Hello everyone!
I am here with another book review, The Good Liar by Catherine McKenzie. Thanks so much to Simon and Schuster Canada for sending me an ARC of this book for an honest review, as always, all opinions are my own.
The story follows three women, Cecily, Kate, and Franny, all of whom are connected through the tragic event known as Triple Ten: the explosion of a downtown Chicago building that occurred on October 10th at 10 a.m. that killed 513 people. Cecily was on her way to meet her husband, who worked in the building and was killed in the explosion. Kate left Chicago shortly after the explosion to rebuild her life. Franny had just recently found her birth mother - who ended up being Cecily's best friend - and had also been killed. The three women all have a story to tell, but they've also all got secrets to keep.
Firstly, I think this book was very well-written and planned out. There were many twists and turns throughout the novel - some of which I saw coming when McKenzie wanted me to and others that just blew me away. The story itself is broken into three different POVs for the three women, with Franny's being an interview transcript with the man making a documentary on the event a year later.
I thought that the pacing was good, I was engaged throughout the novel - even though it took me a bit longer than it should have to finish this book. It's one of those ones you savour. It's well paced, but it's not break-neck, read it in one sitting. You have to read a bit and then step back for a moment and think about what is happening next. It was a really refreshing change of pace for me, I usually am able to get books read in one sitting but I appreciated that this book broke that cycle.
I really liked the premise behind this book, and in the interview with McKenzie at the end of my copy, she describes how she wanted to integrate the withholding we often do in everyday life in the book, creating character-driven suspense. I really loved this approach to the story, where the thrill came from the unpredictability of the narrators, not from the external forces of the story itself. There were some things I figured out ahead of time but it always felt like I was supposed to know what was going to happen - not that I spoiled the surprise.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I look forward to picking up more from McKenzie!