Book #78 |
Book: The Lies You Wrote | Author: Brianna Labuskes | |
| Source: Free First Reads download Format: Kindle |
Pages: 350 | Duration: 08/26/25 – 08/27/25 (2 days) | |
| Rating: ★★★☆☆ | Genres: fiction, mystery, psychological thriller, suspense, crime | ||
| 📕10-word summary: Two murders — one a copycat — 25 years apart convolutedly converge. 🖌6-word review: Multiple, “duplicate” characters hard to follow. |
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| 💭A favorite quote: “If someone can’t fix something about themselves in five minutes, you shouldn’t mention the thing [to them].” | |||
| 🎓Some new-to-me words: plink, unsub, idiolect, antanaclasis, tendre, skeeze, apex predator | |||
| Description:* The double murder of a married couple draws FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto into an investigation that mirrors a decades-old crime. 25 years ago — to the day — Alex Parker murdered his parents, then took his own life, leaving behind a note admitting everything. Raisa, paired with forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, uses her skills to read between the lines. Especially now that paranoid postings on a conspiracy thread suggest that Alex was a victim himself — theories that have piqued the interest of a perceptive content moderator and a true-crime podcaster eager for a big break. Something more sinister than a copycat crime is at play, and plundering the darkest corners of a killer’s mind leaves Raisa vulnerable to a deadly twist even she never saw coming.*From goodreads.com’s synopsis. | |||
| Thoughts: I’d never heard of a forensic linguist before, and I loved everything about that aspect of this story. But I struggled with the setting at times, having a hard time keeping straight when we were talking about the murder that happened 25 years ago or the current-day “copycat” murder, especially while characters associated with each were still being introduced. I also struggled with a couple of the characters toward the end, and I supposed this is somewhat of a spoiler alert, it got very confusing once two of the characters were revealed to really be other characters, but from the point we find that out, one of them begins being referred to as their “real” character name while the other one continues to be referred to by their “fake” character name. (Why???) That aside, I will say that the final, final twist was pretty brilliant. I’d be hard-pressed to recommend this book, at least not without several caveats. | |||
See the rest of the books I’ve read in 2025 and previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019.
