Monday, January 27, 2025

Book Bites (Expanded Edition): Never Lie

Never Lie
by Freida McFadden

✩✩✩✩
1 star out of 5

The line separating good books from bad, generally speaking, is that in a good book, plot serves characters, and in a bad book, characters serve plot. Not to crap on bad books; I've certainly written my share. There's nothing wrong with scarfing French fries now and again (Ready Player One, anyone?). As long as people are picking up books and visiting their local library, who cares?

Well, me, apparently.

Never Lie by mega-selling literary sensation Freida McFadden is a bad book. The plot follows homebuyers Ethan and Tricia as they tour the house of missing pop-psychologist Dr. Adrienne Hale, only to get snowed in. Creepiness abounds. Not the most original setup, but it works. Chapters are short and the language feels grade-schoolish, but at least it's accessible.

Much of the book's word count is spent on a2+b2=c2 plotting so formulaic as to be downright boring. Chapters alternate between present-time Tricia and past Adrienne. Tricia is an aw-shucks wilting flower and Adrienne is so logical and cold as to be a complete dick. McFadden takes the reader by the hand and guides them to "Ethan is a horrible murder and Tricia must escape." Dr. Hale has a psychotic patient called, rather suspiciously, "EJ." Its mentioned time and again how many red flags litter Ethan's past. Both EJ and Ethan know their wine. It all makes too much sense, right? I nearly threw in the towel on this one a hundred pages in, rooting for Ethan to bury a knife in Tricia's clueless back already and end this lackluster ride.

Except!

Ethan is not the killer (except he also kind of is)!

Except!

Tricia is the killer (but also Dr. Hale is the killer?)!

Oh, and Also!

Literally everyone here was one of Dr. Hale's patients!

In a good thriller, the twists feel pre-ordained after the plot pivots. The reader smacks their head and says, "oh of course! How did I miss it?" Never Lie's reveal brings more of a, "what? huh?" The tension required to wildly swing its plot is manufactured almost entirely by Tricia and Dr. Hale intentionally withholding information in first-person narration. Two narrators lying to the reader. In a book called Never Lie. Characters lie all the time, no prob, but...in their own thoughts?

So despite laying breadcrumbs thicker than the top of a midwestern casserole, EJ is of no relation to Ethan. EJ is just some rando. Why it took Dr. Hale 80% of the book to call EJ by his real (and very much not Ethan) first name? Insert shrug emoji. And having Tricia be the one who murdered Dr. Hale (oh and also like six other people) requires the reader to completely ignore her early narration. Tricia spends 2/3rds of the book pretending to be afraid of everything. She describes getting bad vibes touring Dr. Hale's house. Well duh, Tricia. Off course the vibes are off; you murdered someone. Bad vibes are inevitable. But then, on the flip of a dime, Tricia is a cold-blooded killer.

Which circles us back to junk food. The characters in Never Lie are all trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, meant to impart flavor and crispiness but entirely without substance. Tricia and Dr. Hale and Ethan squish and mold into the exact shapes Never Lie's plotting requires, bending and stretching to cover each new plot hole but never quite keeping the rain out.

No comments:

Post a Comment