NetGalley ARC | Lies Between Us

I received a free digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Rating | ⭐⭐

Two families side-by-side in their waterfront mansions, neighbors for years, the children growing up together in a small town on a small island where there's little crime, everyone knows everyone, and doors are never locked.

This summer is different though. Their picture-perfect lives are upended one night when tragedy strikes after one of the many beach parties they've attended. A boy is dead, secrets abound, and no one will come out of this the same.

(Except they all will because no one learned a damn thing through all of this.)

In theory, this should have been everything I love in a quick YA that doesn't require too much time or thought. Rich kids, secrets, murder. All things I love.

Instead, the book was such a disappointment. I usually really like ths author's work but this was just blah. The ending was ESPECIALLY blah. The characters all had very surface-level development and neither matching set of siblings was distinguishable from any other set. Not to mention that the two families, last names Gold and Silver, just happen to live next to each other. The Golds have three girls, the Silvers have three boys. Each has their exact-age counterpart in the other family.

Seriously, come on. Whyyyyyyyyy???

I didn't really care about any of the characters because we never get to know them well enough to decide one way or another. As a result, it was hard to care about what was happening. Time and time again we are told how the sisters are so close, there are no secrets between them, there's nothing that could break their bonds or loyalty to one another.

Except by the end we see that's a big fat lie because ALL OF THEM had major secrets that they hid from each other for the entire book, and the entirety of their teen years so far.

The only parts of the book that really made it worth reading were the flashbacks of the party the night that Billy died. Literally, knowing what happened was the only thing that kept me reading this one because none of the characters were compelling. And none of them learned anything or changed in any meaningful way when all was said and done.

But even arriving at the big reveal and ending, it all fell flat. All this build-up with the party flashbacks, and we don't even know for sure what happened in those last moments of Billy's life.

Overall I was annoyed that I struggled through everything, just for THAT ending. There are plenty of people who will like it though, who will be able to overlook the nonsense of the names and the families being so perfectly suited to each other. I'm just not one of them.