but books are better: Book Review: WHITE LIES by Lucy Dawson

Author: Lucy Dawson
Read: June 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

Alexandra Inglis is a respected family doctor, trusted by her patients to keep their most intimate secrets. And if sometimes the boundaries between duty and desire blur… well, she's only human.

But when Alex oversteps a line with Jonathan, one of her patients, she knows she's gone too far. Jonathan is obsessive, and to get what he wants he will tear Alex's world apart - threatening not only her career but her marriage and family too.

Soon Alex finds she's capable of doing almost anything to keep hold of her perfect life, as it begins to spin dangerously out of her control…

My musings:

White Lies is the perfect example of ordinary people making stupid decisions and having to deal with the consequences – all wrapped up in a deliciously evil and utterly addictive mystery! Alexandra Inglis, a respected GP, wife and mother of two, wakes in a hotel room in Ibiza to find a stranger next to her in bed. To her horror, she discovers that the young man is not only over twenty years her junior, but he is also a patient of hers, and the son of clients of her GP surgery. She has made a terrible mistake, and one that may cost her her marriage, her career and the respect and trust of the whole community ...

I admit that I struggled with the beginning of this book, mainly because I felt a strong antipathy towards Alex. Whilst I would normally be able to make allowances for her grave slip in judgment, I felt disturbed by the fact that her one-night stand involved a teenage boy and envisaged how angry I would be if this had been my own child. As a health professional, I was horrified about her betrayal of trust that her position as GP bestowed upon her, whether she was drunk at the time or not. So it took me a little while to calm my inner tiger and let myself get swept up in the story, but I am so glad I did!

White Lies gradually unfolds through the POVs of several characters, including the “he said – she said” account Alex and Jonathan give about their sexual encounter. Alex claims that she was too drunk at the time to be aware of Jonathan’s identity, whilst Jonathan alleges that they had been having an affair ever since Alex treated him for a sporting injury in her doctor’s surgery a few months ago. Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? As each and every character tells their own version of the story, my head was spinning with the possibilities – I love well-written stories with unreliable characters, and this one really messed with my mind! After coming up with and discarding several possibilities, I was still stunned when it came to the final reveal (although I had had my suspicions). This was such a dark, wicked tale! Although I usually struggle with stories featuring a bunch of unlikeable characters – and be assured that this dysfunctional bunch is far from being warm and fuzzy – White Lies was so well written and its plot such a cleverly spun web of lies and deceit that I found it utterly unputdownable. The involvement of social media added a very contemporary feel to a story that could have played out at any time in history, with an age old theme of fatal attraction – but who was the perpetrator, and who was the victim?

Summary:

I loved Dawson’s writing style and will be putting her other books on my tbr list ASAP. I highly recommend White Lies to lovers of dark and twisty psychological thrillers that mess with your mind. Strongly character driven, this book will propel you into the minds of some very disturbed characters – it utterly consumed me from the moment I thought: “Hang on, he is telling a completely different story than she is!” and I could not get enough of it until the final reveal. Well done, Mrs Dawson!

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