Book Reviews

She Lies Close by Sharon Doering

How far would you go to protect the ones you love?

For six months now, Ava Boones has been missing. Without any leads, witnesses or arrests the small town is bustling with worry.

Grace Wright, a newly single mother of two children moves to a new neighborhood in an effort to start again. But soon she discovers she is living next door to the only suspect in the Ava Boones case, an old man named Leland Ernest.

Grace, sleep-deprived and anxiety ridden develops an obsession with the case and is determined Leland is guilty. Lines between dream and reality blur and Grace learns exactly how far she will go to keep her children safe.

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This book was quite different from how I’d anticipated it would be. Rather than a quickly building thriller, it was a slow-building story about a woman and her mental health issues. Nevertheless, the story was wickedly intriguing and pulled me right in. I had to know the truth! And it was not at all what I expected.

Doering’s writing style was quite good, something I don’t always find with thrillers. I appreciated the building of tension, the suspicion of everyone and the frustration of not knowing the truth. I liked this book but I found myself thinking the ending felt so abrupt. After all the building, the conclusion just didn’t deliver in ways that I wanted it to. There were details in the middle that didn’t feel necessary. We go through lots of inner-dialogue with Grace, how she cannot sleep, and the trouble she is experiencing. I think some of that could’ve been cut down so we could’ve been introduced to the truth in earlier chapters rather than have them thrown at us in the last chapters of the book. 

Overall, I do recommend She Lies Close. It is a debut, first book for Sharon Doering and I would definitely pick up her next book, I just hope the next one one hits the mark a bit more than this one did. I will not be surprised if Doering becomes a well-known name within the thriller genre. 

PUBLICATION DETAILS: Titan Books; November 10th, 2020; 9781789094190; Fiction/Thriller