I haven’t read any other Nicci French books but I like the genre and was recommended this author by a bookseller friend.
The book is aptly titled - the web of lies seems never ending and the story is full of twists and turns. An enjoyable read, though I found Neve’s initial reaction on discovering a murder somewhat unbelievable. I suppose it makes for a good read but I found it hard to get over the decisions she made and I felt a bit frustrated with her and the quandary she found herself in. It seems in the past few years that more books have ‘flawed’ main characters and this one certainly fits in this category.
Probably a 3 and a half star read if I could give a half star.

I have read a few Nicci French books and thoroughly enjoyed them. I had high expectations on starting this and although the book was a good read it didn’t hold me captive like some of the previous books. I felt there was a lot of characters to keep up with and this became a little boggling at times and off putting trying to remember who they were, how they fitted in to the story etc. Without giving much away I found some of the material a little hard to believe, for instance the scene in the flat it was too methodical, too calm I really can’t see somebody reacting to what was in there in the way Neve did. As I say it was a good read but not a fantastic read as I would have expected.

This book oozes tension, I don't think I have ever felt so anxious reading before. The atmosphere seeps through the pages into you.
Neve discovers the body of her lover Saul, and instead of ringing the police she cleans the scene. Neve doesn't want her family to know about her affair, so she does her best to wipe all traces of herself from the flat. The problem is someone does seem to know and Neve's life is about to unravel.
I highly recommend this book.

Neve has been married to Fletcher for twenty years. But she's also been having an affair with her boss. She gets a text message to meet him at his Covent Garden flat, but when she gets there, hes dead. His heads been caved in. In a blind panic, she scrubs the flat clean to erase any trace of her being there. Going out of her mind with worry, Neve decides to try and find out herself who had murdered Saul.

The Lying Rooom is a cleverly written psychological thriller. Everything in the book is perfectly described.; characters, work place, home etc. Thre storybdraws you in from the beginning and doesn't let you go. Oh how Neve maddened me, cleaning the flat of all the evidence that she had bee there, instead of calling the police. She was also cleaning away the murderers DNA as well. This is a twist filled and gripping read. I did guess all the way through to who might be the killer, and I did guess right. My only criticism is that I would ha e liked ore information about Mabels past. It was referred to often but never fully explained.

I would like to thank Netgalley, Simon and Schuster and the author Nicci French for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Neve appears to be the ‘perfect’ person. She’s married, has children, a good job and is popular with her friends and even strangers.

Her life isn’t as perfect as it seems as it’s thrown into turmoil over the course of a week after the death of someone close to her.

There are many characters and potential suspects and I couldn’t work out who might have done it.

Although I enjoyed the story and found it moved along at a good pace, I did think it was a bit far fetched and ended very neatly.

Completely gripping, the storyline hooked me straight away and I couldn't put it down. Nicely paced with a real sense of tension throughout.

A few seconds. That’s how long it takes to Neve Connolly, the protagonist of the twisty new novel by Nicci French, to make a decision that could ruin her life. When Neve finds her boss Saul dead, murdered, inside his central London flat she decides not to call the police. Instead, she cleans the place better than a professional housekeeper, removing all traces of her ever being there. Why? Although you probably figured it out why Neve acts like this, her secret is not the most important part. By not calling the police Neve sets in motions a series of events that have consequences on her and her loved ones.

Who is Neve Connolly? In her late forties, she is a wife, a worried and caring mother, a good friend, the person everyone likes and turns to when in need of advice and comfort or to spill their secrets. On the outside, she looks like everyone else, living a fairly normal life – although she stays up at night worrying about her teenage daughter, Mabel -, however, she is carrying a secret that could destroy her and, as she keeps telling lies to everyone, things become more difficult as her house fills with old friends and a persistent police detective who likes to turn up unannounced at her door.

The suspense is high. Always. The author (or I should say authors as Nicci French is the pseudonym for Nicci Gerrard and Sean French) brings the reader right inside Neve’s mind and, thanks to detailed descriptions and a wonderful writing-style, you can feel her anxiety, her guilt, her pain, her fear, and her remorse. Like Neve, I felt a sense of dread every time the police detective turned up or every time the truth risked to come to light. I loved the complexity of both the plot and the characters. The characters are very well-developed and I never knew what to expect from any of them. Neve feels realistic. She is flawed and she makes mistakes. There were times when I didn’t like her and I wanted to shook her and tell her “what are you doing???”. And there were times when I cheered her on and I read anxiously while she protected her family and tried to find a killer.

The Lying Room is a terrific, addictive, tense psychological thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat from the first to the last page and I highly recommend!

I have read quite a few Nicki French books in the past and always enjoyed them thoroughly and this was no exception. I found the twists and turns in the story kept me constantly turning the pages and really trying to guess what was coming next. I did struggle with the family dynamics at times and found myself very concerned about Mabel! I couldn’t guess who the murderer was and spent time trying to work it out.

Overall a really good read, Nicki French at her best. Thank you for letting me have the opportunity to read this book.

Thank to Netgalley for my copy of The Lying Room.

I have never read anything else by Nicci French before so had no expectations as such. This is a domestic thriller that at times is a real page turner, especially at the outset, i couldn't put it down. However, it then seemed to plod on until about half way through. I was becoming a bit disenchanted and finding quite a few little details quite unlikely. Would Neve and Fletcher really be the type of parents to call one of their children Connor, Connor Connolly? Neve, who is quite a successful host even attempting to feed about ten people with scrambled eggs
made with only a dozen eggs? I also found Mabel thoroughly annoying.

Any way, as I said halfway through my interest was piqued once more and the characters, especially Neve's work colleagues became more three dimensional. The plot thickens, the mystery expands and is followed by what seems to be a most unlikely conclusion on the part of Neve, and the police seem to think so too. Nevertheless this is followed by an explanation which makes the outcome more than plausible and proves that the reader never stood a chance of solving the crime.

A well written book in so far as I shall miss Neve now I have finished the book, and that is always a good sign.

A real sleep stealer! I couldn’t put this book down. The story just keeps building in momentum as we’re led through a tale of love, disappointment, murder and revenge. What I really enjoyed about it was that I couldn’t see the end coming! I wasn’t expecting that. It’s a very good author who can keep you guessing right up to the last paragraphs and Nikki French is most certainly an excellent author.

I’ve been trying to make an active effort to include thrillers into my current reads and considering the time of year, it’s the perfect time for me to absorb some amazing books and that’s exactly what The Lying Game was.

I was hooked from the synopsis and that feeling never left once I started reading this book. This is my first book by Nicci French and it will not be the last.

This book was full of suspense and had me second guessing every thought that crossed my mind. When I wasn’t reading this book I was thinking about it and talking to family members about it because I simply could not figure out who was the murderer. It is such a gripping psychological story that will have you suspecting every single person involved in Neve’s life.

The only reason I haven’t given this a five-star read is because I did feel that some parts of the book could have been shorter, and others could have been longer. I do feel like the ending was too clean for me and I expected a lot more from it.

This review is a lot shorter that I want it to be but it’s so hard to talk about this book without wanting to spoil everything and just talk about the whole plot. I do recommend this to anyone who loves a cleverly written psychological thriller!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

The is my first book by this writing duo and, on the back of what I read, I'd definitely be interested in starting their series - if I can sneak it into my tbr - as despite some reservations it wasn't a bad read. In this stand alone book we meet Neve. She is wife to Fletcher, mother to three children, and works for a publisher. Apart from the shenanigans with Mabel's mental health - mostly surrounding drugs - life for her is pretty mundane, verging on stale. Her relationship with Fletcher is pretty much over as illustrated by his shutting himself away in the office he works from at home for pretty much all the time. So it's no wonder that she ends up having an affair with her boss Saul. And it's the morning after one of their liaisons when we first meet her as she receives a text saying he is free for the morning. Unexpected though this is - he is supposed to be off travelling for work - she races over to his flat, the scene of the night before. Letting herself in, she is shocked to find him dead. A blood stained hammer by his side. So she does what anyone would do in the situation, she calls the police to let them investigate... Only kidding - that'd make for a very short boring book - no, instead of doing the right thing which will incriminate her as it exposes their affair, she does the next best thing - she deep cleans the flat, removing every trace of her. She then disposes of the things she has taken and returns to work. If only things were this simple as she is soon to find out. Obviously (probably) she didn't kill him but who did, and why, and with all the evidence all cleaned up, how are the police going to figure it all out?
OK so once I got over myself with what Neve did when she found the body and accepted the direction that the book was going to take me I had a wild ride trying to work it all out.
As with most books of the genre there were plenty of red herrings thrown in to divert my attention away from what I should have been concentrating on. So many secrets lies and more than its fair share of duplicitous behaviour, mostly including alcohol, to be found in this book. And not only from Neve!
Neve... well, what can I say about her apart from I really didn't like her. She came across as one of life's takers whilst at the same time playing the victim. I was kinda rooting for her to get what she deserved all the way through - my sympathies weren't really in her corner one little bit.
All that said, it was however quite a compulsive read as I really needed to know what really happened on that morning. Was I satisfied when I found out - not 100%, I'll admit. I also had a few issues with what Neve did and how the police investigation was handled which did skirt credibility for me a tad. That said, it was well written, it flowed well with appropriate pacing and didn't contain any padding or waffle so however I thought about how it was getting there, it got there quickly! My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I enjoyed this book. It follows Neve and her complicated life - wife, mother, lover, friend, but when a murder takes place her life is turned upside down and she tries to protect those she loves. But who can she trust and who is the murderer? A page-turner with a few twists! Nicci French fans will not be disappointed.

Difficult!
All through the book, which is based on a married woman finding her secret lover murdered when she goes to meet him at his flat and the repercussions of this on her, her family and her lovers family, all I could think was ‘but this is based in Holborn in Central London, the place is riddled with cctv and yet the police haven’t mentioned it and the myriad of people ( for various reasons ) who go to the flat before, during and after the murder are not perturbed by it, in fact never mention it and yet in real life the crime would have been solved in a few hours by checking it.....I know its fiction and we all give and take a bit in books but cctv is such a massive part of life now and so entwined with crime solving it really is remiss to just ignore it, for me it lost all credibility to the story, harsh maybe but there you go
Oh and also a character called Mabel, a girl about to go to University who was as likeable as gone off milk also ruined parts of the book
However that aside the writing was good and flowed well and the other character’s interesting and their interaction good, at times amusing and the story was readable
But basing it on my main gripe am afraid its a
3/10
2 Stars

Truth be told, I’m not sure what to make of this one, let alone what to tell you about it. On the one hand, it’s a clever psychological thriller with a culprit I never suspected, on the other hand, though I appreciated and enjoyed the story, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped I would. This is not my first Nicci French, although it’s been quite a while, and I’d been looking forward to being reunited with the authors who sparked my initial love for psychological thrillers sometime in the 90s. This book though? It fell a little flat…

I think the main buzzkill for me was the fact that I didn’t like any of the characters. I didn’t hate them either (to me, hating a character is just as good as loving them). I just found them annoying. Seriously, every one of them, especially the main character Neve, who we are supposed to like, I think, and feel for, but I could not, and believe me I tried. So what happens is that Neve is cheating on her husband, has been for a while, and she goes and visits her lover, who is also her boss by the way, and finds him in his apartment with his skull bashed in. Okay, please take a moment to take in that scene. Apart from the fact that I don’t see myself cheating on my husband, let alone with my boss, I do believe my first reaction in this situation would be to call the police. Yes, the cat would be out of the bag, everyone would know I’d been cheating, but at least the police would have a fair chance to apprehend the killer. Not Neve though, oh no. Her first reaction is to clean the entire apartment, lest the police find evidence of their affair. Sigh. How on earth anyone can find it in them to make a place spick-and-span while their dead lover whom they claim to love is but centimetres away, is beyond me. But okay, sure, I forgave her for this lapse of judgement, after all people in dire straits have been known to do funny things and I was ready to let it go, to move on, to let bygones be bygones. Until Neve goes home and remembers that she’s left something behind. Naturally she has to go back for it. Oh but where is her key? Oh there it is! Oh but she can’t find the thing she left behind! Oh and the murder weapon is gone too! This marked the start of a story that felt too farcical at times for me to enjoy it properly. There were too many moments of me thinking oh yeah naturally and rolling my eyes. I have no problems suspending disbelief, it’s fiction after all, but Neve never felt real to me, and neither did the other characters. They remained just that, characters. Between the old friends from uni who are suddenly there and seem to never want to leave anymore, every single colleague having issues that they need Neve to solve, the widow seeking out Neve for no apparent reason, and DCI Hitching showing up literally everywhere like a modern-day Colombo with better dress sense, I never believed any of it. We are constantly told that Neve is a saviour and so popular and loved but I never bought it.

All whinging aside, I did remain invested enough to want to find out who the killer was and how it all tied back to Neve. I don’t regret reading The Lying Room, it was certainly an okay read, it’s just that I’ve read better ones this year.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster UK and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

What happens when you tell a lie??? Eventually you will get found out. Now imagine you involve your friends and family in your lie. You have sworn them to secrecy. Well we all know what is going to happen. Once I started this book I could not put it down I HAD TO KNOW THE TRUTH!!!!! Bucket loads of tension and suspense, a dinner party from hell. Read this book in one sitting and finally turned the last page in the wee hours. This is one hell of a read no A MUST READ I LOVED IT!!!!An easy five stars and so Highly Recommended.
I would like to thank the author, Simon and Schuster UK and Netgalley for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

Another winner from the Nicci French team. I always enjoy their family dilemmas - should you cycle on the road with your son when he might be hit by a car or a towpath when he might fall in? Is it okay to have a twix for breakfast when a detective drops in? - juxtaposed with bloody hammers and corpses. As usual I didn't guess whodunit, and found it an interesting moral dilemma at the end. Four stars for this one though as I didn't find Mabel a well rounded character and it was difficult to follow her motives or understand her health problems.
Thank you to netgalley and Simon and Schuster for an advance copy of this book.

I've always wanted to read a book by Nikki French and when I got the chance thanks to Netgalley I took it.
The story revolves around Neve, her family and friends. She draws people to her and her homely house. Neve and her husband, Fletcher, have been married for a long time, their daughter, Mabel, has had problems with drugs and is about to leave for university. Life is beginning to get back to normal although Mabel is still vulnerable.
Neve has a secret though. She's been having an affair with her boss from work and when she gets a text message from him to meet at his London flat life takes a very dark turn. Her boss has been murdered.
When I first started reading this book I couldn't put it down, I needed to know what happened next. The writing style ensured that I was wanting to read this at every opportunity..
About three quarters through, however, I started to get a bit cross with Neve and her deceitful behaviour.
When I found out who the murderer was it came as a bit contrived at first but the last chapter gives an incite into why things happened the way they did.
All in all a good read.

The Lying Room is the first book that I have read by Nicci French and the concept and sypnosis were excellent.

Unfortunately I felt that the book failed to deliver on this promise with it being boring and not gripping me into wanting to read it.

Sorry but not one for me

First Nicci French novel I have read. I know! Where have I been? I finished it over two long nights. Brilliant twisty plausible plot which left me wanting more. What would you do if you discovered the man you were having an affair with had been murdered in his flat. You discover the body when you turn up for an illicit rendezvous. The author deftly explores modern dilemmas: the protagonist Neve and her relationship with her difficult and on the surface unlikable teenage daughter. Her staid marriage and complex relationship with work and university friends. Loved it!