Wake Up, Amber! A review to Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

Personal Rating

 This novel is Sometimes I Lie. There are three things you need to know about this novel. 

1. It is a page-turner, 
2. It keeps you puzzled,  
3. I do not lie about how I feel in this novel. 

Sometimes I Lie, a 2017 psychological thriller novel written by debuting author Alice Feeney. Sometimes I Lie topped the New York Times Bestseller and a nominee for Goodreads Choice Award for Mystery & Thriller in 2018. The critics drew the comparison of this novel to Gone Girl due to its explosive twist and domestic storyline content. In 2019, Fox bought the television rights to Sometimes I Lie, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in an undisclosed role. 

Amber Reynolds wakes up in the hospital in a state of coma and unable to remember anything that happened a week before the accident. All she knows is it has something to do with her husband or her sister. Are they having an affair? Is her husband, do it to her? Or it has something to do with her boss? Or his ex-boyfriend? Even though she is in that condition, she is awake and hearing things in her surroundings. She has less idea if it’s real or just her imagination playing tricks on her. The worst part is she cannot do anything about what is happening around her. As the story progress, she remembers things piece by piece, and revelation starting to unfold. What she discovered is much more sinister than ever she imagined.  

Sometimes I Lie novel creates a compelling character. The complexity of each character is astonishing. You will be puzzled by each character’s scheme, relationship, and role in this book. One of the most memorable characters is the protagonist, Amber Reynolds. Amber Reynolds is one of those characters that you can love or hate. The novel gives a few bread crumbs for you to guess. The misdirection will keep you blind until its mystery unfolds. Sometimes I Lie crafted good characters, but the main antagonist lacks motivation. Almost to the point that it is unconvincing and thinking her character development is not formed.  

The plotting of this novel is astonishing, thrilling, and superb. The beginning mystifies you. The ending leaves you open-mouthily shocked in revelation, in a good sense—one of those psychological novels that are a propulsive and chillingly claustrophobic novel filled with twists and turns. This novel puzzled and disturbed the reader up to the end, in the sense that you will ask if the character’s action is right. That is the fun in reading a novel where the story’s perspective is on the unreliable character. It is always up to us to interpret and decipher if their action is right or wrong.  

Maybe this novel can’t live up to giving a well-structured social theme, and interpretation about society like Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn does. 

However, the similarity between Gone Girl and Sometimes I Lie is you can easily say that this novel is one of those unputdownable noirish domestic psychological thrillers. That probe into the horrific complexity of marriage, love, and family relationship and both stories cannot discuss to you who is right and wrong, in ingenious fashion in their creative storytelling. 

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney can be easily lined up to the company of best-regarded domestic psychological thriller novels such as “Gone Girl” and “The Girl in the Train” because of their twist and theme. However, this novel is for you if you are looking for a twisty, gripping, brilliantly crafted story.