in spades!! Neve is looking down at her murdered lover and she makes the decision not to call the police. Fletcher and the kids cannot know about her affair. She becomes embroiled in more lies and more secrets and in the process Mabel, her troublesome daughter, who is about to head to University becomes involved as well. Neve and Fletcher's friends from back at University have their own lists of secrets and lies and I begin to wonder if anyone in this book is real about anything. It begs the age old question - what would you do to protect yourself and those you love?

This was the story of a married woman, Neve, who discovers the murder of her married lover. She cleansup the murder scene to protect her daughter, Mabel. The books character and plot twists were interesting and at times humorous. But the central premise about the fragile daughter as a motive for Neve's actions wore thin as the story unfolded and became hard for this reader to accept.

Neve Connelly in her 40s is a wife, a mum of three and is having an affair with her boss Saul Stevenson. One morning she turns up to Sauls apartment to find him dead. What should she do call the police and explain why she is there or remove all trace of her from the apartment? A complex web of lies and deception follow. A great read full of twists and turns! Highly recommend this complex thriller. Another Nicci French winner.

Dramatic, suspenseful, at times even dark, and very absorbing, “The Lying Room” is an excellent example of a clever and stylish mystery-thriller. Intriguing, engaging, rich with character development and true-to-life settings, the novel is an adrenaline rush between covers. It is undoubtedly beautifully written. Its plot builds slowly and it masterfully escalates to an engrossing, dramatic and unexpected end which leaves you speechless and in awe!

I loved this story from the first pages and I became very fond of the main character in it, right away. Neve, a woman of around forty years old, a wife, a mother, and a friend to so many is depicted as a complex character, in the midst of a boring marriage, child-rearing issues, and all the drama that comes with family and job dynamics. Add to the drama, a fling with the boss, who then ends up dead and you get Neve finding herself entangled in a web of lies, confronted by the police, and in chaos struggling to remember all the lies she has told while trying to keep her fling a secret, her family together and prove her innocence of the murder committed. The authors have provided a vivid depiction of this character by going deeper and deeper into the darkest corners of her psyche revealing her thoughts, her mental strength, her fears and through her they try to reveal the human psyche and what lies behind it. It really makes you think: do you really know the people you think you know? It’s the kind of thinking that makes you look differently at the people close to you, your friends and your neighbors. You become more alert to your surroundings. This is why I found Neve’s character to be rich and fabulous.

The only weakness I found in the story is the insufficiently justified and therefore unconvincing motive behind the first murder. If that motive were somewhat stronger, this would have been an electrifying thriller. The writing also needs some editing and correction of typos such as the ones I’ve included below, at the bottom of my review.

Nonetheless, for me “The Lying Room” is a mesmerizing domestic (slightly noir) thriller, which I greatly enjoyed reading and would highly recommend.

My thanks to HarperCollins Publishers Inc. and Netgalley for providing me with an electronic copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Posted on Goodreads, too on May 31, 2020

Some typos I noticed:

...if she let myself relax she’d plunge over it. (correctly: herself);

Her mother said Neve should seem him more often. (correctly: see);

It’s about building a case, assembling evidence and seeing if it’s proved beyond a reasonable doubt. (correctly: proven).

The Lying Room by Nicci French has a plot that intrigued me from the beginning. It reminded me a bit of Pretty Little Liars. Because this novel featured a scandal that was a betrayal to the protagonist's family, co-workers, and to a police detective. A woman is tired of her marriage to her husband and kids who are a bit of a handful. Yet she accepts an affair with her boss. One morning, a text comes in and she automatically assumes its from her boss. She prepares herself to go to him. Part of her already feeling guilty and excited. She goes only to find him dead. She back traces and wipes evidence of her being there and just left him to lie dead bleeding out on the floor. I was shocked, horrified, and disgusted. I was like wait, what?! She showed absolutely no regrets nor any feelings of real loss. The only prickling of feelings she felt were that of her affair with her dead boss being discovered. This woman character proved to not be likable in any fashion. She lied to everyone but to her troublesome daughter. Weird.

The book was a bit slow and just didn't feel realistic even for a fictional novel. The main detective ignores that suggestion that the crime was not yet closed fully. What detective would ignore that? Also, at the end, he was hoping beyond hope that the main protagonist would share the same feelings. But it was like she either didn't get the memo or she was still living in full fear of him arresting her if he got too close. However, I think it was the fact that she left her dead boss for others to find; cheated on her husband; and lied to everyone that was starting to eat a little bit at her. As it should have.

Overall, this book sounded promising but left so much to be desired. It was weird that she wasn't in any kind of trouble. The ending made me furious. The story was dragging out slowly for me. 3.5-stars

Immediately liked the writing and plot. Once started, book was hard to put down. Kept me guessing until the end.

The Lying Room quite frankly felt like a hot mess. The protagonist is a hot mess - she's having an affair with one of her bosses and upon going to his flat for a tryst finds him dead, murdered. Not wanting to be exposed for adultery Neve does something far stupider - she cleans up the crime scene and tries to disavow herself of any personal connection with Saul. While we know Neve didn't do it, the reader is now stuck in her meltdown mind for the rest of the book where she alternates between a haze, being paranoid that she's going to be exposed for her affair and crime clean-up, and giving everyone around her a healthy dose of suspicion as the murderer. Her daughter Mabel is also a hot mess, although there's never really a backstory established on that. Her coworkers that were bought out with her into a larger company are all also messes. Her husband is a mess. And they're all constantly circulating in and out of Neve's home partying and drinking alcohol. It also feels like so much time is spent on building up Neve's paranoia and concern about Mabel that identifying the murderer that starting the whole ball rolling is a complete afterthought, thrown in as the rest of the story is written. One of the few upsides of the story is the Inspector Hicking, written well so that you never know how much he knows about Neve and everyone else. This one didn't do much for me.

Neve is a middle-aged, married mom of three who has found herself bored with the monotony of her life. When her new (also-married) boss shows a bit of interest, it quickly devolves into an affair that has brought some excitement back into Neve's days and nights...until one morning Neve shows up at his apartment and finds him murdered. In an effort to cover up her discretions from the investigation that she knows is coming, Neve cleans the apartment from top to bottom. As the investigation starts, Neve digs herself deeper and deeper into a hole, hoping that her lies don't bury her...

I have been wanting to read a book by Nicci French for a while - so I was excited when this showed up on NetGalley and I was given the opportunity to read it. While I read it quickly over the course of a few days, determined to find out how the case would wrap up, there were definitely aspects of the story that I found a little unbelievable. I also found many of the characters highly unlikable - which, while not always a deal-killer, kind of kept me at a distance from the story. I will still read more books by this author duo in the future - just not sure this one was my favorite.

So many lies! When married Neve finds her married lover dead in his city apartment, she cleans up the murder scene and tries to remove all traces of herself from the flat, as she does not want her affair to come to light. And of course that doesn’t go well. Lies beget lies beget more lies. It took a while to get invested in the story or the characters, but eventually I was engrossed in the story. I could feel the dread that Neve felt as the detective kept turning up, obviously suspecting that she is the murderer. The dinner party was almost farcical - great addition to the book!
Neve looks at her family members and close friends, wondering if one them might be the murderer, wondering how well she really knows them. And still there are more and more lies.
3.5 stars - would have been 4 but for the really slow start.

I didn't know what this book was about before reading it, sometimes it's funner that way and this book didn't disappoint. The lying room kept me wondering all the way throughout and they way it all tied in at the end was wonderful

Neve seems like a wholesome mother and wife but she has been keeping a secret from everyone. Her life is turned upside down the day she finds her lover murdered in his apartment. While Neve is the person everyone turns to for a shoulder to lean on, there is no one she can share this burden with and she is left to cover up her secrets on her own. Soon, she has trouble keeping up with her own web of lies. This book is captivating from the beginning and full of potential murder suspects. I would have liked to learn a little more about some of the characters, like Mabel. Why was she so dark and brooding and what had happened in her past? Overall, an entertaining read that keeps you guessing.

The Lying Room was an entertaining and light read. I was able to read it in a couple of days. It was somewhat predictable, but had some twists in the plot.

The Lying Room grabs your attention from the beginning and will not let go. Neve Connolly has been married twenty years with three children and she has been getting a little something on the side. An early morning text sends Neve stumbling upon the body of her lover with a bashed in skull. With a cold calculated concentration, Neve cleans up any evidence of her affair and proceeds to try and live her life. Neve is not particularly a sympathetic character especially the way she calmly steps over the blood of her lover to get rid of any evidence that might be found. She claims to be in love but her actions seem self preserving. The book keeps you reading to see who really committed murder and if Neve's affair will come to light. One thing is made clear quickly, Neve is a really good liar. The book will make you question how far some one would go to hide their secrets. My voluntary, unbiased review is based upon a review copy from Netgalley.

My thoughts

Would I recommended? No

Would I read more by this author? No

This is the first time I read anything by this author and after reading this I'm not sure if I want to read anything else by them. There was times I was so confused about what was going,and even when I went back to re read what I had already read i still didn't even understand it. And there was times I just wanted to DNF it but I kept hoping it would get better but it didn't , with that said I want to thank NetGalley for letting me read and at lest giving it a try

Neve seemed like such a well liked and well adapted person until her lover is murdered. There is some ominous person out there that wants her dead and there are so many people it could be. She has worked with the same group of people forever. She has friends from college that she still keeps in contact with. Some of the members of her family are the not who she thought they were. She does not know what anyone is capable of. I liked the writing in this book and liked that this book kept me guessing. I struggle a bit when people in books do things to cover up their mistakes instead of just owning up and making things right so there were parts of this book that just annoyed me to no end, but I have this experience often when reading. Thanks for the ARC, Net Galley.

I really enjoyed this book! It was fun to try to figure out who the murderer was, and I was very surprised at the ending! I will definitely look for more books by this author. I received a copy of this ebook from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.