Review: The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

The Truth and Lies of Ella Black by Emily Barr
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.5 stars.

Thanks to Penguin for sending me a copy of this book for review.

The One Memory of Flora Banks was one of the first books I read in 2017, and I really enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to picking up The Truth and Lies of Ella Black. Unfortunately, it didn't quite reach my expectations.

I thought this book was going to be a psychological thriller, and from reading the synopsis, I thought there was going to be some aspects of mental health. I wouldn't call it a thriller; there were aspects of mystery throughout the course of the story, but when the mysteries were "uncovered", I felt quite underwhelmed. As for the mental health part, the main character has another "side" to her... a bad side. I would've loved to see this developed more throughout the book, and I think if this was the focus of the story, then it would've had a lot of potential. However, it's kind of brushed over. No one else ever finds out about it. Her bad side kind of just gets forgotten.

I didn't love the romance in this book, and to be honest, it was probably one of the worst cases of insta-love I've ever read. They meet one morning, and that night they're at a bar kissing, and then the next morning she says to herself that she has a boyfriend now, and all of a sudden she's in love with him?!?! I probably could've forgiven this if we found out more about Christian, but that's all we know about him, and we see very little of him after that.

Also, the whole "40 days until she dies" thing that is written as a countdown at the beginning of every chapter was kind of odd... and maybe unnecessary. I felt like that was going to be another mystery that would be uncovered in "40 days" or whatever... but when it happened it was kind of underwhelming.

Also, there's an unnecessary scene with animal abuse that didn't add to the story whatsoever and made me feel a bit sick...

I read the book in a day, and a main part of that is because it wasn't a boring story. It's readable, and maybe some people might really enjoy it; the potential is there, but it just wasn't for me.

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