The Good Liar by Catherine McKenzie

The Good Liar by Catherine McKenzie – 373 pages

Book Blurb:

When an explosion rips apart a Chicago building, the lives of three women are forever altered. A year later, Cecily is in mourning. She was supposed to be in the building that day. Instead, she stood on the street and witnessed it going down, with her husband and best friend inside. Kate, now living thousands of miles away, fled the disaster and is hoping that her past won’t catch up with her. And Franny, a young woman in search of her birth mother, watched the horror unfold on the morning news, knowing that the woman she was so desperate to reconnect with was in the building. Now, despite the marks left by the tragedy, they all seem safe. But as its anniversary dominates the media, the memories of that terrifying morning become dangerous triggers. All these women are guarding important secrets. Just how far will they go to keep them?

My Review: 4 stars

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The Good Liar is a suspenseful novel that pits three women all squirreling away their own secrets in the midst of the public eye. The setting made my day, as all the action takes place in Chicago. I think the author did a dang good job bringing the awesomeness of the city to the readers. Too bad she made a building blow up though! This is my first novel by Catherine McKenzie. I’ve have all her books on my TBR and felt horrible that I hadn’t read any when I met her this May at BEA. I made sure to get to this one by the end of summer.

I must say that many of the thrillers I read these days all seem to blend together, some way, somehow; so I’ve been very selective in how many and which ones I’ll read. In this one, I only guessed a few of the many twists that are tied up in the book. For that I am grateful.

One thing I really enjoyed was how one of the women became noticed and forced into the public eye from the start. She was photographed at random during a tragedy, although she signed an okay to publish the photo. This resonated with me because in so many pictures I take, my family takes and that I see floating around social media, people are always in the background. For some reason I always wonder who else’s story is captured unbeknownst to them. Are they with a lover, shouldn’t be where they say they are; you get my drift. If you’re looking for a quick read with both unreliable and reliable narrators, this is for you.

Quotes I liked:

One person can’t fulfill every role in someone’s life.”

-“Depression’s a funny thing. We don’t know what to do about it—as a society—unless we’ve been there ourselves. The person before us is not someone we know, and their unhappiness is often not something we can understand. So we downplay it, and we make the afflicted somehow to blame. No one would ever tell someone with cancer that if they tried a bit harder, if they got out of bed and took a shower, everything would be better, but people told her all those things. That and more, worse.”

-“No one had told her, before she had children, that being a mother would be like reliving her own childhood, only worse. That she’d have to re-feel all the slights and worries a hundredfold.”