5* review: After the Lie by Kerry Fisher

Available to preorder/buy from Amazon.co.uk

A perfect wife. A perfect life. A dangerous secret ... 

Lydia counts herself lucky. She’s married to a decent man, Mark, who she still loves and even though her teenagers test her patience she’s pretty proud of them. She knows she’s fortunate. She’s grateful. Especially when her mum, who, unlike Mark, knows what happened in her past, constantly reminds her how different things could have been … 

Because the truth is that Mark has no idea who he is really married to – Lydia has been living a lie for years. She did something terrible when she was young, that forced her family to start a new life elsewhere, and she can’t let Mark and the children find out about it. So when Sean, the person who knows all of Lydia’s dark little secrets, turns up at the school gates, his presence threatens to blow Lydia’s life apart. 

What is Lydia’s terrible truth? Once the secret is out, you can’t put it back … 

A powerful and heartbreaking story, perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty and Diane Chamberlain 

Lydia is a mother in her early forties, successful business woman and supportive wife. They live in Surrey in a nice house and the children go to an expensive private school, she has the perfect life?

She floats along like the swan and is paddling like fury underneath, especially when Sean moves to the area - the man that could blow apart her life by revealing something they did as teenagers that could have been reasonably innocuous but changed the course of Lydia's family's lives forever. And it is something that Lydia's husband and children know nothing about.

While reading this wonderful book I got so involved that when an integral part of the story came up I actually dropped a swear word when realising that Lydia's life was about the unravel and felt her panic as though it was inside me.

Fisher hooks you firmly into the character's lives with her perceptive wit and perfect descriptions of normal family life with teenagers. Experiencing the fears of the social media generation where a photograph can travel hundreds of miles around thousands of people in minutes and will be there forever and explores the minefield that is teenage relationships.

I loved her writing style back with The Island Escape last summer and it has only got better.

I adored and empathised with Lydia's character, loved her supportive husband Mark and wanted to batter her interfering, judgemental mother who I softened a little towards by the end of the book, and a huge mention to her wonderful father who would clearly do anything to protect his daughter.

This is a fantastic book to get your teeth into, I read this in two long sittings I was so gripped.

A huge...

The Island Escape - Kerry Fisher 5* Review

Buy here from Amazon.co.uk

(currently in the Amazon 3 paperbacks for £10 promotion as of 14/06/15)

Octavia Shelton thought she’d have a different life. One where she travelled the world with an exotic husband and free-spirited children in tow.

Instead she’s married to safe, reliable Jonathan, and her life now consists of packed lunches, school runs and mountains of dirty washing. She’s not unhappy. It’s just that she can barely recognise herself.

So as Octavia watches her best friend’s marriage break up, it gets her thinking. What if life could be different? What if she could escape and rediscover the person she used to be? Escape back to the island she visited years ago? And what if the man she used to love was there waiting for her?

Octavia and Roberta are best friends, they have the kind of friendship that when the affluent Roberta rings from a police station in the middle of a winter's night and says 'bring me a tshirt - mine has blood on', Octavia does not question it - just hopes she has not finally killed off Scott, her loathsome and unsuitable husband - gets in her car and goes to her rescue.

It is clearly apparent that as perfect as Roberta's life seems from the outside, behind closed doors things are far from it. She is dissatisfied, unappreciated and emotionally bullied. She decides that enough is enough and leaves, taking teenage daughter Alicia with her. Her first port of call is Octavia who seems to have a strong and happy marriage, but Roberta's situation leaves her wondering if she is really as contented as she thought. Especially as people point out that she is just not the outgoing, unburdened free spirit she used to be, and it doesn't take long for thoughts of her first love to bubble up from the depths where she has buried them.

I absolutely loved my few days where I luxuriated in the pages of The Island Escape. It is beautifully written in alternating chapters from Octavia and Roberta, with empathy, humour and the most vivid description of the beautiful islands of Sardinia and Corsica.

Fisher delved into the early middle aged women's relationships and stripped them to their bare bones, letting the reader right into their souls. They are very different characters but the very closest of friends and would do anything for one another, and do. We also see how 'what if' moments can change our lives.

The ending of the book is perfect and things are resolved exactly as I would have liked, both characters going through huge developments and really finding who they are and what they are capable of.

I loved the book so much I went straight to Amazon and bough Fisher's debut The School Gate Survival Guide 

A definite 5* from me 

Review copy kindly provided by the publishers via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.