Review: Seven Lies

Wednesday 22 April 2020

As someone who is regularly asked by Netflix, 'Are you still watching?', it takes a lot for a book to stand out and grab my attention. But this one surely did.

Maybe it was because I had just finished Harlan Coben’s The Stranger on Netflix, or because I was desperately awaiting the arrival of Killing Eve Season 3 on iView, but Seven Lies landed in my lap and it wasn’t even a week before I was madly rushing though the final 20 pages, desperate to know how it ends.

For anyone who has ever had a best friend and told the odd white lie to keep the peace, this is for you. Jane and Marnie have been BFF’s since school and their lives intertwined so closely, they could finish each other’s sentences. It was during one of their regular Friday night dinners that Jane told her first lie, and soon after Marnie’s husband was dead. It seems fitting that he died as Jane's husband is also dead.

What leads a person to lie to their best friend? How did both husbands end up dead? Why isn’t this a TV show? I had so many questions.

Elizabeth Kay’s writing keeps you captivated, her descriptions of Jane and Marnie are so exacting you feel like the third wheel in this dangerous friendship. Set against a backdrop of present-day London, it’s easy to imagine our unreliable narrator Jane navigating her way on the Tube trying to figure her way out of the mess.

Described by Harlan Coban as “a relentless, chilling story of what happens when friendship becomes obsession”, Seven Lies had me up well past my bedtime and examining my list of Facebook friends to see if I could be culling any potentially dangerous connections.

I was thrilled to learn that the book will be turned into a TV show after the rights were quickly snapped up. I could imagine Villanelle from Killing Eve playing the character of Jane. In the meantime, I have more Killing Eve to watch.

Seven Lies is out now, and you won’t be disappointed.


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