Every Lie I Told by Hilary Davidson

 Twisty thriller that didn’t pay off.

Public relations fixer Jackie Swift lies for a living, cleaning up scandals for wealthy clients, rehabilitating reputations, and also constantly rescuing her younger sister, Madi, from drug issues. Her personal and professional lives collide when Madi texts and frantically begs Jackie to bring her some naloxone. Madi purportedly is at the mansion of Jackie’s former boss and mentor, Erick Mortenson. When Jackie arrives at the residence, her boss is dead and Madi is missing. Now Jackie must use all of her devious skills to manipulate the police investigation and manufacture suspects while searching for her sister. 

Full of completely hideous characters throughout, I struggled through the convoluted narrative with so many of them lying and scheming. High body count, lack of depth in characters other than they all seemed nasty and self-serving, and the plot that I really still don’t get — what was the point of this whole story? All I know is that they wrap up and the inter-relationships between the characters was a twisty mess. I didn’t like any of them; the result of Jackie’s actions and her sister’s outright behavior, didn’t net them the consequences they really deserved. If you like reading about liars, manipulators, and schemers, you’ll enjoy this. It was fast paced. I kept waiting to see if I had predicted something about a particular character and I was right. I’m giving this 2.5 stars but now I’m even rethinking that rating. I really didn’t like this very much. 

I listened to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC, both provided by the publishers. The narrator, Brittany Pressley. I’ve listened to a lot of books she’s read and she does OK with the female voices though they all sound mostly the same. This would have definitely benefited with a larger cast since there were so many characters, and definitely this should have had a male voice. Usually the audio book makes me enjoy a book more, but this wasn’t enough to redeem this one.

This is a standalone and is not part of any series.

Murder, lies, schemers, public relations, sexual predators, rape, sexual assault, drug use