Behind Every Lie

By Christina McDonald

Eva is happily engaged to Liam; they’re living on an island off Seattle. He’s a bit domineering, but she values his protectiveness. Her mother, Kat, knows about him, but Eva isn’t ready to introduce them: there are secrets in her own past that she doesn’t want Liam to know about.

Following a family dinner at Kat’s house, Eva wakes in hospital. She’s been struck by lightning, and almost died. She can’t remember anything from the previous evening. Then she learns that Kat has been brutally murdered, and the police are treating her as a suspect. And Eva’s not sure herself: she has flashes of memory, of holding a knife, of blood on her hands.

The story is told from two alternating points of view: Eva’s and Kat’s. Of course, Kat’s story takes place in the past, moving forward, while Eva’s story is in the present. She’s trying to find out the truth. She goes to London, where Kat lived earlier, in hopes that uncovering her mother’s past can help her figure things out.

This book is full of secrets, deceptions, hidden agendas and sudden twists. Eva doesn’t know who to believe: she can’t trust anyone, it seems, even herself.

Behind Every Lie, published in February 2020, is McDonald’s second novel. She has quickly become a new star of the domestic suspense genre. Her first book—The Night Olivia Fell—was released just a year earlier, in February 2019; by October it had hit USA Today’s Best Seller list. She has a third book in the works, due to come out in 2021.

McDonald has built an enviable fan base. (Her email list grew from 0 to 11,000 in two years, and she has almost 9,000 followers on her Facebook author page.) Her fans love her accessibility—she’s constantly interacting with her audience on social media— but what they like best is the power of her writing.

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