but books are better: Blog Tour / Book Extract: DEAD GIRLS CAN'T LIE by Carys Jones

Author: Carys Jones
Publisher: Aria
Publication Date: 15 August 2017

Book Description:

Best friends tell each other the truth – don't they?

When North Stone's best friend Kelly Orton is found hanging lifeless in a tree, North knows for certain it wasn't suicide. Kelly had everything to live for – a loving boyfriend, a happy life, and most importantly of all, Kelly would never leave North all by herself.

The girls have been friends since childhood, devoted to each other, soul sisters, or at least that's what North has always believed. But did Kelly feel the same way, or was she keeping secrets from her 'best friend' – deadly secrets...

When the police refuse to take North's suspicions seriously, she sets out to investigate for herself. But her search soon takes her to a glamorous world with a seedy underbelly, and before long North is out of her depth and getting ever closer to danger. Determined to find the truth, she soon wishes that dead girls could lie, because the truth is too painful to believe...

I am really excited to be taking part in my first ever blog tour! On this maiden voyage, I am sharing a little taste of Carys Jones' new crime novel, Dead Girls Can't Lie, courtesy of Aria.

Please also make sure to check out the post of my co-host, The Purple Book Stand, and the rest of the great blogs that are participating:

Excerpt:

Kelly didn’t kill herself.

It came again. Her phone had beeped in acknowledgement. The message had been there. North had read it, twice. But now it was gone, her inbox suspiciously devoid of it. Even the message she’d previously taken care to save was gone, it was like a slate had been wiped clean within the device. As she stared at her phone, North dared to wonder if exhaustion was playing its usual tricks on her, or worse, if she’d deleted the message herself in some half-asleep state. But surely she wasn’t capable of that kind of self-sabotage? Someone was trying to connect with her, trying to get through and tell her that they believed in the same truth that she did.

Sleep.

The word was almost a mantra. North just needed to sleep and then everything would start making more sense, things would stop disappearing.

Kelly didn’t have a cure for insomnia. But on the nights when North couldn’t sleep they’d sit up together and watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Despite Kelly’s best efforts, she’d usually drift off before the end of the first movie, leaving North to sit and watch the drama unfold across Middle Earth on her own. But listening to her friend’s steady breathing just a few feet away comforted North.

Insomnia was a lonely affliction. It had first visited North when her parents failed to come home. As the police searched and her grandparents fretted, she lay wide-eyed on the single bed in her bedroom. When everyone else was overpowered by exhaustion, she sat at her window and watched the stars. Kelly couldn’t sneak over back then, not during the night, not as teenagers. The next day at school she was always wrought with guilt over her friend’s nightly plight.

‘I’d have stayed up with you,’ Kelly would insist. ‘You shouldn’t have to be alone, North.’

Back then there was only her namesake, her star, to keep her company. North would look up at it outshining the rest of its peers and wonder why her parents chose to name her after something so commanding when she herself was more darkness than light. A bringer of death, according to her grandmother.

On the television the gathered fellowship were daring to journey through dwarven mines which tunnelled deep into the ground. Too deep. North stirred on her sofa. She’d bought the duvet from her bedroom and snuggled beneath it but still sleep wouldn’t come. Candlelight flickered around her but she wasn’t even sure if it was night. The curtains were drawn. She’d banished any lingering daylight when she returned from Dean’s flat. She couldn’t return to work. Her grandparents’ home had been sold several months ago. There was nowhere for her to go except to the hollowness of her flat. She was just drifting like an unsettled spirit. The DVD boxsets were stacked up beside the television, where they always were in case of such an occasion. Something to occupy the dead hours when everyone else was sleeping. North pulled her duvet up to her shoulders, wishing she could hear the soft breathing of her friend over the epic soundtrack.

Banging.

North twisted upon the sofa and blinked at the television. The characters looked afraid, backed into the corner of a stone room as a terrible sound echoed out from the depths.

More banging.

‘What?’ North rubbed at her eyes. Had she fallen asleep? Perhaps she’d slipped into a doze. The banging was coming from the television, wasn’t it? She stared at the screen as the banging continued. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. ‘Urgh,’ she pressed the heel of her hands against her temples. First insomnia came for her sleep and then her sanity. Once, she spent an entire week believing that Leonardo DiCaprio had emailed her. She’d imagined the whole thing. Or even dreamt it. It was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t when sleep failed to visit her. Of course Kelly had believed her. She’d kindly sat at North’s side as she frantically trawled through her inbox trying to find the evidence and then, when it failed to materialise, agreed that it must be a malfunction within the computer.

North moved from rubbing her eyes. The banging didn’t stop even though the scene on the television had moved on. With a groan, North reached for the remote and paused the action, freezing all of the characters mid-motion. The banging bounced around her little flat. Someone was at her front door and they were hammering on it with great force.

‘I’m coming!’ North shouted over the ruckus as she shed the duvet. She shivered away from its warm embrace. Hugging her arms around herself she scurried across her flat towards her door. She pulled it open without pausing to look through the peephole. ‘Dean?’

He was standing in the corridor, one fist still held in the air ready to pound on her door again. His muscles twitched as though he was consumed with restless energy. His eyes were bloodshot and there was a wildness to him. A wildness which concerned North. She took a tentative step back and he immediately advanced towards her.

‘Did you know?’

About the Author:

Carys Jones loves nothing more than to write and create stories which ignite the reader's imagination. Based in Shropshire, England, Carys lives with her husband, two guinea pigs and her adored canine companion Rollo.