Title: The Lies that Sinners Tell

Author: Anne Malcolm

This is the first in a duet.

Despite my hatred for cliffhangers I know I could trust Anne with a duet and I wasn’t disappointed.

I struggled a bit with the POV on this one. The story is told mostly from Stella’s point of view; first person, but there are some sections third person from Jay which took a bit to get my head around.

Stella is light, easy, fluffy, a little bit of a shopaholic and with some of those shoes I can see why. But there’s an underlying fear, a darkeness, one that is only drawn into the light when she enters an arrangement with Jay.

Jay is a little bit of an enigma as we don’t see a lot from his point of view. He’s obviously involved in some dark business, something he doesn’t want Stella exposed to. But there’s a terrified, broken, little boy underneath the hard exterior.

I love her friends. I love how their thoughts and feelings change over the course of the book, that they’re not tied to their initial expectations for her.

I’m interested to see where this one is going, to see what comes in the second half of their story.

This isn’t a typical Anne Malcolm story. This isn’t a typical romance. This is something different, something else, and I’m intrigued to see how she pulls it all together!