Review: ‘Lying Next To Me’ by Gregg Olsen ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

Happy Publication Day to this amazing thriller!

No matter what you see, no matter what you’ve heard, assume nothing.

Adam and Sophie Warner and their three-year-old daughter are vacationing in Washington State’s Hood Canal for Memorial Day weekend. It’s the perfect getaway to unplug – and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out on the water, he sees Sophie abducted by a stranger. A hundred yards from shore, Adam can’t save her. And Sophie disappears.

In a nearby cabin is another couple, Kristen and Connor Moss. Unfortunately, beyond what they’ve heard in the news, they’re in the dark when it comes to Sophie’s disappearance. For Adam, at least there’s comfort in knowing that Mason County detective Lee Husemann is an old friend of his. She’ll do everything she can to help. She must.

But as Adam’s paranoia about his missing wife escalates, Lee puts together the pieces of the puzzle. The lives of the two couples are converging in unpredictable ways, and the picture is unsettling. Lee suspects that not everyone is telling the truth about what they know – or they have yet to reveal all the lies they’ve hidden from the strangers they married.

Thank you to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer and Gregg Olsen for the chance to read this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I devoured this addictive, fast-paced novel and would have read it in one sitting if not for that pesky thing called sleep.

It starts with a distressed man, Adam Warner, who has just seen his wife abducted. Adam is frantic, begging the police to get out there and find her. Detectives Lee Huseman and Zach Montrose are in charge of the investigation and despite witnesses to the crime there seem to be few clues and no suspects. Where is Sophie Warner? And who would snatch her from the beach in broad daylight?

Lee Huseman is determined to find the answers. Not only because she’s still reeling from a recent failure to solve a case, but because she owes Adam; he was her brother’s best friend and saved her when she was twelve years old. But will this skewer her ability to investigate Sophie’s disappearance? Could she miss vital clues because of her affection for him, or will it allow her to see more clearly if he’s deceiving them or holding back? As she delves deeper into the lives of Adam and Sophie she finds surprising clues that will hopefully lead her to the truth.

What a fantastic book. I really enjoyed that it was written from so many points of view. It allowed us to see the events from almost all the character’s perspectives and find little clues in their chapters that we’d not have had otherwise. The only main character we didn’t get any chapters from was Sophie. She remained a mystery who we only saw through the eyes of others. I loved this choice as it made the truth subjective and elusive as we only know as much as each character does about her life, although we obviously have the advantage of taking these multiple viewpoints to create a fuller picture.

For me, Adam quickly became a morally ambiguous character and I would go back and forth in my views of his guilt or innocence. I thought he was expertly written as the author repeatedly manages the difficult task of making him someone you one minute have sympathy for, and then someone deplorable. His actions often didn’t make sense but a grief looks different for everyone so you view all his actions through that lens. In terms of villains, Sophie’s father, Frank, was so vile that although he was never a suspect I almost wanted him to be so that there was no reason to feel even a grain sympathy for him. There were no redeeming qualities to him, not even his grief for his daughter, and I could relate to Adam’s venomous feelings towards him. Unlike Adam I pitied his wife, Helen as abuse and control changes people and makes them act in ways others often can’t understand.

“What’s done in the dark will be brought to the light”. That quote reverberated in my mind many times while reading this book as we saw how many of the characters acted very differently in secret than when with others. As the story went on some of these secret actions were revealed to others but what I liked is that the author showed the human side to them in their motivations. With one character this was especially true. I feel like saying their name will be a kind of spoiler so will just say that I felt great empathy for this character even though I disagreed with their actions.

This was my first read by this author but certainly won’t be my last, and I now have the urge to go and buy his entire back catalogue. The multiple characters and narrators never felt confusing, even at the end where it was particularly fast-paced, frantic and full of opposing commentary. The bombshell finale had my jaw on the floor and it is a testament to the writing how I can instantly recall lines that now have a completely different meaning and were a subtle foreshadowing of the truth.

Lying Next To Me is a story about family, love, lust, sex, secrets, betrayal, desperation and revenge. I highly recommend this dramatic, layered, tense and twisty thriller. Just make sure you have plenty of time spare as you won’t want to put it down.

Publication Date: 21st May 2019