Reviews with content warning for Miscarriage - Lie With Me

First read: October 2022

F**k… this book was phenomenal. I am so utterly speechless on how to articulate how this book made me feel, I know 100% it will stay with me for years and be re-read multiple times. Just wow. WOW!!! This has shot straight up to maybe my favourite book I’ve ever read.

A lovely person on Goodreads recommend me this book because I loved Swimming in the dark by Tomasz Jedrowski and this has similar vibes and thank goodness they did. I took this, their review of Lie with me and others (that didn’t spoil the plot) and instantly bought a preowned copy. The day after it came I devoured just over half and right now before writing this finished the remainder. It hooked me from the first page and kept me at the biting point to the final sentence (one I will have permanently stuck in my head - the whole letter possibly). It honestly felt like a cardinal sin to put this book down, I had to know more, I needed it.

Bessons writing is so beautiful and transportive but f**k the characters!! Oh my goodness like ugh I can’t even begin to explain how much I was invested in their lives. They were so real - they are real, to me anyways - and just oof I don’t know. My response was so visceral as this book is so emotive and just pure brilliance.

The central plot starts with our protagonist Philippe thinking he sees Thomas whilst undertaking an interview in the present day. This then transports him back to 1984 (the vibes are immaculate - clothing, names, music, technology (the Walkman omg!!), just everything) where he remembers the summer of his first love. It is so beautiful, heartwarming and magical but oh my it breaks you too. My heart was full on exploded into a million pieces reading his story. I won’t say anymore as you need to experience this book and plot first hand to grapple with its emotiveness and excellency.

I honestly think I could talk about this book forever like just wow! I was so obsessed and ugh the quotes and takeaways from it. Unreal. But… I read this whilst I was out so didn’t bring a pencil to underline and went through it super quickly so I plan to have a re-read (soon but I’ll give myself enough time to recover) where I will update my review with my favourite quotes - they’ll probably be paragraph-long because it’s so good.

Please read this book. Thank you 💔

Second read: November 2022

This book is just so fkn good - just such beautiful, meaningful writing, fully realised characters, a heart wrenching plot. Pure brilliance.

As promised in my initial review I would ‘annotate’ (underline and star) as I reread to share some of my favourite quotes and sections. There are so so many, practically every page had at least something that stuck out but I’ll only show you my personal crème de la crème:

‘There is an impenetrable border that stands between us. Maybe it’s. Disdain, at the very least.’

‘To allow it to be said is to confirm it.’ - talking about homophobic comments made and not reacting

‘But I will never change. I will never think: It’s bad, or It would be better to be like everyone else, or I will lie to them so that they’ll accept me. Never. I stick to who I am. In silence, of course, but it’s a proud, stubborn silence.’

‘This feeling of love, it transports me, it makes me happy. At the same time, it consumes me and makes me miserable, the way all impossible loves are miserable.’ - just wow I am speechless.

‘It could never have happened.’ - this isn’t like wow but it’s vital to the story

‘He says that he can no longer be alone with this feeling.

That it hurts him too much.’

‘I say: Why me?

[…]

He says: Because you are not like all the others, because I don’t see anyone but you and you don’t even realise it.

He adds this phrase, which for me is unforgettable: Because you will leave and we will stay.

[…]

It’s the violence that the words carry within them, their admission of inferiority and, at the same time, of love’ - just fck it so fkn good I am just in such awe like wow wow wow

‘You can’t fight necessity. If you do, necessity will win.’

‘… I understand the fear and panic he carries with him […] it can’t only be the fear of being caught. It’s the fear of himself too. A fear of what he is.’

‘In the end, love was only possible because he saw me not as who I was, but as the person I would become.’ - speechless

‘Thomas says: You see how we come from different worlds. Worlds that have nothing to do with each other.’

‘A place is not a question of topography but rather the way that we describe it - not a photograph but an impression.’

‘I receive his smile like a gift’

‘It seems crazy not to be able to show our happiness. […] sharing their happiness makes them even more happy, makes them expand with joy. But we’re left stunted, compromised, by the burden of having to always lie and censor ourselves.’ - when you can feel the energy of words and a feeling and liken to it so much, it really hits you the power that words can have. Exceptional.

‘… affairs of the body are so much more preferable to affairs of the heart, but that sometimes you don’t have the choice.’

‘It’s a curios notion, love; difficult to identify and define’ - sure is

‘Have you noticed how the most beautiful landscapes lose their brilliance as sun as our thoughts prevent us from seeing them properly?’

‘I will always remember the flat prolonged sound of a ship’s horn blowing in my ear as the summer of 1984 ended. A roar that gradually dies out, little bit little.’

‘I also know how much of yourself you have to leave behind in order to look like everyone else.’

‘Does he end up believing it himself? That’s the fundamental question. If the answer is yes, then moving forward in life would be possible. If the answer is no, then it is a live condemned to interminable misery.’ - fck my heart!!

‘Desire does not go out like a match, it extinguishes slowly as it burns into ash.’

‘How could the circles of these two existences have even one point of intersection?’ - awghhh! It’s just amazing

‘… did he simply hold on to this fundamental truth: that in the end, death is only a matter between you and yourself?’

And one final one, I know it’s long but honestly this is a a much shortened list to what’s in my other notes. The whole of the letter at the end… Lord my heart and body is attacked every time I read it (I’ve revisited it without reading the whole book). I go full goosebumps, tears well up, the full shebang. The entire letter is a 5 star read from me but that final sentence is just absolute brilliance, so don’t read on as it does contain spoilers:

‘I just wanted to write to tell you that I have been happy during these months together, that I have never been so happy, and that I already know I will never so happy again.’ - this haunts me.

Please read this book xx okay thanks bye

Third read: May 2023

Once again this book has well and truly devastated me. It’s one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking stories ever written and I will never not recommend it. Truly exceptional with a haunting last page that never leaves me, I always think about that letter… wow!

Content Warnings

marabdelmageed's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

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