I requested this title as an ARC from NetGalley because I was in the mood for a twisty, page turning, stay up all night welded to my hands until completion kind of read. I’m happy to report, this book did not disappoint.

Short plot synopsis: Sophia, an up and coming young London architect receives a cryptic phone call from her mother one night. Returning home next day, Sophia discovers a nightmare crime has taken place which turns her life upside down and everything she has known is called into question in the aftermath.

Things I liked about it:

Callaghan’s novel is simply packed with layers of suspense and thrill- a huge chunk of the book is a story within a story and it works incredibly well in order to solve the problem of jumping back in time to set out Sophia’s mother’ story. At the same time, there’s several quite meaty present day dramas going on for Sophia, both in solving the mysteries left behind by her mother but with a nice little sub-plot related to Sophia’s work. It’s a lot of bang for your buck in terms of stuff going on and it kept me riveted.

Nina’s backstory was compelling for me- I won’t say too much so as not to give it away but I found Nina’s part of the story to be fascinating, particularly as it was written in diary form with the hindsight.

Multiple twists at the end were fun and wrapped up the story without too many loose ends.

It stayed on my mind for a couple days afterward- always a good sign.

Things I didn’t like so much:

Sophia is a whiny pain for much of the book- she’s not especially likeable and I am not sure if that is deliberate or not on the part of the author. Unpleasant protagonist seem to be a constant theme for this type of genre and I do wish writers could devise a protagonist that we don’t have to detest as they solve the mystery. Meanwhile I felt quite sorry for Nina and wished things had turned out better for her in some way.

There were a couple of points that required significant suspension of disbelief.

Would I read it again? Probably not. Would I recommend it? Absolutely.

This book was easy to read but just about ok. The jumping between timelines, between diary and present day, doesn't really work. Sophia's mother isn't that interesting of a character.

London architect Sophia MacKenzie receives a phone call from her mother asking her to return home to Suffolk because they need to talk. Sophia, enjoying a night out with colleagues and over the legal limit to drive, puts her mother off until the following day. But when Sophia does arrive home, her parents aren't there. Venturing into the garden she finds her mother's lifeless body hanging from a tree and her father lying near-death in a pool of blood.

Sophia is astonished to learn her mother was a member of a cult in the 1980s and had written three notebooks about her life inside The Order of the Ascendants, which are going to be published. As Sophia begins to read the notebooks, it becomes apparent her mother's hanging and the near-fatal attack on her father are somehow connected to their contents.

Oh what a wonderful tangled web of intrigue this book is! The timeline is split seamlessly between Sophia in the present and her mother Nina in the past. The reader is given small pieces of the puzzle. Some are easily figured out - which I suspect is the author's intention, but others are cleverly interwoven until the final chapters. The suspense gradually builds as the two timelines come together and Sophia finally discovers the truth about her mother's past and the repercussions for the present.

The book title tells the reader Everything is Lies; therefore I was constantly questioning motives - was everything as it appeared to be or was there something much more sinister lurking under the surface? Oh boy, was I paranoid or was I paranoid?! When that happens, I know I'm reading a a quality piece of fiction.

I thought the main characters were developed to a tee. Cult leader Aaron Kessler literally jumped off the pages as he was brought to life by the author. His charisma and control were both unsettling and disturbing. The two timelines worked extremely well and the conclusion was exactly as it should have been.

In my opinion this is an excellent psychological thriller and I have no hesitation in placing it as a Top Read of 2018.

* I received an Advance Reader Copy. My thanks to NetGalley, Helen Callaghan and Penguin UK - Michael Joseph.

Everything is Lies by Helen Callaghan

Having loved Helen Callaghan’s first book, I jumped at the chance to read this one. The twists and turns made for a great evening spent guessing what would happen to mother (in the past) and daughter (in the present).

Everything is Lies was a book that grew on me while I read. I loved the opening chapters, but then found the introduction of the notebooks a little jarring, before the novel regained my full attention and had me flipping through the pages by the end. At first I just wanted to hear about Sophia’s life, as her mother was already dead, but by the end I cared just as much about both characters. The twist was very well done and I didn’t predict it until very near the end, which made the close of the novel much more enjoyable.

There were a few times when the difference between the privileged lives of some of the characters distanced me a little from the novel, but overall this was a fantastic reading experience. The cult aspect of the book was a lot different from what I was expecting going into reading, which made for a nice change from some of the more predictable books I’ve read recently.

Looking forward to reading this author’s next book!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback, thank you to NetGalley and Penguin U.K. for the opportunity to read this book.

The basic idea of the book reminded me of the recent successful novel "The Girls", but was less gritty and immediate. That said, it was written in a pacey fashion and was interesting read. My main disappointment was being able to guess the conclusion before reading the chapter about Notebook 3.
Even with the above caveats I enjoyed reading this book.

I really enjoyed this book - there were a lot of twists & turns. Kept me hooked until the end.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author & the publisher for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Suspenseful thriller with a lot of twists. A family saga with heaps of past history thrown in. Characters are well written and believable but tend to be a depressing. Good ending.

I’m so glad I requested this book on netgalley. The story starts innocently enough... dysfunctional family, daughter leaves home and doesn’t want to take her mother’s calls... until the mother kills herself... or did she? Was everything a lie? Told in the form of a letter to her daughter, the mother’s story unfolds, with exciting twists and turns in the plot. I thoroughly enjoyed this well written thriller.

Cliche, full of tropes, felt like I'd read it before, dull, predictable.

The idea of a death that is hard to explain is really interesting but the way that Sophia finds out what really happens to her parents was dull. Instead of finding clues and piecing together the mystery, she just reads about what happens in her mother's notebook. You are effectively just told what happens and now allowed to uncover anything for yourself as a reader.

These sections, which should have been the most interesting, were the weakest parts of the book. They dragged on, were badly explained and completely lost my attention. Overall, I was really disappointed by the reading experience.

This was an interesting read and if you enjoy reading 'thrillers' or books about cults then you will enjoy this....sadly, I didn't enjoy it as much as I hoped I would. It's my first Helen Callaghan novel so I had no expectations of what it might be like and I was intrigued by the premise of the story.

The novel tells the story of Sophia who has an ordinary twenty something life in London, until one night she gets a call from her mother asking her to come home. Sophia gives her the mother the brush off as she is too caught up in enjoying her own night, however, feeling guilty she sets off home the following morning, only to find her mother hanging dead from a tree in the garden and her father suffering from life threatening stab wounds. What follows is Sophia's quest to find out what happened to her parents, and her quest takes her back to her mothers past, a secret religious cult and shocking revelations that change her view of herself.

As exciting as that all sounds, I personally found the writing a little weak and I wasn't as sucked into the story as I hoped I would be. I didn't find it particularly thrilling or exciting, and I had worked out what the 'plot twist' was by the middle of the book. For me it was all a little disappointing but if you like that particular type of fiction I am sure you will love it.

Thanks to Net Galley for the free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

What a brilliant book! Excellent book. Brilliant story and I loved the main characters. I would highly recommend this book.

I had high hopes for this book after reading dear amy and i wasnt disappointed. Helen callaghans writting style is brilliant. Theres something about how she tells a story that just sucks you in and everything is lies was no different. I loved the unique plot line of a cult and getting to see how all the characters were interwoven together. I was able to guess a few twists but how each situation played out made up for that. Thank you for the arc! Will be recommending this book on release!

Recently it has been incredibly difficult for me to just sink in to a book and enjoy it, reading lately has been a complete chore for me. Until this one. I have read work by Callaghan before and loved it so I had a vague idea of what to expect but given the fact that I have struggled with books from authors I have loved previously I wasn't holding my breath, however, from the first few pages this book grabbed my interest and wouldn't let up.

I have devoured this book in a little over 24 hours. And when I was unable to read I found myself wandering back to Sophia and Nina's story in my head. I found I needed to know what happened to Nina all those years ago, and what had happened to her most recently.

Nina's story is particularly heartbreaking, given her parents and upbringing its clear how she became such an easy target for Aaron Kessler and his friends. Watching her be pulled in to his world was quite difficult and there was more than one occasion I hoped for a happy outcome for her, despite what I already knew of her tale.

Whilst the exploration of who joins cults, what makes these people especially attracted to belonging, how they grow evermore reliant on the leader’s approval, and why these groups often implode is an interesting enough subject. However, in reading ‘Everything is Lies’, it is unlikely that you will gain any more insight than you may already have. Rather, the central theme is a vehicle for a novel which is a messy mix of ‘who’s who’, ‘whodunnit’ and ‘whydunnit’ compounded by the problem that very few of the characters are credible, veiled identities are not well disguised, and it’s really not hard to work out why all the crimes are committed.
On top of this Helen Callaghan uses the vehicle of secret notebooks to transport the central character, Sophia, back to her mother’s youth and her cult experience. Mother Nina writes these notebooks for her daughter and even has a publisher interested, perhaps because they expose the morally bankrupt ways of old rocker Aaron Kessler who leads ‘Morningstar’, a movement dedicated to the Creative Spark (yawn!).
However, in order to make Sophia understand why Nina is so enraptured with the charismatic Aaron, the notebooks include the kind of intimate details most mothers – and, in particular, the self-effacing Nina, - would shy away from putting into material written specifically for a daughter. Necessary for the plot, this mistake joins the list of narrative errors mentioned earlier, as does the rather clichéd final chapter. After devoting several ‘reading hours’ to this story, I was left with a sense of time wasted. Sadly, given what could have been an insightful study of the effect of power struggles and mind games, this novel is one to avoid.

A well written page turner. I had guessed the final twist a while before it was revealed, but it's testimony to Ms Callaghan's writing and believable characters that I still continued reading, rather than skimming, to the end.

I absolutely loved this book so many twists and turns and I for one never guessed the ending . I will definitely be connecting with this author and reading more of her books

This is a terrific story, with an authentic feel across generational eras. It kept me guessing to the end with elements of mystery and missing clues. I rarely describe books as "page turners" but had I been reading it in print, this one would most certainly qualify. I sneaked to my tablet at every opportunity to swipe another page.

To begin, I’d like to thank Penguin Random House UK for sending me an ARC of this book, and to NetGalley for facilitating. And a thank you to Helen Callaghan for another thoroughly enjoyable read!

Occult, A Cult, Sex, Death and Lies - all perfectly balanced to make this book utterly delicious and moreish!
I read Dear Amy a while ago and loved it, so when I saw that Helen Callaghan had written another I was desperate to get my hands on it! And to my delight, I was sent an ARC to my Kindle! This is a completely different beast to Dear Amy but holds many of the best qualities of the first book.
Once again - and for the second time in my life as a parent, I ended up staying up WELL PAST when I needed to be asleep just to read “one more page” (or one more chapter as seemed to be the case) until suddenly it was 2am and I was faced with 4 hours sleep before needing to get up for the kids. And I wasn’t even sorry. Lol!

I won’t spoil this book for anyone so my details will be as shady as Wolf (read it - you’ll get it).
But as I said, this is a mixture of the best parts of the genre. Refreshing to pick up a book that doesn’t centre around the tired “girl is missing” plot that has literally been done to death these past few years. This is NOTHING like those books. It was tantalising, and dark, and beautiful. The characters were so diverse and detailed enough that I could easily differentiate all of them just via their mannerisms. And the way that Helen Callaghan has described the places, I could see them so clearly - I was at Morningstar, I was just as smitten and enamoured as Nina was with the place (despite the warning alarms sounding in my head).

It’s very rare to find a book that can pull you into the pages like that. All books try to beckon you in, that’s the point right? But Everything Is Lies doesn’t beckon you in, it entices you closer and then drags you in. I loved it. Definitely one to buy and put on my shelf of trophy books (ones I really like get promoted from Kindle to Hard Copy)!

Thanks again to Helen Callaghan! Loved the first book, loved this one even more, can’t wait to see what’s next!!

Really enjoyed this book everything is lies great tital for a great novel you get an insight into how these people get sucked into things they really shouldn't found myself saying no don't do it was brilliantly written enjoyed Nina's story and how Sophie told it loved the twists and turns and the ending I really wasn't expecting brilliant think this book will appeal to young and old alike very good story

This book was quite the slog to get through! The plot was interesting and I liked that it was about a cult, and the far-reaching effects this has on individuals and those around them. I liked that the narrative alternated between the present and the daughter's perspective, and the mother's experience of being in the cult. That being said, I think that's where the positives end. The first 20% of the book did a great job at building up momentum and setting the scene, making me think this would be a real page-turned and that I'd want to read 'just one more chapter' again and again before being able to get off to sleep. Unfortunately, the middle chunk of the book was incredibly boring, long-winded, and slow-moving. It did catch up and get a lot more interesting for the last 20&, and I enjoyed the twist, but for 60% of the book to be slow and unenjoyable, I certainly wouldn't recommend this one.