*I was given a copy of Four Good Liars in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to HarperCollins UK and Sarah Wishart for my copy of the book*
Synopsis:
Layla. Kai. Liam. Fliss.
Terrified big sister. Troubled surfer. Insecure genius. Pampered princess.
They have nothing in common, except they were all on the school bus that morning. The morning of the crash. The morning they discovered the dead driver’s holdall, containing one million pounds – and a gun.
All of them have secrets, and all of them need that money. But someone dangerous is hunting it down, and drawing closer every minute. If Layla, Kai, Liam and Fliss want to survive, they’ll need to stick together. But can four good liars really trust one another? Or are some truths just too powerful to stay buried…?
Review:
Even after finishing Four Good Liars, I’m not sure how I feel about it. The opening was super high-intensity and the scenes with the bus crash were action-packed, but I found the descriptions to be a little messy and hard to follow. There’s a lot of ‘this is happening, now this is happening’ type of descriptions and it was all over the place – this did make sense for what was going on though, so I can’t bash it too much.
This was such an unlikable cast of characters. I think I liked Layla the most but even then she wasn’t great. Their personalities and morals felt all over the place and I won’t even get started on the end of the book. I don’t want to spoil anything but never trust a single word any of these characters to say. This did make the story interesting though, you never knew where it was going to go next.
Also, every POV read exactly the same and I found myself getting confused about which character I was reading multiple times.
This is a bit nitpicky, but I studied law as part of my journalism degree and I’m pretty sure newspapers can’t print the full names and photos of minors without a parent’s consent, so that part made no sense. I could be remembering wrong, I studied it years ago now, but I’m sure minors have to have their identities hidden for safety purposes.
Anyway, storywise, this book is very interesting. I love a thriller/mystery and the premise of Four Good Liars was very interesting. It does raise the question of what would you do if you found a bag with a million pounds in it? Especially as a teenager. I feel like a lot of their stupid actions can be forgiven due to their young age, but a lot of what they do is ridiculous.
The number of plot twists is definitely what kept me reading and I really liked the ending scene. It’s a classic will this whole ordeal happen again with someone else situation and it was a great way to end it.
Overall, I think Four Good Liars was a decent read but it definitely has its flaws. It’s a good example of a non trustworthy narrator and I found I had no idea what was going on at any given moment.
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