The Perfect Liar
Grade : D

I like to think my intuition works pretty well when I'm choosing books for review. I end up enjoying about eighty-five percent of those I select, and I'd say that's pretty good, all things considered. Unfortunately, Thomas Christopher Greene's The Perfect Liar turned out to be one of the remaining fifteen percent of books that didn’t work for me, and I struggled to finish it

Susannah and Max seem like the perfect couple to everyone they know. Max is a motivational speaker whose philosophy of life has managed to make him quite a bit of money, and Susannah is content to be a stay-at-home mom to her teenaged son Freddy. They live in a bustling university town in Vermont, and their life seems to be the stuff of dreams, especially compared to the time Susannah spent raising Freddy alone after the death of her first husband some years earlier.

One morning, Susannah heads out on a shopping errand, and when she returns, she finds a note on the front door, a note that threatens to expose all of her closely guarded secrets. Understandably upset by the missive, Susannah confides in Max, and of course, she pretends not to know what secrets the author of the note is alluding to. She claims not to be hiding anything from Max, and he appears to believe her, chalking up the note as a prank. Although she pretends Max's assertions make sense to her, Susannah is still very concerned about the note. Someone obviously knows what she's been hiding, and she's desperate to keep them from revealing what they know.

Meanwhile, Max has his own reasons to be unsettled by the note. It seems he's also been keeping some dangerous secrets, and like his wife, he can't stand the thought of them getting out into the world. The reader has no idea what either Max or Susannah is hiding, so much confusion ensues for the next couple of hundred pages as they try hard to keep certain aspects of their lives from coming to light.

Things get even murkier when a neighbor is murdered shortly after having dinner with Max and Susannah. Could he have been the one to leave the note on the door, and is it possible that Max or susannah killed him to keep him from telling what he knew? I thought I'd enjoy finding out the answers to these questions, but the story was too chaotic to hold my interest.

The narrative unfolds in alternating chapters, told from the perspectives of both Max and Susannah. It's not uncommon for me to find one character in a story difficult to like, especially in a domestic thriller like this one, but it's hard to deal with when both the novel's main characters rub me the wrong way. Neither one is honest, and neither one seems to have a problem with that. Max is full of justifications for why he doesn't tell the truth while Susannah seems to be in a constant state of denial. I might have had more sympathy for them if the author had come up with compelling reasons for their lies, but that wasn't the case, and I came away from the book feeling frustrated.

The mark of a good thriller is in the author's ability to keep the reader guessing until the very end. This is usually done by weaving several twists into the plot, but Mr. Greene took this too far. This novel contained way too many twists for my taste, and in fact, I lost track of what was actually going on, something I rarely do. It felt as if Mr. Greene was trying too hard to keep the reader from learning the truth, and by the time it was finally revealed, I was too confused to care all that much.

I was also troubled by the novel's pacing. At just under 300 pages, this is not a book that should crawl by, but that's exactly what it did. Thrillers are usually fast-paced and action-packed, but that wasn't the case here. I read page after page where nothing much seemed to happen, only to have the last few very short chapters be filled with too many key details.

The Perfect Liar is not a book I can recommend. The premise was intriguing, but the story itself puzzled and annoyed me. There are a ton of other fantastic thrillers out there, and I urge fans of the genre to skip this one in favor of something more satisfying.

Buy it at: Amazon/Apple Books/Barnes & Noble/Kobo

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Reviewed by Shannon Dyer
Grade : D

Sensuality: N/A

Review Date : January 20, 2019

Publication Date: 01/2019

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Shannon Dyer

I'm Shannon from Michigan. I've been an avid reader all my life. I adore romance, psychological fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and the occasional memoir. I share my home with my life partner, two dogs, and a very feisty feline.
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