Thank you to Netgalley and Graydon House for a gifted copy. I really liked this book! It was super easy to read, it grabbed me right away, and the main character was relatable.

An Honest Lie centers around Rainy, a thirty-something artist transplant from New York to Washington state. She is trying to integrate into a friend group at the urging of her boyfriend, but she has anxiety issues and secrets from her past that she wants to keep to herself. She is convinced to go on a Vegas trip with the girls and things get weird. In an effort to distance herself from the catty girl group, she heads out to confront her past, taking readers on a thrilling journey that will keep you page-turning.

This was an eerie mystery with thrilling aspects in the latter third of the book. There were hateful characters and ones you couldn't trust. I think the story wrapped up rather quickly at the end and it left some details to the imagination. This didn't bother me, as they weren't central to the plot. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend.

**Look up trigger warnings beforehand.

Every since I read Tarryn Fisher’s The Wives, I have expected each of her books to have some sort of major twist that completely changes my perspective. While that did not happen with her novel The Wrong Family, nor did it occur with her latest book An Honest Lie, this story still has enough cringy drama and explosive moments to keep you turning the pages well into the night.

Perhaps the greatest twist associated with An Honest Lie is that it ended up being nothing like what I expected based upon its synopsis. This novel quickly reveals itself to have two storylines - one set in the present and one set in the past - the latter involving a downright creepy cult. The parts of the book that take place in the present - those mentioned in the book’s summary of a girls’ trip to Vegas - actually take up very little space in this novel that mostly reflects on a commune isolated in the Nevada desert outside Las Vegas where a mother relocates with her teenage daughter and finds she has enrolled them in a cult. How this cult ties into main character Rainy’s present day storyline is the focus of this dark and gritty novel about how the past we thought we left behind can truly come back to haunt us.

If you’ve read a Tarryn Fisher novel before, you know that her books shine a spotlight on the shadowy corners of life, taking seemingly ordinary people and exposing their deepest secrets and shameful stories. An Honest Lie combines two topics that have been receiving a bit of attention in publishing lately - girls’ trips & cults - and creates a story that is nothing if not entertaining. While some parts of the novel did move rather slowly and the past and present didn’t align in a way that was entirely satisfying, I still enjoyed the time I spent reading this book and can wholeheartedly recommend it to fans of the genre or author.

Sigh. Im feeling like new Tarryn Fisher books are not for me. The plot was just.... awful and disjointed. It didn't sit right at all. It felt like a lot of actions were not true to the characters.

What Tarryn does nail is the actual writing! She has a beautiful way with words and describing thoughts and emotions.

I feel like Fisher's best works were her character driven stories of the past (like The Opportunist, etc.) I'm personally not digging the newer plot driven ones.

"Everything is going to be okay now-echoed uncomfortably in her memory. The most honest lie she'd ever been told. Nothing had ever been okay again."

What You'll Find:
✔️Psychological Thriller
✔️Cults
✔️Dual Timelines
✔️Single POV

Rainy gave up her life in NYC to move to Washington State with her boyfriend. He wants her to make friends with his friends. But she's not the biggest fan of them. So when they invite her to Vegas, she goes for him. Even though she has a secret past in Nevada she's tried to keep hidden.

I thought this one started a bit slow, and when I wasn't sure I'd continue, I was suddenly locked in and wondering at the hint of secrets you could feel. I liked the dual timelines. I was really intrigued in the cult atmosphere of Rainy's past life. And I eagerly wondered how it would collide with the present. I was surprised by some twists. But overall I didn't love the main event in the end. It kind of lost my attention again. Overall not my fave. I would recommend The Wives if your looking for a great thriller from this author!

*I received an ARC from Grayson House via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own and given freely.

I was lucky to be one of the first to be able to read An Honest Lie. What a wild ride. Set in two timelines it does take a bit to put pieces fully together. It seemed to progress very quickly near the end and I found that I couldn’t put the book down as I wanted to know how everything would come together. All in all, It was an enjoyable read.

I’ll be the first person to tell you that I don’t spend a lot of time reading thriller books. There is just a certain level of “Oh hellll no” that runs through my blood which makes it hard for me to settle into the story and enjoy it. However, I’ve already read a couple of Tarryn Fisher’s books and you never really know where the story is going. It's always like watching an accident happen. You just can’t look away even though everything in you is saying “there ain’t no way…”​

Plot: Rainy is an artist who moved from NYC to Washington for love. Grant has this established group of friends that he pushes her to try to get closer to. Rainy reluctantly agrees to their gatherings until a girls' trip to Vegas comes up. She refuses but later finds out that Grant already purchased her ticket. 

The story is told in a now-and-then format. We learn through flashbacks about Rainy’s past and the dangerous secrets that lie there. When her past catches up to her in Vegas, Rainy has to get creative to save herself and another. ​

In the first few pages, you get settled into the story. The characters are introduced and I spent a fair amount of time lamenting the fact that I was reading middle age women's issues and dreading it. Nothing like a reality check in a fictional book. Then it picks up, and it was like a marathon race to unravel all the pieces of Rainy’s past and why they matter 20 years later.

I think that this story could have been shorter. The chapters from the past are where all the drama is in the first half of the book and then in the end everything catches up to Rainy and it gets overly chaotic in the end. ​

Characters​: I couldn’t relate with any of the characters honestly but I do understand how a mother’s decisions in a critical moment can affect the daughter’s life. From both sides. So that is what I am choosing to take from this book. As a mother, I have had to make some hard decisions in these last couple of years and I often wonder and worry about how my decisions will affect my children right now and as adults. As a daughter, I have been confronted with the consequences of decisions my mother made when I was a child. I always tell my kids that there are consequences to every decision they make. I feel that it is my job to make sure that they learn to stop and think things through so that they can be prepared for anything. Including the things we didn’t think could happen or never dreamed would happen. Someone should have had this conversation with Rainy’s mother because I spent some time very upset with her while reading this one.

Oh and Grant’s friends, overall as a group, suck. I would not want to be friends with any of them.

I am at a loss for words. I so don't even know where to begin with this review. This book definitely left me reeling. It was suspenseful and intriguing. It was so different from anything I have read recently and I absolutely loved it. I loved seeing the way the story ties together and the journey these characters take. It left me wanting more. I completely love Tarryn's writing no matter the genre and this story was no different. I can't wait to see what she has in store for us next. I know it will be unexpected.

“I will recharge, I will resurface, I will rebound.”

So after weeks of having this book stare at me from my desk, judging me for leaving it unfinished.. I finally picked this book up again & finished it in one sitting. Now, it probably wasn’t a good idea to read this great of a thriller in the midst of an anxious week but it did such a great job of distracting me for the entire day.

I’ve read many a book by Tarryn Fisher but this one? It had so many twists and turns that I was on the edge of my seat biting my nails for the entirety of it. Now I’ve never been to Vegas personally but just the idea of going there gives me all the panic attacks so I was right there with Rainy the female lead at not wanting to go. Granted.. I didn’t have as traumatic of a childhood as Rainy did but, I was getting all the anxiety for her. In An Honest Lie we meet Rainy in present time, a successful artist living in Washington with her boyfriend and elderly dog and with a group of friends that she’d acquired when getting into a relationship with Grant. In the past, we meet Summer, a young girl growing up in a place that no child should ever grow up in. As the storylines start to mesh, we grow to understand more and more & as the events lead up to a dangerous situation, Rainy must confront her past if she has any hope of saving her future.

Went into this book with low expectations, but ended up thoroughly enjoying it! The book jumps back and forth between 2 different times but felt like the author did a good job of separating the two so it wasn't confusing. I really enjoyed the overall plot twist and build up.

An interesting psychological thriller that focuses on the main characters troubled past with a cult in the desert.

This book kept me interested until the last couple chapters. I really liked the back and forth from the present to the past, even though the 2 stories didn't really come together in a satisfying way. The past and present stories I really enjoyed. The last 2 chapters were why I only 3 starred this book. The ending wasn't really surprising, but I won't give any spoilers.

I really enjoyed this twisty thriller and the cult aspect had me fascinated. I love when books incorporate past and present to tell the story and the eventual conclusion that arrives after a shocking timeline collision. The narrator Lauren Fortgang did an amazing job and really added another element to the experience.

This is the story of Rainy She is living in a close knit but small rural community Shes is a woman who never talks about her past Ever. She grew up or spent her preteen years in a clut that her mother got them involved in and didn’t know how to get them out. Back then she had a totally different name and it was Summer Hiwvernon a girls weekend in Vegas one of the girls is abducted When Rainy is contacted the person seems to know a lot about her secret past and claims to have the girl this book will keep you super engrossed in it I love how we got to see Rainy/Summers past I thought it was very interesting to see the past time in the cult and I really couldn’t put this book down

I've enjoyed a few of the other Tarryn Fisher books that I have read but this one was not a fit for me. It seems that cults are a hot topic in fiction these days but I definitely know I'm not the reader for these titles. That being said, others, especially Fisher's devoted fans, will likely enjoy this one immensely.

The writing was clear and concise, however, the back and forth between past and presence and matching up old names to new names left me questioning who I was reading about and what storylines I was trying to follow. This book was sinister, dark, mysterious, and had some good twists that, like I previously mentioned will keep Fisher fans entertained.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book was unfortunately no something I should have read. I was very excited to read this for my YouTube channel but I was left feeling frustrated.

One thing I've learned while reading this book is that I don't really care for cults in my fiction. I don't know what it is but I don't care for it.

This book had many twists and turns. I would recommend this book and enjoy reading books by this author.

Tarryn Fisher has some of the best writing you can find in modern day. I have thoroughly enjoyed all of her published work to date. An Honest Lie was no different. While it did take a bit to pick up, it did have me captivated from the first chapter.

We get back and forth then and now chapters, narrated by our main character Rainy/Summer. We get the “then” chapters as flashbacks to her youth. The trauma she grew up enveloped in and how she escaped it. In our “now” chapters, we follow her during a weekend in Vegas gone wrong when one of her friends ends up taken and the events that unfold around it.

The book is packed with suspense as it unfolds in both periods in time, and I was on the edge of my seat the entire book. From cover to cover, as we meet both versions of Rainy/Summer, I was dying to know where the story was going and how it all ends. It was a great suspense, but just a bit slower paced.

I cannot wait for what Tarryn will come up with next!

I love Tarryn Fisher’s books because they are never clean and cookie cut. There is always some sort of darkness and grit, but they never go overboard. It’s always just enough. An Honest Lie falls in the psychological/mystery/thriller category where we follow Rainy, an artist and a New York transplant who relocated to Tiger Mountain with her boyfriend, Grant, and who struggles to fit into this new world.

Rainy has surrounded herself with women, some of whom she doesn’t necessarily care for, and who don’t necessarily care for her. When Grant convinces her to attend a girls’ weekend she focuses on a wild weekend and not the fact that she’s going back to a place she’s spent her adult life trying to forget. When Rainey awakens to a text saying her friend Braithe is missing and the kidnapper reaches out to her, she knows it’s time to face her past.

This story is told in present day and flashbacks. In the flashbacks we discover that Rainy’s mom, in search for a better life for them, reunites with an old friend, Taured. Taured has built his own community. A community which turns out to be a cult. We also learn that Rainy’s birth name was Summer. The flashbacks chronical the years Rainy and her mother spent with the cult, their plans of escape and the death/murder of her mother. Rainy’s escape was an act of betrayal to Taured, and unbeknownst to Rainy he has kept tabs on her over the years (even after her name changed).
Present day follows Rainy as she and the girls spend time in Vegas and leads up to Braithe’s kidnapping and the confrontation of Rainy and Taured, and the discovery of roles as to who she considered friend and foe.

I’m not a fan of flashbacks but these didn’t bother me much. I had trouble keeping track of the present-day storyline. Too many women to keep track of and I found myself going back to previous pages to remind myself who certain characters were. There were some scenes with all the ladies on Tiger Mountain that seemed to drag a little too long, and there were other parts such as when Rainy met her grandparents that seemed to get glossed over. When I finished, I went back to certain sections of the book for clarifications. Not that this makes a difference, but I had a hard time connecting the storyline to the title. There were plenty of examples of “omission of truth, so I guess that was the link. Anywho, this wasn’t my favorite Tarryn Fisher book, but it was a good read. You might want to tuck this one away for the summer as a beach read.

A phrase Taured repeated throughout the flashbacks, “The sins of the parents will be visited upon their children”.

It’s a phrase Rainy will never forgot, and creepily enough it’s one I can’t seem to shake myself.

I overall really enjoyed this book and thought all of the stories were very interesting on their own. Rainey was an interesting character but I felt that the backstory and the current story were a bit disjointed and there were a few parts where while they may have added to some minor drama, did not seem necessary to the plot. The thriller portion didn’t really happen until later into the book and then it felt kind of rushed. I was definitely hooked and it was a fun read still!

It was a bit busy in the beginning with too many character introductions. Had to skim read parts of the story, but ended up enjoying the general concept