Her Dark Lies
A Novel
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3.9 • 225 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
If you only read one thriller this year...
“A great modern gothic. Ellison outdid herself— what an ending!” —Catherine Coulter, #1 NYT bestselling author of VORTEX.
Fast-paced and brilliantly unpredictable, J.T. Ellison’s breathtaking new novel invites you to a wedding none will forget—and some won’t survive.
Jutting from sparkling turquoise waters off the Italian coast, Isle Isola is an idyllic setting for a wedding. In the majestic cliff-top villa owned by the wealthy Compton family, up-and-coming artist Claire Hunter will marry handsome, charming Jack Compton, surrounded by close family, intimate friends…and a host of dark secrets.
From the moment Claire sets foot on the island, something seems amiss. Skeletal remains have just been found. There are other, newer disturbances, too. Menacing texts. A ruined wedding dress. And one troubling shadow hanging over Claire’s otherwise blissful relationship—the strange mystery surrounding Jack’s first wife.
Then a raging storm descends, the power goes out—and the real terror begins…
You won't be able to guess what happens in the end!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Nashville artist Claire Hunter, the narrator of this mesmerizing romantic suspense novel from bestseller Ellison (Good Girls Lie), and her fianc , Jack Compton, the son of a computer company magnate, arrive on Isle Isola, Italy, for their wedding at the Compton family villa, Claire is alarmed to hear that skeletal remains were dug up at the villa during restoration work the day before. She feels better after Jack reassures her that such finds are common on an island with a long history, but it turns out to be a harbinger of more sinister things to come, such as hacking of the Comptons' private servers and discovery of the body of a family employee. Convinced that someone is trying to sabotage their wedding, Jack and Claire unite in an effort to identify the culprit before more lives are lost. Characters with secrets to hide and mysterious deaths, including that of Jack's first wife, who died in a sailing accident a decade earlier, add to the menacing atmosphere. Fans of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca will want to check out this compulsively readable tale.
Customer Reviews
Gothic Suspense!!
I have to say J. T. Ellison writes excellent suspense.This one reads like a gothic mystery of old. Towering cliffs on a island owned by a powerful family. So many secrets in both sides. Twists and turns so crazy you never see what’s coming and a shocking ending. Great job!!
Great twists
Thought provoking. Great suspense with. Twists and turns.
Fun but ....
Fun but way too many unanswered questions, plots holes and time lapses that don’t align.
Like (partial spoiler alerts so I’ll omit the names) when two people part ways and person #1 goes to another floor where he discovers a body and figures out who the mystery woman is, all of which takes at most 30 minutes, person #2 goes to several floors, has long conversations with different people, gets dressed for his wedding, stops the wedding at the procession, drags the bride back up to the room, has another revealing conversation while the bride strips AND THEN answers the phone call from person #1 who is out of breathe and racing to person #2’s room to explain his big discovery at the exact time the mystery woman pops into the room with a gun. I mean, it was very dramatic for the story but unless person #1 fell into a time and space wormhole, there’s no way each person took the same amount of time to get to that point.
Also, again without giving away names, there’s a point in time where the killer supposedly kills a woman and drags her to a cave to pile her body with the others then gets back to the room for the perfectly timed big reveal in what was at most 5-10 minutes. How?
And what happened to the damning tapes showing who really killed the burglar? The authorities found all the other tapes, so why not that one? I’ll tell you why, because then Claire would have been arrested and that would have ruined the ending so instead that pesky little plot point gets glossed over which was weird since it was such a big deal in the beginning and of course that tape was with the others.
But other than those and many more convenient lapses in time and explanations, the overall story was a fun summer thriller. Just don’t look too hard at the details.