Lucy works hard to complete her latest book while her husband Dan looks after everything else. Has she given him too much power and how does he use it? A house move Lucy was not involved in rakes up horrid memories for a Lucy of her childhood when her little brother Teddy disappeared.
Gripping novel with great characters, dark and twisted at times. Great read.

Firstly, I would like to thank Net Galley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.

This is the first book I have read by this author, and it was a first class psychological thriller. It’s about
Lucy Harper, a successful author, who is married to an objectionable man called Dan. She experienced trauma in her early life when her younger brother, Teddy, went missing after she had taken him with her to a Summer Solstice celebration in the woods near her home in the middle of the night, unknown to their parents. He was never found, and this has haunted her since then.

She has an alter ego, Eliza, who has been with her all her life, and who has a huge impact on what she says and does. Her husband disappears, and the book is taken up with the investigation into this, and also her ongoing attempts to try to discover what happened to her young brother. There were times when I wished that she listened less to Eliza and instead did or said what she herself thought was right. I think this often got her into more trouble than necessary.

As it was the the book came to a satisfactory end as far as her husband was concerned, but not so for her little brother.

I would recommend this book.

4+

Lucy Harper is a very successful author of a crime series featuring DS Eliza Grey. She is married to Daniel who has aspirations of literary success but has not succeeded so he manages aspects of Lucy’s life. Daniel is jealous of her success which manifests itself in various ways and then one night after a disagreement Daniel disappears. Lucy has a past she has kept hidden. When she was nine her younger brother Teddy, aged three also disappears at solstice celebrations in Stoke Woods near her family’s home near Bristol. Now her past and present collide and separating truth from lie, suspicion and disbelief and fact from fiction is a fascinating quest. The story is told by Lucy and is interspersed with the night of Teddy’s disappearance and the search to find him.

The characters are very well portrayed. Lucy’s alter ego is Eliza and this is fascinating as there’s often a power play between them. You question Lucy’s reliability and honesty as a narrator as she seems very controllable by Daniel and Eliza. Daniel is probably one of the most loathsome spouses I have read in fiction recently. Some of his actions are so outrageous it makes my fists clench, he has the sensitivity of a charging rhino, the perception of an earthworm or is it all calculation on his part? The setting of the book is excellent as the woods where Teddy disappears are both colourfully magical yet also threatening and menacing which provides a great atmosphere. The storyline is good, you feel Lucy’s pain about Teddy, her confusion over Daniel and her conflicted feelings about him. It’s a well written novel and it’s fast paced with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. This is a good suspense thriller although I’m not entirely certain about the resolution with regard to Daniels disappearance but I did like the other ambiguities so it’s make your own mind up, reader!

Overall, I enjoyed this very much, I like the ways it’s written and it keeps to guessing to the end. Highly recommended.

Many years ago a young boy went missing in woods near Bristol on the night of the summer solstice. He has never been found alive or dead.
Today, Lucy Harper is a best-selling novelist but remains haunted by what may have happened to her younger brother all those years ago. She has just written her famous series character Eliza out of her latest book but neither her publisher or the imaginary Eliza are happy about this.
So begins one of the most gripping and compelling psychological thrillers I have read in a very long time. It is impossible to guess what will happen next either in the present day story or the past. Gilly MacMillan writes far too cleverly for that.
Each page permeates with a sense of impending doom. Why has Lucy always insisted that her brother was taken away by the spirits of the woods?
Powerful and unsettling, this story will stay with you long after the final page is turned

This book really kept me guessing, I don’t like being able to predict what might happen and I certainly didn’t with this. Lucy is an author, married to a man who perhaps might not be the supportive husband he may first appear to be. When they move house, the past comes back to haunt Lucy and we question what she might have been or be capable of. This is full of suspense and I raced through the pages reading into the night to reach the end. I really enjoyed this.

The story was quite good but would have been better had she not had an invisible friend who she was always talking to it got on my nerves. I couldn’t warm to any of the characters and couldn’t picture any of them it’s a shame because it could have been so much better, but having said that it was well written and kept you reading until the end.

Hey everyone,
This is not a Challenge 2020 read, this is my FIRST EVER Netgalley book review!
What is Netgalley you ask? Netgalley is something I've recently joined for free and is a website distributing digital proofs of books, many of which are yet to be published. When you see a book you like the sound of you can request a copy. You then wait for an email to either say 'you've been unsuccessful' or 'congratulations here's your copy' after that you read the book and post the review on Netgalley and your blog and then publish your review on Amazon on the release day. Exciting stuff right?
My very first Netgalley book review is for To Tell You The Truth - Gilly Macmillan. Here's the blurb:
"Lucy Harper has a talent for invention…
She was nine years old when her brother vanished in the woods near home. As the only witness, Lucy’s story of that night became crucial to the police investigation. Thirty years on, her brother’s whereabouts are still unknown. 
Now Lucy is a bestselling thriller writer. Her talent for invention has given her fame, fortune, and an army of adoring fans. But her husband, Dan, has started keeping secrets of his own, and a sudden change of scene forces Lucy to confront some dark, unwelcome memories. Then Dan goes missing and Lucy’s past and present begin to collide. Did she kill her husband? Would she remember if she did?
Finally, Lucy Harper is going to tell us the truth.
Cross her heart. 
And hope to die."
Sounds intriguing right? Check out my review below:

"My dreams had been horrible, the kind that taunt you, torment you, wring every bead of sanity out of you..."
This is the tale of Lucy. She is an award winning author with her detective novels with a female detective, Detective Sergeant Eliza Grey as her main character.
"I could find beauty in surprising things. You have to when violence reverberates through your work."
What her readers don't realise, is Eliza is Lucy's imaginary friend and been with her since childhood.
"...it is impossible to separate truth from fiction."
Lucy is married to Dan, once a keen author now her biggest supporter of her work and helps ensure that everything is kept up together.
"Your soul is your own...no matter what you say or do. You and it are answerable only to one another. It is both your conscience and your essence."
When Dan surprises Lucy with a house, you'd think it'd be any girls dream but this house is on Charlotte Close, a road Lucy had vowed never to return too and Dan knew this.
" After all, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that not all surprises are good ones. Especially when you're keeping a secret yourself."
What is he playing at?
"I had the horrible feeling that I had become a pawn in a game..."
When Dan doesn't return home and the police discover his car burnt out at the side of the road, the question is not missing person any more...it's homicide; Lucy is the prime suspect.
"How could I trust anyone else when I couldn't even trust myself?"
Things get worse when her past starts coming back to haunt her and when both her brother's disappearance and her husbands murder collide, she realises there is a link.
"It's because she's a fibber. Always has been, always will be."
When her husbands demons start creeping out of the closet, its time for Lucy to start using her own detective skills.
"...my husband had believed me to be a monster."
But where is her brother Teddy? Who killed Dan?
"Fiction isn't just about what you find in books, it's the lies we tell ourselves. They can be sturdy lies we use as scaffolding, lifes with an abrasive edge to scour our consciences clean, lies that settle over things we'd rather not see like a pure drift of snow. There are many other permutations, but whatever form they take these are lies that we love and loathe.
'The only way to avoid creating your own fiction is not to think at all." The Truth - Lucy Harper
This is a book written in two settings - one is Lucy and Dan, the other is from Lucy's past when Teddy went missing. It really helps as they bring the story together.
I'll be honest, to begin with the story didn't grip me like I was expecting it too, I found it quite easy to pick up and put down. But once Dan went missing I was hooked and couldn't put it down! There is still a missing piece, an unanswered question in the book but there are definitely arrows pointing in certain directions so we, the readers, can come to our own conclusions. 3.5/5 stars for me because it definitely got better!

Find it on [amazon text=Amazon&asin=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tell-You-Truth-Gilly-Macmillan-ebook/dp/B083Q5GJ6H/ref=sr_1_1?crid=39TPPADC7X9LX%26dchild=1%26keywords=to+tell+you+the+truth+gilly+macmillan%26qid=1589119414%26sprefix=to+tell+you%2Caps%2C189%26sr=8-1] from June 25th!

Until next time,
Keep reading,
D x

When Lucy Bewley was nine-years-old she crept out of the house on the night of the summer solstice to watch the pagan celebrations in Stoke Woods. Her four-year-old brother, Teddy, would have woken the house if she hadn't taken him with her. But in the early hours of the morning, Lucy returned home without Teddy, hoping that he would have got home before her. He hadn't and no one has seen him since. Lucy's story was crucial to the police investigation, but it keeps subtly changing. Lucy is being advised by her imaginary friend, Eliza Grey and Eliza says that there are certain things which Lucy must not tell the police.

Thirty years later, Teddy's whereabouts are still unknown. To avoid publicity, Lucy became Lucy Brown and then her name changed again when she married Dan Harper. She's a best-selling author now and the heroine of her stories is DS Eliza Grey. Eliza still appears to Lucy, even dictates to her, and between Eliza and Dan, Lucy's life is not easy. Dan planned to be an author, probably still thinks that he is the better writer, but he's taken over the administration of Lucy's life. He works for his wife.

He does have some talents, though. He can manipulate and he can spend money. When Lucy finishes writing her fourth novel (Dan's keen on deadlines) he blindsides her by announcing that he's bought a grand house for them, backing onto Stoke Woods. Lucy is horrified - and then Dan goes missing. It's not long before the police discover Lucy's past - and now they want to know what she's done with her husband.

It's a year or so since I read Gilly Macmillan's The Nanny, so when the chance to read To Tell You the Truth came along I wasn't inclined to resist reading another well-plotted, exciting story. Would I be disappointed? No - if anything this book was even better than the last one.

The characters are excellent. Lucy's conflicted and easily manipulated: she has her childhood to thank for that. She's gathered around her some strong and quite ruthless characters. Eliza might be a figment of Lucy's imagination, but she's the character who has Lucy's best interests at heart but even she can be a bit wilful. Dan obviously resents Lucy's success, whilst taking every advantage of her earnings and furthering his own schemes. He's easy to dislike (I had no problems!) but Lucy loves him.

The plot is clever without being too clever. Once I accepted Eliza Grey as a character (an imaginary character would normally have me throwing the book against the wall) and understood Lucy's relationship with Dan, I couldn't turn the pages quickly enough and I certainly got through the book a lot sooner than I expected. My guess as to the identity of the wrong 'un wasn't even close!

I can't wait to read what Gilly Macmillan writes next and I'd like to thank the publishers for letting Bookbag have a review copy.

Really enjoyed this book. There were plenty of twists and turns, it really kept me guessing until the end

I have loved all of Gilly Macmillan’s previous books, so I was so excited about getting this one, thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone.
Sadly, it didn’t live up to the same standards as her previous books. I found that the main character, Lucy, seems to have difficulty being honest, and has a chaotic existence as a result that often makes her unlikeable. I don’t mind an unlikeable character in some novels but there was no sense of integrity to Lucy, and her actions at times seemed unrealistic. There were a number of unpredicted twists, some I enjoyed and some seemed hasty in order to terminate a certain part of the story line. Easy to read, and I am sure it will be more intriguing to some other readers who can put aside their feelings about Lucy!

This book was intriguingly dark and very suspenseful. It must be one of the best I have read that keeps you questioning every action and every character, trying to connect the pieces literally all the way through. It really didn’t go in the direction I thought and my mind is still reeling a little. It did drop a star because I felt not every clue or red herring was satisfactorily tied up at the end, but overall if you want an edge of your seat suspense book then I have to recommend this one. I rated it 4⭐️.

I really enjoyed this book! The story is about a girl who goes into the woods one night, with her little brother, but comes back alone. She grows up to be an author of crime fiction. The author of this book did a really good job of portraying a woman who has felt alone her whole life carrying the guilt from what happened that evening. She is betrayed by the few people she has come to trust throughout her lonely life. She retreats into her private world with her imaginary friend from childhood; not really sure what is true and what isnt until she finally comes to peace with her past.

Three decades ago, Lucy Harper's younger brother Teddy disappeared after the two of them snuck into the woods at night. Back then, Lucy's wild imagination meant that her account of what happened was half truth and half flight of fancy. As an adult, Lucy's tendency to live in a dream world has secured her a career as a best-selling author of crime fiction, with a beloved recurring character based on her imaginary childhood friend, Eliza. Except nobody knows that Eliza sometimes appears in Lucy's real life, too.

Married to Dan, a would-be writer whose ambitions have never been realised, Lucy keeps her world small and safe. Until Dan surprises her: he's purchased a house in the same neighbourhood as Lucy's childhood home, backing into the woods where Teddy disappeared all those years ago.

Away from the city and her familiar routines, Lucy begins to unravel. And when Dan goes missing, her life and her past are suddenly subject to public scrutiny. Did Lucy kill her husband? What really happened to Teddy? Is Lucy the victim - or is she the perpetrator?

Sometimes the lines between fact and fiction are blurred, and Gilly MacMillan manipulates that brilliantly in To Tell You The Truth. I've been a huge fan of all of her novels, but this one is something special. I loved that the central protagonist was a writer, and although I've seen this trope employed dozens of times, it's given an extra layer here with the addition of Eliza, who is both the lingering presence of Lucy's imaginary childhood friend, and the ballsy star of Lucy's bestselling detective novels. The Eliza angle is an interesting one, and works beautifully, adding extra complexity to an already complex character - Eliza is an extraordinary mix of comfort blanket, protector, and confidante, and we're never quite sure if she's the figment of imagination she started out as, or if she's the person-shaped manifestation of mental illness.

The novel switches between the present day and Lucy's childhood, both stories unfolding at a deftly managed pace. I was hooked from the first chapter - Gilly has a way of writing that is both elegant and accessible, and her characters are well-rounded and believable. I loved the central story, and I love when an author decides to make the narrator unreliable - although we empathise with Lucy and feel sorry for her in a lot of ways, we're never quite sure whether we can fully trust her, largely because she can't trust herself. I really resented real-life interruptions while reading the book, and would have happily read it in one long sitting if possible.

I'd recommend any of Gilly Macmillan's novels as they're all superb, but this one is my favourite so far - gripping, twisty, intense, and unexpected. I absolutely loved it. Five shiny stars from me, and I'd give it more if I could!

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher of this book, who gave me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, until I got to the end, which I found most unsatisfying. Throughout the book you had a possibly unreliable narrator, hallucinations and a husband acting suspiciously, all of which drew you in, only for it to end with (spoiler alert) the husband having been killed by a criminal syndicate and still no answer on what happened to Teddy. Could have been so much better.

This is the first Gilly Macmillan book I've read and I have to admit I've read better books in this genre. Right from the start I took an instant dislike to Lucy and Dan. Why would an intelligent woman allow her husband to spend her money without her knowledge? For me the best part of the story was when Lucy took her little brother out without their parents knowing and what happened afterwards.

Lucy Bewley was nine when her little brother Teddy went missing. Lucy desperately wanted to see the summer solstice celebrations taking place in the woods near her home.
As she was leaving the house, Teddy woke up, so she decided to take him with her.
A few hours later, she returns home without him.
What happened to him, her imaginary friend Eliza might know!
Thirty years on what happened to Teddy was still a mystery.
Lucy is now married to Dan and is a crime writer, and she has written a best seller detective series based on Eliza, but now feels she would like to write a different genre.
Her husband, Dan, who is controlling and manipulative,
is her assistant, he is jealous of her success but enjoys the financial rewards of her hugely profitable franchise.
They decide to move into a house near to her childhood home.
Dan disappears.
The police suspect her.
Is history repeating itself?

I thoroughly enjoyed this psychological thriller that keeps you guessing to the end.
A must-read for all psychological thriller readers.
I want to thank NetGalley, Random House UK, Cornerstone and author Gilly Macmillan for a pre-publication copy to review.

An excellent read.

Lucy, a little girl leaves her house in the middle of the night. She returns home, hours later, minus her little brother Teddy.

Years later, Lucy is grown, a successful author, married to Dan.

Dan is a failed author.

Then Dan goes missing.

To Tell You the Truth is a first rate thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Sharp, complex, gripping and twisty, with an ending that literally doesn’t even cross your mind, Gilly Macmillan does not disappoint!

Lucy Harper is a successful crime novelist, who has a very big secret. As a child her brother went missing and the police never discovered the truth. Lucy has always been a natural story teller and nobody knows whether she’s telling the truth or spinning a yarn. Her imaginary friend Eliza might just know what happened, but she won’t let Lucy tell... When history seems to repeat itself and Lucy’s husband goes missing, it’s clear that not everything is as it seems. Does Lucy know more than she is letting on? Is Eliza slowly taking over Lucy’s mind? And what exactly was Dan up to before he disappeared?

To Tell You the Truth is a very well written psychological thriller that twists and turns at an impressive pace and immerses the reader into the dark and deceitful world if it’s characters. It’s no overstatement here to say that nobody is quite who they seem in this novel. Macmillan’s characterisation of Lucy is perfection - you’ll find yourself flitting between vehemently believing she is guilty of both disappearances and being convinced that she is innocent on all fronts. The relationship between Lucy and Eliza borders on dangerously toxic and there are many moments where you find yourself questioning Lucy’s sanity. Is she schizophrenic, or psychopathic? Is she suffering from a mental breakdown? Is she the victim of a cruel game inflicting psychological torture on her? Macmillan will keep you guessing until the very end and you may find yourself surprised with the outcome!

The supporting characters are very well developed here and there are a myriad of viable suspects who may have been involved in Dan’s disappearance. Lucy’s interactions with the neighbours are laden with suspense, misdirection and at times pathos. Whilst the disappearance of her husband is the dominant storyline, the historical story of Lucy’s brother Teddy is also a key element that meanders through the narrative. Chapters that recall Lucy’s viewpoint of Teddy’s disappearance and the subsequent police investigation are interspersed between the present day events and help to build tension and paint a broader picture of suspicion over Lucy. However, as the narrative progresses you will find that these chapters are not exactly what they seem either...

Overall, Macmillan has written a thoroughly enjoyable psychological thriller that builds to an exciting unforeseen conclusion. This is a perfect read for crime thriller fans and you won’t be disappointed!

We find Lucy is a master at story telling, she's done it since she was a young girl and is now a best selling author. When she has finished her latest novel, she finds Dan her husband has bought a house near where she lived when she was a girl. This only exaggerates Eliza's (her imaginary friend from childhood and character in her novels) influence on her. It also brings to the front memories of her brother Teddy's disappearance and her involvement in it. Then Dan's car turns up burned out one night at the side of the road after an argument with Lucy, and blood is found in their house! Has she killed Dan, and did she have anything to do with Teddy's disappearance? Will we find out. Well written with lots of red herrings.
Loved this book couldn't put it down, thank you net galley for letting me read this book and will be looking for more from Gilly Macmillan in the future.

A tense and well written thriller about Lucy, a very successful writer with a dark background, an alter ego who is the main character in her books and a controlling, manipulative husband. Her past and present come together and haunt her - her missing brother, now (thankfully) missing husband and the neighbours from hell. I found it hard to sympathise with Lucy and felt she needed a good shaking at times, metaphorically of course; the ending was satisfactory for her present situation but completely not so for past events. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, cornerstone for an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.