I have never read a book that represented me SO INCREDIBLY well.. I'm not even joking, I have actual tears in my eyes from all the emotion i feel, about being properly represented DOWN TO THE T.

Here is a book about a Pakistani Muslim woman, who is in an interracial marriage, struggling with money, culture, identity.

Her surname is Saunders. Her husband is white. She has 3 children, 2 with modern names for our culture and one VERY common Muslim name. She struggles with money.

I AM A SAUNDERS!! my husband is white.  I have 2 children, whom i both named with very "fusion" names because my husband's family didnt understand or couldn't pronounce the names I had wanted. I am also very bad with money.  This book is about me. I am Faiza. 😂😂😂😂😂😂

I honestly have never related so much to a book before. There are a few things that don't match up,  like Faiza has an occasional glass of wine, so I can't say that it's a positive Muslim representation.... but then again, there are Muslims who drink alcohol, so its actually very realistic and honest.

The writing is IMMENSELY good. Very powerful and i found myself completely drawn into it. I read it over a few hours, SUPER ANXIOUS just needing to know what happened next.

Every single character was written well. I had NO IDEA what was going to happen, i mean the odds were NOT in Faiza's favour at all. I also really loved how the story changed halfway through, showing working mums and all the struggles.

There's a lot to unpack here. Racism, people making comments that they don't think hurt, but it does, mixed race children, different cultures, working mothers, BUT ITS SO GOOD and i highly recommend

There's much to recommend in this debut - it touches on multiple contemporary topics, from race to affluenza to (not-so-) everyday sexism. Might have benefitted from trusting itself and the reader more rather than underlining each and every point several times, but it's a fast-paced, enjoyable read and Ali-Afzal writes with an eye for detail and a deft comic touch so that will come in future novels, no doubt. 3.5 stars.

Faiza’s husband loses his job in the city, and with a mortgage, school fees and bills to pay at least they have their emergency fund.... or they used to before Faiza secretly spent it trying to keep up with the other stay at home yummy mummy lifestyles. Faiza is determined to fix it before her husband finds out..
An enjoyable feel good read.

I feel blessed after reading this book. I stayed up late to finish it and it was so worth it. The writing is fast paced, so you'll never want to stop. Even when I had to stop reading, my mind was always going back to the book. I love the characters. The plot twists were well placed and properly resolved, the dialogue is so vivid, you can almost hear them.
This novel has the right amount of tension to entertain. I can't wait to recommend this novel to everyone and their mommies.

unexpectedly sweet, romantic, eye opening and all this with everyday racism woven beautifully in. One of those unputtdownable books that you're willing to read late into the night!
After spending the (large) emergency savings, her husband losing his job and all the usual scary bills piling in, Fi spends the six weeks before the end of her husbands redundancy pay out desperately working to find the money. Only no-one can do that in six weeks and we live her despair as deadline day gets closer and all her precious family and friend relationships start to unravel. Five stars from me.

A great debut novel from Aliya Ali-Afzal which contains humour to lighten very serious subject matters making a super read.
Faiza and Tom have three children, live in a lovely house in Wimbledon Village, Tom works in finance in the City enabling Faiza to be a full time mother. From the outside they appear to have a perfect family life. But Faiza has a secret; to maintain their lifestyle she has secretly been spending their savings, all £75,000 of them! When Tom suddenly loses his job, it becomes an urgent problem that Faiza must solve. How will Faiza find a solution to their financial problem without losing her marriage?
This book shows how small matters can spiral seemingly out of control and the lengths people will go to to avoid disclosing problems and 'saving face'. It also highlights the importance of talking about problems of all types.
Super multi layered and multi issue book. Great debut and I look forward to reading the next by Aliya.
Thanks to NetGalley for a Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A comical yet fascinating book that shows how a persons life can just crumble.

We are all after the latest gadget or keeping up with the Jones. I myself have hidden bags of shopping in the wardrobe. How awful a position when she needs the money for more important things.

With everything around her disintegrating how will she pick up the pieces

The writing is just beautiful and full of insight and astute observations of the life that surrounds her. At times it is laugh out loud but there are other moments where I was full of sadness.

This is a brilliant debut and a really important book.

At least there were some advantages to being an identikit Wimbledon Village mother: women who occupied themselves with benign activities, like after-school ballet, cheering at rugby matches, Friday night dinner parties and mid-morning coffee dates, although of course, this was never the whole story. I knew people saw me like that too. That was my ‘subcategory’ anyway. The initial classification was, of course, always, brown, Muslim, and of Pakistani origin.

“Would I lie to you?” by Aliya Ali-Afzal is not my normal literary fare, but read for its resonance, being set among the investment bankers, and ex-Nomura-bankers, with children at private schools, in Wimbledon Village.

Multiple ticks for me - but fortunately not to the opening chapter: it opens with a male banker, unnamed, contemplating suicide from the terrace of a restaurant, called Cinq in the novel but obviously based on Coq d'Argent.

We then switch back several months to Faiza, whose husband Tom, has just been made redundant from his bank. At first Tom assumes he will find another role quickly - There was a long list of jobs on the screen. ‘I’ve applied for a couple already. I’m going to call up John and Tig and the old gang. I got David his role at Nomura, I’m sure he’ll help.’

But there is generally a hiring freeze and Tom realises they will have to fall back on their savings for a period. Fortunately, they have an emergency fund, but unfortunately Faiza has secretly spent it, trying to keep up appearance and fit in with the in-crowd although Tom’s role wasn’t so senior that he was receiving the large bonuses of some of Faiza’s social set’s husbands.

I stood in the middle of the room, not sure what to do. I looked around. The emergency fund was everywhere. Above the sofa hung an enormous seascape oil painting which I’d bought from one of the art galleries in the Village … and the Murano glass lights, which I’d said, were from Homebase, but had been bought on the New King’s Road–all these things taunted me.

In a way, it had also been Tom’s fault–to start with, anyway. He had a habit of checking every item on our monthly credit card bill before he paid it off. He’d go down the list, reading every single payment out loud, whether it was a TFL charge for the tube, or a particularly large grocery bill if we were entertaining. When he came across something he didn’t recognise, he’d ask me about it. I knew that he was just ‘being a banker’, and looking out for fraudulent transactions, but I hated it.

As time progresses, Faiza builds up an increasingly elaborate series of transactions to keep their finances afloat and pay the next term’s fees, and a parallel series of lies to hide what she is doing from Tom, whose unsuccessful job search is driving him into depression.

Faiza herself is an ex-UBS private banker from before she has children, and eventually finds a way back into employment herself, but she has hidden from her boss that she knows his wife (another Village mum whose snooty attitude to Faiza is, at best, unconscious bias and, at worst, racism) and she starts to become closer to him than to her own husband, leading to yet another tangled web.

All this is told against the story of her own family and their own struggles (we learn one reason her youngest son attends private school is racial bullying at his previous state primary) and those of her non school-run friends, and which leads to more storylines and indeed more candidates for the banker in chapter one.

Overall, this was a page-turner of a read, although at times a little over melodramatic (Faiza’s initial monetary schemes reach almost farcical proportions, and the endgame of her relationship with her boss crosses from flirtation into illegality), and (to slightly contradict myself) the story sags a little in the middle while Faiza is re-establishing her private wealth manager career. Plus, as mentioned, not my usual literary fare (which tends to be experimental translated novels) so I'm not that well placed to comment on how it compares to other novels of its type.

3 stars for personal taste, but 4 for what it is trying to achieve.

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC

What a brilliant debut!

The opening chapter sees Faizia at a swanky botox party full of wealthy white Londoners. Initially, I didn't know if this would be the book for me as I cannot imagine a life in which a botox party, or buying designer clothes on credit cards, is anywhere near normal. But the author did such a fantastic job of making us empathise with Faizia and understand why those things were so important to her that I totally fell in love.

At times, Would I Lie To You? has hints of Confessions of a Shopaholic with its dry witty humour. But alongside the humour, this book has so much depth and covers issues of racism, sexual assault, and mental health.

While you'll probably find yourself screaming at Faizia and her choices, you'll also cheer her on every step of the way and wish terrible things upon Julia,

Overall, this is a fantastic debut that tackles complex issues head on while remaining funny, charming, and hopeful at its core.

Would I Lie To You is the story of Faiza and how she navigates life as a wife, mother, daughter and member of the yummy-mummy set in South West London. Faiza is a Pakistani-British woman who seems to have the perfect life with her banker husband Tom, her daughter and two sons. She is part of a group of women who are all wealthy and in order to fit in with this group, Faiza finds herself in a downward spiral of pushing past all her reservations and indulging in things she wouldn't do otherwise. Before she knows it, she's spent all the money she and her husband had saved and when Tom is made redundant, she has no way of replacing the money before he might find out.

I enjoyed this book and found it to be a compelling read, needing to know what would happen next and how would things work out for Faiza in the end. There were many issues that cropped up in the book and at times I thought that perhaps there were a few too many different things being brought to the readers attention. There were moments where it felt like anything that could go wrong for Faiza was going wrong and ultimately, it could all have been dealt with a lot earlier in the book had she just communicated and been honest. But, I think the fact that she didn't and things progressed the way they did was more reflective of how a flawed character might handle things.

This book was well written and I found the characters to be well crafted too. The insight into the different cultural settings was good to read although there were some words and phrases which weren't explained for those unfamiliar with them.

Sadly this wasn't for me. Didn't expect the money issues to go through the whole book and anticipated the book to pick up more pace but it felt a bit stilted and slow for me.
Felt a bit extreme and far fetched and could have focussed more on mental health, problem solving and suicide. Appreciated that a different culture was represented and discrimination is rarely in books so thought that highlighted something missing in many books.

WOULD I LIE TO YOU is an unflinching look at how easily our lives can unravel, and a stunning story about one woman's struggle to keep her family afloat in the darkest hour. It is so tense it had me stress-eating, with twists that made me gasp out loud several times. It brilliantly captures Faiza's fierce love for her family in the face of mounting debt, racist "friends", and misogyny in the workplace. A breathtaking, tense ride and one of 2021's highlights!

I received a digital ARC from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I found it difficult to like the lead character of this book. It is an interesting premise but I found myself getting annoyed with her choices. Also the end was a little quick and neat for my liking.

I loved this novel describing how a woman who once had everything becomes the sole bread winner and makes herself and her family stronger for it. A very engaging read!

Genre: Womens Fiction / Romance

Release Date: 8th July 2021



Trigger Warnings: Racism, Alcohol, Sexual Assuault, References to suicide and self-injury.



Faiza has it all - her life is something pulled straight from the pages of a glossy magazine.

She has Tom, her handsome banker husband, three loving children, a busy social life among the elite mums of London and the envy-inducing home. She has curated the perfect life, the one she so desperately desired before.

But it's not all that it seems on the surface. Somewhere behind her perfectly polished exterior, she is struggling to keep her life together, draining her families emergency savings to maintain the life she wants to live until they dried up completely. And she was going to put it back one day ... but when Tom loses his job it's only a matter of time before before the little money they have left runs out and her secret comes out. She could lose everything and everyone she loves unless she can figure out a way to put everything back - quickly.

I was gripped by Faizas world right away, watching as the first ripples on the surface of her world started to appear. I was right there with her, desperately terrified and waiting for something awful to happen.

Delving into the reality of the lives we pretend to have and how far we go to be something we're not, and exploring the struggles of how mixed race families are treated along with societal and traditional pressures - this was not only insightful and poignant but addictively dark.

As Faiza tries borrowing, earning, anything to fix her mistakes - she finds herself in increasingly difficult and disturbing situations as lives and lies get tangled together.

This story was a stunning debut that was undeniably binge-readable and hauntingly real. Aliya Ali-Afzal has definitely put herself firmly on my literary map.



RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐



Thank you to Aliya Ali-Afzal, NetGalley & Head Of Zeus Publishing for an Advance Readers Copy in return for an honest review.