Carrie's Reviews > Listen for the Lie

This one started out really fun and suspenseful. The premise drew me in and the pacing and suspense were very well done. It doesn't take itself too seriously, which makes it easier to roll with some of the more improbable plot developments. There are some laugh-out-loud scenes and the characters successfully tread the borderline between all-too-real and comically absurd. Some reviewers have found the sordid goings-on in Plumpton to be a bit much, but I was digging the telenovela feel of it.

That said, maybe about two-thirds of the way in, we start to get into some serious themes, and things go off the rails a little bit. The main character, Lucy, constantly makes terrible decisions, which works until it doesn't. Honestly, it got a bit wearing that every time she did something patently idiotic, she would preface it with something like "I've never been known for making good decisions" or "it seemed like a terrible idea, so of course I went for it". Under the circumstances, it's understandable that she would embrace this "to hell with everyone" philosophy, but after a while it got repetitive and started to feel like Lucy was doing a lot of stupid things just because the plot required it. The book also featured my absolute least favorite trope, "this man beats me and is generally terrible and I hate him but I can't help but be wildly turned on by his vileness" (and its counterpart: if a guy is genuinely a friend to you and treats you well, there's clearly something wrong with him). The best a woman can hope for, in Tintera's universe, is a man who is unethical in a nonviolent way - bad enough to be sexy, but not a danger to your physical person. So that was disappointing.

Ultimately, the key to a successful psychological mystery is the characters. The situations don't have to be realistic, but the psychology and the characters' behavior has to have some authenticity, and this is where the book loses its footing. I liked the device of the podcast, because you first learn about each character through the eyes of other people, in retrospect. "She was a perfect sweetheart," "Nobody liked that girl," "They were always a happy family," etc. This is an excellent way to get the "unreliable narrator" effect without resorting to cheap tricks (yes, I'm looking at you, Alex Michaelides). So even though none of the characters are entirely what they initially seem to be, the reveals mostly feel believable. But some of the characterizations get a little flimsy as the plot threads come together, and the resolution feels oddly unsatisfying. After a couple of twists had been revealed, I thought the story was headed in a very intriguing and original direction, but by the end the author has returned to safe, conventional territory. (view spoiler)[Frequent mystery readers will probably guess who the murderer is going to be because various plot twists cast suspicion on pretty much every character by turns ... except one. Well - duh! (hide spoiler)]