The Darkest Lies by Barbara Copperthwaite #BlogTour @BCopperthwait @bookouture

Book Description:

A mother desperate for the truth. A daughter hiding a terrible secret.
Melanie Oak appeared to have the perfect life. Married to her childhood sweetheart, Jacob, the couple live with their beautiful, loving, teenage daughter, Beth, in a pretty village.

Nothing can shake her happiness – until the day that Beth goes missing and is discovered beaten almost to the point of death, her broken body lying in a freezing creek on the marshes near their home.

Consumed with grief, Melanie is determined to find her daughter’s attacker. Someone in the village must have seen something. Why won’t they talk?

As Melanie tries to piece together what happened to Beth, she discovers that her innocent teenager has been harbouring some dark secrets of her own. The truth may lie closer to home and put Melanie’s life in terrible danger…

A completely gripping psychological thriller with a twist you won’t see coming.

My Thoughts:

The storyline is without a doubt one that is a parents worst nightmare. Realising your child has gone missing but then even when found, the nightmare only really starts to begin.

My heart literally poured out with grief for Melanie and her husband Jacob. Their only daughter clinging onto existence with very little hope of pulling through. Having to go to the hospital day after day and not see any signs of improvement, my heart literally broke for them. One particular part of the story had me in floods of tears and I had to have a bit of a breather whilst I composed myself. It really did make for some very emotional reading in parts.

I have to admit I am not a lover of stories told in the first person but I think the fact that Melanie was speaking in her head more to her daughter than the reader, which I think was her way of keeping Beth alive and being there with her, was something as a human being I could relate to.

The story does flick about quite a bit between Melanie, her daughter Beth and a character that we don’t get to find out until later on in the story. I have to admit to guessing correctly quite early on who the character behind those chapters was. As the book description suggests though, there was a twist that I certainly did not see which totally rocked me so it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the book whatsoever.

As the title of the story suggests, this is one novel that is riddled with lies and deceit. It is one that will have you turning page after page whilst discovering untruth after untruth. It had me feeling so many emotions of shock, anger, frustration, love, it really took me on an emotional roller coaster of a ride. A ride that will leave lasting memories, which for me is a sign of a good book indeed.

My thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for an advanced readers copy of this book. All opinions are my own and not biased in anyway.

Goodreads rating 4/5 stars.

The Darkest Lies is available to purchase from Amazon.