The Lies We Tell by Jamie Holland

The Lies We Tell is a coming-of-age novel set in 1974, after the Watergate scandal has left the country grappling with an unnerving sense of deceit. Thirteen-year-old Martie Wheeler, whose father has suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack, is consumed by nagging questions: How could the president lie? How does a healthy heart just stop one day? Could hers do the same? To add to her anxiety, two girls her age have disappeared from the local Maryland mall. Could she be the next victim?

When her mother announces her plans to move the family to Milwaukee, Martie, always the good girl, suffers silently, leaving the theatrics to her angry sixteen-year-old sister, Blaire, who befriends “the witch,” a strange woman whose yard is littered with bizarre sculptures made of sticks and stones. The locals claim that she killed her family, which further fuels Martie’s anxiety.

Missing home, Martie calls the Maryland phone number and becomes friendly with the girl whose family now lives in their old house. The girl claims that she knows a secret about Martie’s dad, which fuels Martie’s worry, propelling her into a frantic, secret search. It isn’t until she gives up trying to be the perfect daughter that she discovers the dark truth surrounding the family she thought she knew. @goodreads

MY REVIEW:

4 STARS

This book tugs at the heartstrings. Martie is a thirteen-year-old little girl who's dad has died of a heart attack. She gets obsessed with heart attacks and always telling her mom and her older sister Blaire that she thinks she's having one. She can tell you every little thing there is to know about a heart attack :-(

Martie also becomes obsessed with these two little girls (The Hanley girls is what they go by) that were taken from the mall. Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting to follow what happens to those little girls, but Martie starts playing out different scenarios in her head on what could have happened to them.

Martie is a smart girl and she knows all kinds of things don't add up, or something is weird. She keeps asking all kinds of questions about her father, heart attacks, those girls, and random things from time to time.



Martie's mom decides to move them all to Wisconsin where they will live in a house on Lake Michigan near their aunt (their father's sister). The kids don't want to leave their house of course and Blaire is livid at having to leave her boyfriend Danny.

They get there and Martie makes a new friend at school and Blaire befriends the supposed witch that lives down from them. I loved that woman, she was a great character in the story. So, they settle into their new home.



But after awhile, Martie starts finding out little tidbits of information. She decides to call her old phone number and see who moved into her house. This led her to befriend a girl named Sarah and she filled Martie in about the missing girls, what eventually happened to them. But<--- she also filled Martie in on some information her family had been keeping from her, something so devastating that Martie was not sure she could live with the truth.

I thought this book was really good, hauntingly sad in some parts. It's filled with family secrets and learning to grow up with hard realities. 

*I would like to than Netgalley and Amazon for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.*

 

GOODREADS REVIEW:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1533364851

AMAZON LINK TO THE BOOK:

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-We-Tell-novel/dp/0692300449/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1454350385&sr=1-3