Her Dark Lies

Jack & Claire fall in love and are getting married at the Compton Villa on the coast in Italy. Then terrible things begin to happen, small at first then deadly. Wedding has to be cancelled. But it’s tied up in a neat little box in the end.

Thought provoking. Great suspense with. Twists and turns.

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.

JT Ellison has finally come into her own. From creepy Nashville murder stories to the the British spy in the FBI, JT has been learning her craft . Her Dark Lies is by far the best. Great flawed characters. A handsome and dangerous old Italian villa with a past, and lots of venom. Lots of fun but hard to put down, grab a comforter and some brandy and finish it whole.

Could there possibly be more mayhem rolled into one book? So many unanswered questions. Such as how and where did Morgan’s funds and rehab happen. Much of this story was left unlinked and OMG, the death and disaster abounds. Too much, just too much. The potential was there, but missed the mark.

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!!