Review & Excerpt: Her Dark Lies by J.T. Ellison
Publisher: Mira
Publish Date: March 9, 2021
Paperback
416 Pages
Standalone
Genre: Thriller
My Review:
EXCERPT
Jack did not talk about his dead wife. Nor did
anyone in his family.
It struck me as strange, in the beginning. There
were no reminiscences, no regrets. Certainly, no comparisons. He sat me down
one night after dinner, three weeks after Elliot’s wedding, said, “I have
something to tell you,” and recited the facts.
He’d been married before, the marriage was a short
one, and had happened a decade earlier. She died only a few weeks in. He didn’t
like to discuss it, but felt I should know, considering the path we were
clearly on.
Then he kissed me, and as we joined together, I
realized what he was actually telling me. I didn’t see then the lack of
intimacy of the admission, nor feel any sort of fear or warning. What I took
away from the conversation was this: He’d just declared his intent. He was
planning a future with me.
I overlooked the fact that he didn’t tell me how
she’d died, nor did I ask. Not then, at least. It was all very mysterious and
speaking about it was completely off-limits. It felt…dangerously romantic in a
way. There was so much about him I did not know, and I clung to those mysteries
like a child. I’d been disappointed by people so often in my life that I
suppose I was just hoping he wouldn’t let me down.
No, in the beginning, none of it mattered to me. I’m
a practical woman, logical to a fault sometimes. I was only eighteen when Jack
was so briefly married, in the throes of my own cataclysmic life earthquakes
that I had no desire to revisit. I didn’t see the story in the news. Even if I
had somehow come across it, why would I care about some gazillionaire’s missing
wife?
I’ve learned not to look back. Never. That way lies
madness.
Jack and I had a long life ahead of us. He’d talk
about Morgan if he wanted.
If I was that curious, there was always the
internet. The Comptons were a very public family, after all.
Katie thought I was crazy not to press Jack for
every little detail. When I refused, she dug up everything she could, invited
me out for coffee under the pretense of a catch-up, sat me down at the Frothy
Monkey, and forced me to listen. This is what I learned:
Jackson Compton met Morgan Fraser at a cocktail
party in Tiburon, California, at the house of a famed literary agent, a
stunning arts and crafts renovation across the bay from San Francisco. Their
courtship was brief and glamorous. Jack was a party boy then, on the circuit,
dating models and actresses, in the gossip columns all the time. Most eligible
bachelor, all that. Feckless. Wealthy. Fun.
Morgan, a well-educated former foster child who
studied computer science on scholarship at Stanford, was the exact opposite of
the kind of woman Jackson Compton was attracted to, according to the salacious
stories. There was nothing simple or easy about her. Her background was murky, her
business interests bordered on the unethical, and she was clearly not interested
in settling down.
But she was a stunner. Breathtakingly gorgeous.
Beautiful, and brilliant. The night they met, she was out celebrating. She had
secured the first round of venture capital for an eponymous IT company that was
making waves with a nanotech microcamera that would eventually change the way
the security industry handled smart home technology. Heady stuff. The Comptons
bought out her company and made her a small fortune.
I’ve been a big fan of J.T. Ellison since picking up LIE TO ME a few years ago, and I haven’t been disappointed since! We can expect complex and well-developed characters, plenty of suspense, and that we’ll be kept guessing until the very end. HER DARK LIES is like a locked in type mystery as our characters are stuck on a private island together as the body count rises. This one starts a little slower as we get the lay of the land and the scene is set, but then the pacing picks up and doesn’t let up until the very end.
This book has a great building mystery to it and, oh boy, talk about a body count! I couldn’t believe how many bodies were stacking up in this book, it was getting harder and harder to figure out who was the killer! I had seen a few other reviewers compare this to AND THEN THERE WERE NONE and I totally see it. I love Ellison’s writing style and I really enjoy the way she weaves these complex stories while keeping it so easy to follow. That being said, there were a couple times I mixed up which character we were reading in some chapters but then I was able to keep it straight. I can’t wait to see what she releases next and I highly recommend this to those that love locked room mysteries and very atmospheric suspense reads.
4 stars
The excerpts are pulling me in! Thank you for being on this tour. Sara @ TLC Book Tours
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