A review by spersephone
Silent Lies by Kathryn Croft

2.0

Arrrgggghhhhh! Why do I bother reading Kathryn Croft? Her books sound awesome, brilliant ideas behind them, but slowly, they just get tedious.

All the characters have some deep, dark secrets. No-one is just real and flawed. What in God's name was the purpose of Josie's mother and the beating in her past? Exactly what did it add to the story? Was it going to be somehow connected to anything else?

Mia, as the main, innocent party of the story was relatively understandable and relatable most of the way through. However, there was no real explanation of how she ended up with her new boyfriend, and he seemed far too perfect to be true.

Zach also came across as being far too good, but there were all these snide comments about what he'd done. Except that it was never truly explained at all, until the end where it become somewhat clear what he was supposed to have done. It may have been helped by a newspaper clipping or similar that came out and said what he was accused of doing, much earlier in the story.

The main twist was so over the top and uncalled for. I mean you could write a story about a cat and dog who are friends, and then suddenly the cat rips out the dog's throat and then pretends to be innocent, blaming it all on the mouse. You'd just go, 'huh?' and shake your head at the stupidity of the way it was dealt with.

It could have worked.

Stop with all the over-dramatisation of every single character. Include nice, mundane scenes that remind us that this could happen to any of us!!

Unfortunately, it just ends up being a silly caricature of a story.