I’m delighted to be back on the Isabel Ashdown blogathon today! My review of Beautiful Liars is written with thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me on the blogathon.

Blurb:

Eighteen years ago Martha said goodbye to best friend Juliet on a moonlit London towpath.
The next morning Juliet’s bike was found abandoned at the waterside.
She was never seen again.

Nearly two decades later Martha is a TV celebrity, preparing to host a new crime show… and the first case will be that of missing student Juliet Sherman. After all these years Martha must reach out to old friends and try to piece together the final moments of Juliet’s life.

But what happens when your perfect friends turn out to be perfect strangers…?

If you like Clare Mackintosh, Fiona Barton, Teresa Driscoll, Jenny Blackhurst, Rachel Abbott, Laura Marshall, Joy Ellis, Cara Hunter, Mel Sherratt, Angela Marsons or Lisa Jewell then you will be utterly gripped by this psychological drama about toxic friendships and bitter betrayal.

Review:

This review will be my last original review for the Isabel Ashdown blogathon and I definitely feel like I’ve saved the best until last! Beautiful Liars has everything: unreliable narrators, secrets, lies and intriguing characters and I loved peeling back so many layers.

Isabel Ashdown is brilliant at creating characters with a lot of depth, and her technique of employing multiple narrators gives us the chance to see all the different sides to them. Neither Casey nor Martha come across as particularly likeable, but they both have issues from their past which influence their current behaviour and I absolutely loved the way that Isabel Ashdown explores this.

I’m finding it really difficult to write this review without giving away spoilers, but I must say that Isabel Ashdown’s plotting is completely next level. She places so many clues and red herrings throughout the novel, and some of the twists (which don’t just come at the end, there are huge reveals through the whole story) had me totally floored. I was just as keen to find out what had happened as Martha was, and I found the story so engaging. I was lost in the world of these characters and I didn’t want to leave them behind.

Isabel Ashdown is definitely an author I will be following more closely from now on!

Beautiful Liars is available from Amazon.