Good read! Really enjoyed this book! It’s been easy to read and I stayed up far too late to finish with no regrets

I found the story fascinating. It’s beautifully written, the characters and the way the history is interwoven is v powerful.

Morgan and Anna were such wonderful characters and I found a lot of questions that have resonance still today. The connection through art is clever.

A winner from Ms Chamberlain

I got a free copy of this book from Netgalley. Foolishly, I hadn't realised I had only a few days between downloading and the archiving date, so I had to put all my other current books aside and rush this one through. And, I loved every minute of it.

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but this particular cover really doesn't do the book justice. There's quite a 'thing' at the moment for books with *Lies* in the title and I was expecting something rather less substantial than this intriguing tale of southern racism mixed with art restoration mixed with redemption.

Let me just address the title because it does this book no big favours because there really aren't that many big lies to go at. A few people are involved in a cover-up, but lies are really not the theme of this book.

We meet two women, separated by 78 years but joined by a love of art. In 1940, fresh out of art school, Anna wins a commission to paint a mural to hang in a small town post office. As a northerner, she's a stranger to the racism of the southern states and a bit of a shock to the locals with her trousers and her cropped hair. She needs to battle the widely held belief amongst the locals that the job should have gone to one of their own. In 2018, Morgan has just been released from prison on parole with the condition that she works to restore the mural that Anna painted all those years before. The two women are connected by the controversial but very successful and now very dead black artist Jesse Jameson Williams who owned the mural and wanted to the centrepiece of his art gallery.

The book is a delight. The balance of the two women's stories is good and their links to Jesse are gently revealed as the book progresses. A lot has changed in the years between the painting and the restoration, but arguably not enough.

I found the information about painting restoration really interesting and I enjoyed Morgan uncovering the original painting in parallel with the book uncovering the stories behind it. I'm not sure I ever completely understood the symbolism of the motorcycle or the more violent images, but enough of the loose ends were tied up to keep me satisfied, especially the big reveal of what happened to Anna.

Chamberlain never disappoints, and this was no exception. The tale tells the story of two women over different timeframes – Anna in 1940 and Morgan in 2018. Both are artists, both are running away from events in their past which have saddened them greatly and both have little confidence in their artistic ability in the tasks they have been given. The story centres around a mural – Anna has been chosen to produce and Morgan has been chosen to restore it almost 80 years later. The mural was one of the U.S. Post Office Murals which were commissioned between 1934-43 – one of the projects to help artists following the Great Depression. The artists were selected via a competition, and in this fictional story, Anna was selected to paint the mural for the Post Office in Edenton, North Carolina. Chamberlain takes us on a journey of small town America and the many issues that were present in 1940 and those of today as well as the personal issues of the main characters. As the book draws to an end – a utterly captivating end – the threads that have trailed their way through the book are woven into a beautiful tapestry – a true work of art. It was such a pleasure to read this wonderful, both heart breaking and heart warming book. I was given a free copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. Thank you for the opportunity.
Wow, this book is amazing and intense. I just sat back after that last page and thought wow. It is beautifully crafted, moving from Anna to Morgan's POV in a timely manner, each picking up on a thread from the other. The writing is lovely and has its own unique flow to it.
The characters are memorable and interesting. The story is unique without having commonly used tropes seen in other books and packed full with twists and turns until the very last page. The story is intensive and immersive, I'd set some time aside to read this book as you won't be able to stop reading it!
I would recommend this book to anyone.