Never Lie by Frieda McFadden: A Thriller That Kept Me Second-Guessing Everything
My rating: 4/5
Some books you read. Others you get through in a mild state of disbelief, saying “wait, what?” out loud to an empty room. Never Lie was the second kind for me.
The Setup
Newlyweds Tricia and Ethan are house-hunting and drive out to view a remote property that used to belong to Dr. Adrienne Hale, a well known psychiatrist who vanished without a trace. A snowstorm hits and they end up stuck in her house. While they wait it out, Tricia finds recordings of Dr. Hale’s therapy sessions. The more she listens, the clearer it gets that someone in those sessions has a lot to hide.
It’s a simple setup: a couple, an isolated house, a storm and a mystery. McFadden gets a lot of tensioin out of it.
Two Very Different People
The thing I found most interesting was how differently the two main characters react to the same situation.
Get Pavithra Sankar’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Ethan comes across as the steady one. He seems like a decent guy who respects other people’s privacy. Going through a stranger’s personal things doesn’t sit right with him, and he would rather keep his head down and stay out of trouble. In a house like that, his instinct is basically “let’s not touch anything.”
Tricia is the opposite. She’s curious and can’t leave a question alone. Once she finds those tapes, she has to know everything, even when listening to just one more probably isn’t a good idea.
That contrast drives a lot of the book. Every time Tricia digs deeper, you feel the pull between her curiosity and Ethan’s caution, and as a reader you are never sure which of them is making the right call. McFadden makes good use of that tension, and of what we assume about poeple based on how they act.
That Ending
I won’t spoil anything, but the twists honestly blew my mind. Parts of it were hard to believe, and I mean that in both ways. Some reveals made me want to flip back and reread earlier chapters. Others felt like they puchsed plausibility a bit. Either way, I couldn’t put it down, and I think that’s exactly what a book like this is meant to do
Why 4 Stars and Not 5?
The pacing is excellent. The short chapters and the back-and-forth between the present day and the therapy tapes keep things moving fast. My one star off is mostly becasue a few turns asked me to suspend my disbelief more than I would have liked. It is a wild ride, but sometimes a slightly too wild one.
Should You Read It?
If you like psychological thrillers with unreliable impressions, an eerie isolated setting and an ending you will want to talk about straight away, then yes. Never Lie is a quick, gripping read, and a good choice for a weekend when you want to switch off and be thoroughly surprised.
Just may be don’t read it alone in a big empty house during a snowstorm.
