This is a book about a mother and daughter. It is told in the first person, by both the mother and her past and the daughter in the present.. it was an interesting story that starts of with the mother,s death. There are many twists and turns in this book as you discover what happened in the past. The story was interesting however I wished on each chapter they had who was telling that part of the story as sometimes you thought it was the daughter but actually the mother part of the story. I would recommend this story.

A diverting thriller. When Sophia's mother commits suicide and stabs her father, leaving him in a coma, Sophia is shocked and can't understand how her mother could do something like this. When she finds her mother (Nina)'s notebooks. Sophia realises Nina had a dramatic past life she never knew anything about. I actually think the book's major strength is also one of its weaknesses: Nina's story is so interesting that it makes Sophia's look bad. I'm inclined to think the book would have been better if it had just been about Nina's experiences as part of a cult, and I thought it was a very bleak ending for Nina that she never escaped from Wolf. I didn't enjoy this as much as Callaghan's debut Dear Amy, but she is a good writer and I will still look out for her future work.

I found this book quite disturbing from the onset. It follows Sophia and her Mum Nina. Nina kept journals of her past from her days at Uni and afterwards. I found Nina to be weak and spineless at times and felt she could have taken a different path to the one she chose. I enjoyed the book and had to keep reading hoping she would see sense and take control of her own destiny. It is well written and enjoyable, but I I couldn’t relate to the subject matter and sometimes found this hard to follow as I felt it so unbelievable in this day and age. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book for an honest an unbiased review.

Sophia always thought her family was just normal.....maybe mildly dysfunctional but basically having a fairly standard dynamic. But one day, after a late night call from her mother she goes home to find her father stabbed, close to death and her mother hanging. The police seem sure it's a murder/suicide scenario but Sophia can't believe her mother would hurt anyone let alone her husband. She begins to delve into her mother's past and soon realises no one is who she thought and everything has been a lie....

Helen Callaghan has delivered another great mystery...it's been too long since Dear Amy but it was worth the wait. This is a well written tale with many twists and turns. My only disappointment was that I found it a bit easy to work out the main reveal. But despite this it's still a very enjoyable story that kept me hooked from page one.

This book was very much not what I expected it to be.
When I read the blurb I was expecting a completely different story but I was very pleasantly surprised.

Sophia is a great character and I really loved reading the notebooks Nina left. All in all, this was a really fun read.

This book is wow.i didn’t guess till right at the end what was going to happen,I couldn’t put this book down ,I kept saying to my husband just one more page.i didn’t see the twists and turns coming ,would definitely recommend this book

This was a great read, dealt with in an original and imaginative way. Nothing in the novel was what I’d imagined, in a very good way. It was a fresh and engaging novel. The ending for Sophia was a little rushed, but that didn’t matter much. I found Jared’s character wasn’t quite rounded enough for me for reasons I don’t want to go into as this would spoil the novel; I enjoyed reading it with relatively little information.

Everything is Lies! Wow...I could not give this book any less than 5 stars! Great storyline with a heart thumping twist i really didn't expect! The story builds and the twists and turns just get better with each page turn. This book will definitely stay with me for a long time. Highly recommend. A great read!

Thanks to Penguin UK & NetGalley for ARC This is my honest review

Secrets and Lies. What do children know about their parents past lives only what they choose to share with them and it’s not always the full story. As parents we edit our memories, not to be untruthful but more that there are some things our children just don’t need to know. So what would happen if I wrote a book about my life laying everything open. My children honestly would not be that surprised or shocked but then neither of them are Nina

This is a great book which will hold the readers interest and with many twists and turns

Enjoy

A different take on the story of a cult and what happens to those who leave. The story was told through a survivor’s daughter reading her mother’s notebooks. There was the added intrigue of unexplained deaths and serious injury, which kept me hooked. I’d thoroughly recommend this book

Thanks to netgallery for a copy of this book.
Well.... I was not expecting a dark cult based read at all! I honestly thought this was going to be another run of the mill psychological thriller. I really enjoyed it. The twist at the end..wow!

This was a very twisted story about cults and domination, mistakes and escapes but never totally resolved. A fascinating story that left me hanging.

The first couple of chapters of this book made for riveting reading and I was hooked instantly. Wow, this one got off to a cracker. I immediately bonded with Sophia, and my heart went out to her. The terrible situation that she found herself in, the guilt, the pain, the "what if's", I could understand it all, and it made me feel immediately invested in the story.

When I started reading this book I was excited to discover that it was a dual time-frame narrative, as I really love those. This story moves between the present where Sophia discovers the death of her parents, and her mother's past and the secrets that it holds, which past has been recorded by her mother in a series of notebooks that her mother had planned on publishing.

For me personally, I loved the chapters set in the past, the chapters explaining the strange and ultimately abusive relationship between her mother and cult leader, Aaron. There were times throughout the story when I felt so irritated with Nina (Sophia's mother), where I just couldn't handle her meek and mild ways, her inability to stand up for herself and to see the truth of the situation for what it was. But ultimately this led to a story that gripped me, that made me feel something for the characters, and of course, that made me want to see how things would pan out.

As this story develops it becomes clear that Sophia's initial gut reaction to the death of her mother and the stabbing of her father - that this wasn't a murder-suicide - is correct. Her mother's strange and secretive past may very well have something to do with the death of her mother.

This is a great book that I really enjoyed. In a year where I'm battling slightly with my reading mojo, this book had me excited to get home every day and to open it up. I highly recommend this one.

I really enjoyed this. It was something a little different to my usual 'who dunnit's' and, the fact that I had absolutely no idea what was coming, or where the story was going to lead kept me turning the pages till the very end.
Sophia is a young woman working on a project for Scottish Heritage at her job as an architect. She enjoys a good social life with friends and work colleagues and after moving into her own little flat in Brixton she has the freedom to enjoy everything London has to offer.
Back home in Suffolk her Mother, Nina, isn't coping very well with her daughter living so far away and makes regular calls to her daughter pleading with her to come home. One particular night when Sophia is in a bar drinking and enjoying herself Nina calls and tells her she must come home urgently.. Sophia's been drinking so can't drive and it's to late for a train, but anyway, she doesn't take the call to seriously and hopes her needy Mother will get used to the situation soon.
Feeling guilty,early the next morning Sophia drives down to Sussex and to her Mum and Dad's house. She finds her Mother hanging from a tree and her Father clinging to life on the ground nearby. She's been dead for a few hours and he's been stabbed with a pair of scissors and might not survive. The police put it down to a murder-suicide, but Sophia can't believe her Mother would hang herself, let alone try to murder her Father first. With no evidence to support any other explanation the police are no help and everyone else seems satisfied to go along with what the police have said, except for Rowan who has worked with her Father for years. She learns from him that the house has been burgled a few times, and there's been a campaign of vandalism going on for months. Whilst searching the house Sophia comes across some notebooks, and what's written in them has Sophia shocked. She realizes that she didn't know much about her Mother's life before she was born at all. The notebooks are draft copies of a book Nina had been writing about her time, as a young woman, when she was in a cult. There's things in these books that certain people wouldn't want published. Could this be what the burglaries have been about? Is this why Nina had become scared to be alone at home? Was she being intimidated so the truth about what happened in the cult would never get out? Sophia thinks she's onto something, especially when she finds out a publisher was interested and she was followed after a meeting with him. To discover what really happened to her parents she has to delve into their past lives, and the lives of all of the members of the strange cult. Can you ever really escape cults and go on to lead normal lives,? Had she been in hiding all these years? Did someone from Nina's past come back to silence her forever or was the killer right there the whole time?
You'll have to read it to find out. Trust me; it's worth it.

Five out of five for this one! Well written, good plot and realistic characters dealing with real life issues. I got so into this book that I actually pulled a sick day at work just so I could finish reading it!
I feel the synopsis is slightly misleading, there is a death and points of the book obviously do focus on that but this is a story of a cult, of love hate and everything inbetween! Will be recommending to everyone, I absolutely loved this story.

Great book. Well written and kept my attention. Not everything or everyone is what they seem. . Would definitely recommend

The blurb certainly grabs your attention –

“Sophia’s parents lead quiet, unremarkable lives. At least that is what she’s always believed. Until the day she arrives at her childhood home to find a house ringing with silence. Her mother is hanging from a tree. Her father is lying in a pool of his own blood, near to death.”

I have not read ‘Dear Amy’, however having just finished ‘Everything Is Lies’ I will definitely be reading that one. It is not a crime novel, despite the murder that starts the book. The story unfolds as Sophia learns more about her mother and her past in a cult, which was led by a charismatic former singer in a rock band.

Sophia’s mother had been writing her life story and these journals cleverly move the plot along – a book within a book if you will.

There are plenty of twists and turns in the book, which Helen Callaghan seems to excel at in her writing style. Highly recommended being both a classic ‘page turner’ and one that is topical dealing with psychological and emotional effects on people by others.

An enjoyable dual timeline type thriller. The overall combination of the two tales was a very enjoyable mystery. Difficult to say too much without spoiling but I did enjoy it overall. There are times when Sophia's mother's actions and decisions leave you a little incredulous but I suspended my disbelief and was kept guessing until quite near the end. The insight into life within a cult is scary and chilling.

This psychological thriller is a good quick read and certainly a page turner. I enjoyed this novel and throughout the book wanted to carry on reading to find out what happens next. The plot is certainly not flawless and some things better not dwelt on but this did not spoil my enjoyment in the slightest.
The lead character Sophia discovers her mother dead and her father critically injured in what appears to be a murder, suicide. Sophia does not believe this to be the case and searches for the answers when she discovers her mother has finally written a book of her life. The story switches between present day and excerpts from Sophia's mothers book which really adds to the suspense.
Overall a very good read, despite the plot flaws.
I would like to thank both Net Galley and Penguin UK for supplying a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Everything is Lies by Helen Callaghan was my 11th book of 2018.

It’s quite hard to write too much of a review without giving away some level of spoiler so apologies but I have tried to keep it minimal.

The book follows Sophia and the exploits of her mum (Nina) 28 years or so previously. Sophia receives a call from her Mum whilst out one Friday night asking for her to come home urgently. After pieing one of her senior colleagues advances, the next morning Sophia drives back to her parents in Suffolk. When she arrives the house is empty, when she goes into the garden where she finds her Mum hanging from fairly lights and then her dad barely Alice stabbed in the stomach. The police put it down to it being a suicide and her dad getting injured in trying to stop it. Sofia doesn’t believe her Mum would taker her own life and thinks something darker has happened.

Sophia is desperate to find out what happened to her Mum and her dad in a coma she sets out her own investigation as to what has caused this, soon into it she receives contact from a publisher who was trying to contact her Mum about a book she had written and wanted to publish. When Sophia finally finds the book it reveals that her Mum had been part of a “cult” when she had joined uni. Or had she was the book just fiction? Or were there ghosts to uncover in this book which could have come back to haunt Nina?

I won’t go into the story any more than this as it would spoil your enjoyment I think. I found this book very easy to get into and liked he writing style. The are a number of twists or reveals in the book, but I did see every one of them coming, but that was fine.

It is quite a dark tale and gives you a quite believable view on what can happen if you get sucked in to a cult.
The book pretty much lives up to its title.

I received this copy from NetGalley and Penguin Books free in exchange for this honest review, so thank you.

I given this book a solid 4/5.