Carole´s Monday: The girl who lied

 

Author: Shannon Hollinger

Narrator: Amelia Sciandra

Title: The Girl Who Lied

Series: Chief Maggie Riley #1

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Fiction

Format: Audiobook

Published: August 2, 2023

Where I got It: My shelf (Audible)

Summary: 

Rain hammers the earth and a vicious wind rattles the trees. Then lightning strikes, the flash illuminating a young girl staggering out of the woods, her brown eyes wide with fright, a silent scream on her lips…

There’s a storm approaching the tiny Maine town of Coyote Cove when Chief Maggie Riley comes across the body of a man, blood seeping from stab wounds into the damp forest floor. As she desperately struggles to secure the evidence before the rain hits, Heather , a local teenage girl, emerges from the woods, shivering and unable to talk.

Maggie, once a high flying big-city detective, lost everything when her four-year-old brother went missing five years ago. Heart-broken, she’s never stopped searching for but now she is plunged back into the world she left behind.

The victim, Maggie discovers, knew secrets about everyone in isolated Coyote Cove. It seems there are more local suspects in this case than people she can rule out. And with Heather still traumatised, Maggie struggles to unravel her strange appearance at the crime scene. Until, following a faint, bloody trail deep into the forest, she’s horrified to unearth what the terrified girl’s been hiding…

But when Heather is kidnapped, the battle to identify the killer becomes a race to save an innocent girl’s life. And with the whole town terrified, Maggie is shocked to uncover that this twisted killer is much closer to home than she’d ever imagined. Battling her own demons and memories of her missing brother, how far will Maggie have to go to save Heather? Or will another innocent young life be lost forever...?

Review:

Didn't realize I was selected to read this book in Netgalley. Strange...normally I get an email but I missed the boat so I wasn't able to download it. Since I was still strongly interested in this, I used my audible free credit to download it there. 

Here we follow Maggie who is the Chief of police in this small town. She wanted and needed to get away from her old life so this was the perfect town to slip away to. She has secrets and wants to keep them buried. Turns out she isn't the only one in this small town who has secrets. When Maggie discovers a dead body on the side of the road, she soon finds out there are more local suspects in this case than people she can completely rule out. And when Heather stumbles out of the woods during the discovery of the body and is traumatized, things get even more complex. 

This had a lot of twists and turns and a lot of players on the board. 

We have multiple POVs here. We follow Maggie for the majority of the time, but we also get to see Heather's, Murphy's, and Steve's POV. Lots of characters running amuck, but the author did a good job keeping it clean and easy to follow along. 

Dang...so many secrets. So many lies. I feel like this town would not be a fun and cute small town to live in. Everyone seems.......off. Creepy in some ways. Some are endearing like the lady that owns the motel but from what we have seen so far.....I don't trust any of them including our two big mains: Maggie and Steve. Don't get me wrong I do like those two, but they have a lot of secrets and have been lying to everyone....including each other. 

The ending wasn't shocking for me because that character was SUPER sus the whole time. I had my doubts of course, but yeah.............that was the only way that made any logical sense for me. Nice though with the red herrings and all the seeds of doubt. Nice try author ;) 

Sometimes the inner monologues seemed to drag on and on. 

I also thought some of the drama with Murphy was a little........much. 

The narrator was pleasant enough. Nice variations of voices. Her voice for Heather was a hair grating for me and she made her sound too young. Everyone else worked. 

All-in-all, I did like this in the end. Some nice twists and a creepy, small town with loads of secrets hidden everywhere. Pretty good narration. Some OTT parts, but overall an interesting ride with an intense ending. I'll stamp this with 3 stars. I would be interested in book 2!

Challenge(s):
- Audiobook #10

- Cloak and Dagger - #5