I got thoroughly immersed into “Everything Is Lies” almost immediately – excellent lead in to an emotionally charged story that was absolutely gripping.

Sophia comes home to find her mother dead and her father critically injured in an apparent murder/suicide – but she is not convinced and when she discovers her mother has finally written a book so begins a journey into a dark past that has never let go…

Helen Callaghan has written a story about personality, manipulation and perception, wrapping it up into a tense and genuinely intriguing family drama. Using the past and present to great effect (I, admittedly, found the past portions the more engaging of the two, the slowly unfolding truth about Sophia’s Mother brings her to stark, beautiful life) we find out that nothing about Sophia’s origins are as they seem. The characters in this drama are both enigmatic and beautifully drawn, the notebooks Nina left behind bringing an era to life – a time, not that far in our past, where certain things were viewed differently – the central theme here is enduring and changeable but I won’t spoil anything.

Secrets abound, still I found the whole thing endearingly realistic – often quite heartbreaking – whilst the final reveal so to speak was nothing like surprising, this is not a book that lives and dies on being unpredictable but more an emotional journey of one daughter discovering her parents’ past and seeing them as people separate from herself. It is clever, yes very twisted with psychological thriller elements – but I came out of it feeling melancholy and this is one of those books where the characters are very real and you wish you could go back in and change the bad things into good.

Definitely recommended.

This book was very well written and I enjoyed reading it. This was a very good version of a murder mystery thriller with very believable characters. I would highly recommend reading it.

I really enjoyed reading Helen Callaghan’s debut novel, Dear Amy when it was released last year, so I was excited to hear that her second novel was coming out and what a brilliant follow up to Dear Amy it is! Helen knows how to pull her reader into the story and from the first page I was gripped.

Everything is Lies starts off with a startling prologue when Sophia Mackenzie returns home to find her mother, hanging from a tree and her father barely alive. The police believe that her parents may have both tried to commit suicide but Sophia can’t understand why they would do this and she sets out to seek answers. The night before her mother’s death, her mother contacted her, begging her to come home, but Sophia ignored her request, what was it her mother wanted to tell her? Was there anything that Sophia could have done to prevent what was about to happen? Sophia begins to unpick her parent’s lives and in the process uncovers surprising details about her mother’s past which she has kept to herself all these years.

Helen Callaghan’s second novel is told from two perspectives: Nina, Sophia’s mother, through her diary extracts and from Sophia’s point of view. The extracts, which Sophia discovers, tell her about the time her mother spent at Morningstar, a major part of the book is told from this perspective. Her mother has been swept in by a spiritualist cult lead by music star, Aaron Kessler who she falls head over heels in love for. Sophia only learns that her mother has written all this down when she speaks to a publisher who is interested in publishing her mother’s story which overwhelms her, particularly at the revelation that her mother has written a book. This immediately had me intrigued, I wanted to find out why a publisher would be interested in her mother’s life. What went on during her time at Morningstar and with Aaron Kessler? This was the main pull of the story, as Sophia raced to find answers and this also is the main source of tension in the novel. Dark secrets soon begin to emerge about her parent’s past.

There is plenty of intrigue here that will keep you turning the pages. Helen created a perfect, eerie atmosphere as she described the scenes during Nina’s time at Morningstar. I always felt as though there was something evil simmering beneath the surface or that something terrible was about to happen; to Nina everything about her life at this point seems perfect and Helen did a brilliant job of giving me the sense that everything about it was about to crack. She also delivers plenty of twists and turns along the way that kept my eyes glued to the page.

Helen Callaghan has done a fantastic job with her second book. She’s a writer who I’m sure I’ll continue to come back to, I love her writing style and I can’t wait to see what she has in store for us next. This is definitely one for you to put on your list in 2018. Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of the book to review.

This was a good read with a few twists and turns. Sophia returns home to find the dead body of her mother and her father close to death in the grounds of their home. She then starts to find out that her parents' past was not what they had lead her to believe and both have secrets they have kept from her. The book flashes between 1989 and the present day which was easy to follow.
An overall good read.

Tricky thriller,quite disjointed. Back and forward over two time periods. A daughter finds out that her whole past is not what it seemed.

A well written book that had me engrossed from the beginning. The whole idea of a cult mentality is one that fascinates and the story progresses at a steady pace even though the relationship of the characters is suspected very early on. I did not agree with the development of Aaron towards the end of the book. He seemed much too level headed and reasonable even though he was still head of a cult.

Thank you to Netgalley, Helen Callaghan and Penguin Michael Joseph for my ARC of Everything is Lies by Helen Callaghan.
I was super excited to read this book as I absolutely loved Helen's debut novel Dear Amy, you can read my review of That here: https://lifehasafunnywayofsneakinguponyou.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/review-dear-amy/
I also had the pleasure of interviewing Helen shortly after, see here: https://lifehasafunnywayofsneakinguponyou.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/author-interview-helen-callaghan/
Anyway, back to Everything is Lies I guess based on Dear Amy I was expecting something along the same lines but Everything is Lies is very different, but equally as good!
Sophia is an architect living in London, spending her nights out being pestered by her needy mother Nina, who calls her all the time begging her to come home. But Sophia wants more for herself than the little garden centre and cafe her parents run. Nothing exciting could ever happen to them.

Filled with guilt at pushing her mother away, Sophia pops home for a visit one weekend and is shocked by the scene that greets her, her mother is hanging dead from a tree in the garden, her father is lying in a pool of his own blood near her. The police think it's a murder/suicide but Sophia has her doubts. Especially when she discovers her mother was planning on writing a book. An expose about her time with a cult called Morningstar and everything Sophia thought she knew, falls apart.

Everything is Lies had me immediately hooked, it's a who dunnit with a unique twist, involving Lies, deception, cults and terrible secrets, not to mention a good dose of running away from murderers too!

The characters were complex but brilliant, I loved Sophia's dogged determination with regards to her beliefs and also her strength at not allowing herself to be bullied. She was a great main character. The novel splits between the present day story and the story Nina has written in her notebooks and the two meet with devastating consequences as all the lies are revealed.

Zooms into action. Written with such imagery it could be a film. Two books in one! A confidently and stylishly written crime novel which zooms into action and keeps up the pace to the end.

I did enjoy this novel but found that past and present did feel confusing at times. But overall an interesting and entertaining read.

This book starts with Sophia on her way home after a night out and recalling her conversation with her mother the night before. Turning up at her parents house her whole world is turned upside down.
We get to see her mum's life through "notebooks" that she left revealing a cult life Sophia never knew about.
Her dad has also led a secret life and it's only at the very end we see this and I really was shocked at the reveal!!

If you liked DEAR AMY, you’re going to love EVERYTHING IS LIES.

Once again, Helen Callaghan has delivered the kind of breathlessly-paced novel that keeps you up until scary o’clock trying to work out whodunnit.

Sophia is an architect who unwittingly discovers the one thing her mother never wanted her to know. As a young woman, Nina had been lured into joining a dangerous cult and had spent several months living with them in a remote stately home called Morningstar before finally being expelled when one of their sacred rituals goes horribly wrong.

After more than a quarter of a century hiding from her past, Nina decides to face her fears and pours the whole sordid tale onto the pages of a journal given to her by her daughter. When Nina dies suddenly – in an apparent suicide – Sophia finds the journals and quickly finds herself in greater danger than even she initially understands. Who can you trust when you suddenly realise that no one is who they say are and everyone has long vested interests in making sure you don’t find out what really happened all those years ago?

Cults are a notoriously difficult thing to deliver convincingly in fiction. Getting the reader to believe the cult members really are under their leader’s thrall without bogging us down in all sorts of mystical mumbo-jumbo is a difficult balancing act – but it’s one Helen Callaghan carries off with panache. Although I didn’t feel particularly tempted to sign up to the cult myself, I certainly believed that they believed every word. It was also very easy to see how a young and openhearted girl such as Nina could be lured in.

EVERYTHING IS LIES is a fitting a companion piece to DEAR AMY. The same key themes of sexual depravity, the destruction of innocence, and the abuse of male power are all here, just viewed through a slightly different prism. In these days when scandals of sexual coercion in the workplace are a constant feature of our rolling news cycle, Helen Callaghan delivers a cautionary tale about how sexual conduct doesn’t necessarily have to be physically threatening to be debauched and exploitative. A few kind words and bit of attention can be wielded as dangerously as a knife.

I am sure this will be another huge success and, if there isn’t already a production company working on the telly adaptation of this, there soon will be!

** I was given a digital copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

I really enjoyed Dear Amy and Everything is Lies is another cracking story from Helen Callaghan. It's well written, tense, and with some good twists.

Right from the first chapter I felt myself being drawn into something dark, a feeling that something bad was going to happen to Sophia.

Sophia is an architect in her late 20s. Her parents run a garden centre and coffee shop in rural Suffolk. They live a quiet, unremarkable life. Sophia has 'escaped' and lives in London and has just started a new job. Her mother calls her one night when Sophia is out with colleagues and Sophia brushes her off.

The next morning, feeling rather guilty, she drives down to Suffolk and comes across the horrific sight of her mother's body hanging from a tree and her father lying in blood and near to death. The Police suspect it is an attempted murder-suicide; that Sofia's mum had tried to kill herself and when Sofia's father had tried to stop her, she had stabbed him.

Sophia is sure her mother isn't a killer and wants to clear her mother's name. After her mother's funeral, an elderly couple appear who turn out to be Sofia's maternal grandparents. She didn't know them and they don't seem very nice.

As she tries to find out more about her parents she discovers she didn't really know them at all. She learns from Rowan who works for her father that they had been burgled several times in recent months. From a letter she also found out that her mother had written a memoir and had been been in touch with a publisher who had seen part of the handwritten manuscript and was keen to publish once they had the final part. Sophia knew nothing of this. After a fruitless search of the house she finds two of the notebooks hidden in her father's shed but no sign of the third and final part of the manuscript. However during her search she came across a recent receipt for the purchase of a gun and cartridges and a shotgun licence in her mother's name but no sign of the actual gun.

Everything is Lies is really two books in one. Much of it is her mother's memoir. Her mother's manuscript starts with a message for Sophia but ominously, the first line is “Everything is lies and nobody is who they seem”. Then she starts reading the memoir and learns of some shocking things. Could the revelations in the book have contributed to her mother's death?

Having read the two notebooks Sophia wants to try and track down the people her mother had been involved with to fill in some gaps but is she about to put herself in danger?

There's a lot going on in this book and the tension mounts as doubts creep in. Who can Sophia trust? She's dealing with her mother's death, her father in hospital in a coma, the fact that Rowan seems to know more about her parents than she does. Her mother has written a book (a memoir) revealing a completely different life before Sophia was born. Sophia is trying to hold on to her job and also trying to keep her parents' business afloat; there's even an attempt on her life; and she's also trying to trace people who may or may not have had something to do with her mother's death.

There are enough twists to keep the book interesting. At one point I may have felt the 'book within the book' was getting a bit too long but overall I enjoyed this book.

A very complicated plot with few, if any likeable characters but a different and absorbing read.
Stars lost because Sophia' s language feels really alien; no twenty-something British woman would use vocabulary like she does.

Oh wow! This is a suspense filled tale of a ‘normal’ family- or are they? Sophia has a good job in London, her parents run a garden centre in the country. A normal family, with a slightly anxious mother who would really like Sophia to live closer to home. Then Sophia goes home for the weekend, and finds her mother hanging from a tree in the garden and her father severely injured nearby. Who did this? Who would want to kill her mother? The police are convinced this is a family murder/suicide and aren’t really looking for anyone else. But Sophia is convinced that her mother would not do this and sets out to find her murderer. Sophia’s investigations uncover hidden secrets of which she was completely unaware, and the further she digs the more she starts to wonder if she ever really knew her parents. The author builds suspense well, leaving small hints to the story which keep the reader guessing. Characters are well written and believable. A suspense filled story which keeps you guessing!

I was so thrilled to be able to read this book early, as I loved the author's previous book 'Dear Amy'.

'Everything Is Lies' did not disappoint, being another psychological thriller that I could not put down. Just like I did with 'Dear Amy', I worked out one of the big twists fairly early on, but again this did not take anything away from my enjoyment of the book.

I enjoyed all of the book but the parts set in the past perhaps the most, the constant tension and wondering what was going to happen whilst reading these sections was fantastic.

Helen Callaghan is a skillful wordsmith and I cannot wait to read more by her.

With many, many thanks to both the author and publisher who provided me with a free review copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Everything is lies is a great title as this is the premise of the story ,nothing is what you think it is and no one is who you think they are .This book is very well written ,the story is a real page turner that I didn't really want to end .This is a story about loss ,intrigue,mysterious cults and much much more .Fabulous I particularly liked the ending .

This book had me staying up past my bedtime every night! A truly mind-blowing, psychological thriller which had me in suspense right up until the end. I felt the main character, Sophia had true guts and determination to find out what happened to her mother and not just accept what she was being told. The relationship with her friend, Rowan was also pleasing to read as he always looked out for her and helped her through her journey. The ending of the book was both exciting and surprising and I hope there's an opportunity for Book 2!!

No-one is who they say they are

No-one is who you think they are

Everybody has secrets

Especially those closest to you

Oh especially those who are closest to you it will cut deep in to the bone!

Sophia's parent's have lived a very quiet, peaceful, unremarkable lives living in there home and running there cafe business. well at least that is what she's always believed .

until she arrives at her parent's home to find the house in silence her mother is hanging from a tree and her father is lying in a pool of his own blood close to death!
The police are convinced that this is a murder-suicide but Sophia is sure no she is certain that is not the case she finds it unbelievable her mother would kill herself or try to kill her father, & with her dad still to sick in hospital to talk Sophia sets out to clear her mother's name and find out what really happened but is she really ready to find out what happened what a roller coaster ride she will be going on because!

WHAT IF YOUR PARENTS HAD BEEN LYING TO YOU SINCE THE DAY YOU WAS BORN!

after finding a letter from a publisher addressed to her mother saying thst they want to publish her book Sophia is shocked and is then searches for her mother's notebooks & this will take her on a shocking journey she didn't see coming!
WOW WOW WOW! What a delicious treat Helen Callaghan has dished up for us this time around! It's always hard for a author to follow up from a huge hit first book but I must say Everything Is lies has exploded on the scene it's everything a book should be it's amazing I just could put this book down! it had so many twists and turns I was shocked on each page & on reading Nina's notebooks I kinda felt I was invading her privacy but felt she wanted me to read them it was great to see things from her point of view, there was a point in the book where I had a feeling what was coming next but I just didn't want to turn the page because I didn't want it confirmed to be true but at the same time I just had to know! This book is insanely good it's amazing it's unputdownable it gets you hooked it will make you feel your in the story also at parts will make you weep near the end as it did with me I just loved it but be ready for this book to take over your life! You have been warned! thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for my copy

The bar was set high for Helen Callaghan with Dear Amy, which I loved. Everything is Lies moves it up a notch in a fast paced thriller with a dark and twisted plot and characters. Numerous themes are considered, including familial ties, the nature of truth and betrayal and cults. It kept me guessing to the final pages and it's haunting.

This is truly gripping storytelling, even though I had to suspend disbelief a couple of times. The characters are plausible and the plot convolutions compelling. It all starts from quietly enough but bit by bit the layers are stripped away and the central character, Sophia, is left to unravel the mysteries of those closest to her, her mother and father.

There are unexplained deaths, shadowy characters and a series of journals written by her mother, Nina, which link past and present. It's devilishly clever, fast paced and an all round belting story. Loved it. My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

When Sophia receives a call from her mother Nina Mackenzie one evening asking her to return to her family home straight away, she shrugs it off, telling her mother that she is out in London and is over the limit for driving. Her mother can be a bit needy and she thinks no more about it until she arrives home to visit her parents the next day. Although she calls out to them throughout the house there is no reply, so she heads towards her father’s workshop. There, she is horrified to find her mother hanging dead from the old chestnut tree with her father, Jared Boothroyd, sprawled out beneath it, a pool of blood seeping from several wounds. He is barely alive. She calls the police and so the investigations begin.
The police believe that it is an attempted murder and suicide, but Sophia will not believe it. Her mother is not depressive and friendly and gentle by nature. She would never turn on Jared. They are a team. She is very suspicious, especially when she receives a telephone call about a book her mother has been writing. She is dumbfounded. It’s news to her. She starts a search for the notebooks her mother would have used and that had been read by publisher, Max Clarke. At last she comes across them hidden in her father’s workshop. What she reads in the notebooks is a handwritten story of her mother’s life when she started university. Another surprising discovery! The journals were personalised to Sophia and were written as a narrative; a confession. As she reads on she feels not only the chill of fear but also a compulsion to meet her mother’s friends and finally solve the mystery of Morningstar, the house in Kent her mother described in her journals. This is the main body of the story.
I was thrilled to receive "Everything Is Lies" as an ARC sent to me from NetGalley and publisher Penguin in return for an honest review. I read ‘Dear Amy’, Helen’s debut novel last year as an ARC and loved it. This novel is quite different. It is a novel about manipulation and threats, literally full of menace and huge shocks. It’s about secrets and the power they can hold over you. It’s about conniving, blackmail and decadence. The notebooks retrace that fated hot summer when everything seemed possible, yet immeasurably elusive. As Sophia continues her search for the truth she feels danger and desperation all around her. But even worse, there is a third part to her mother’s sad story. My heart went out to Sophia as she realises that her mother was used and betrayed; her life was lived in a web of lies, deceit and ultimately hatred. It was no life at all, a life not worth living. The final shocking revelation rocks her world as finally the truth is laid bare.
This dark novel with its issues about obsession, mind games and grooming was dark and disturbing. Some of the characters were unpleasant, evil and odious. All in all I found the content quite overpowering, strewn with evil. It was not really to my taste, although I know others will lap it up.