Latest Reads: Friends and Liars Kaela Coble

Publication Date: 1st June from Corvus

Source: Netgalley

It has been ten years since Ruby left her hometown behind. Since then she’s built a life away from her recovering alcoholic mother and her first love, Murphy. But when Danny, one of her estranged friends from childhood, commits suicide, guilt draws Ruby back into the tumultuous world she escaped all those years ago.

She’s dreading the funeral – and with good reason. Danny has left a series of envelopes addressed to his former friends. Inside each envelope is a secret about every person in the group. Ruby’s secret is so explosive, she will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it hidden from those she once loved so deeply, even if that means risking everything…

Friends and Liars is a  totally immersive and addictive read about a group of friends and the things that both bring them together and divide them. In the aftermath of the suicide of one of their own, all of them must face up to the truths about themselves and each other.

As we meet them both in the past and in the present, their story is authentically compelling. As a tight knit group of children, “the crew”, none the less they all have wavering loyalties and secrets that they keep – Friends and Liars is a brilliantly insightful look at the group dynamics of friendships formed, those that endure. Danny, in death, forces a kind of reckoning, it is utterly gripping and often very emotional.

The characters, all of them, are layered well, Kaela Coble unravels their lives in an intelligently woven plot that allows you to feel everything right along with them. Much of the focus is on Ruby and her one time best friend Murphy, the rest of the group rippling around them with Danny, the damaged and troubled soul right at the heart of things. The author plays on the readers sympathies, keeping you engaged, in some ways this is like a mini thriller as each secret comes to light slowly over the course of the story. Ultimately there is a kind of redemptive feel to things, sometimes the truth really does set you free…

Really I loved it, I read it in two sittings, the small town vibe, the ebb and flow of family and community, this group of friends who are genuinely tied together by those invisible threads no matter where they are in the world, it all made for quite wonderful and often unpredictable reading.

I’ll miss them all. I feel like I’ve lived it with them.

Recommended.

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Happy Reading!

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