1.5 Stars When I started this book I knew that it’s average GR rating is relatively low. I try not to let that influence my decision of whether or not to pick up a book. There have been many times I’ve picked up a book with low expectations to be pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, this was not my experience with There Will Be Lies. It’s funny, because there was something about it that kept me reading. And despite the fact that this was over 450 pages long (which is totally unnecessary) I read until the end.

That may be part of the reason I was so disappointed. I had figured out every twist and reveal long before they happened, so I assumed that along the way one of those things would end up being a misdirect...but nope.

Anyway, on with the review.

What I liked:

1. Um...honestly, the more I think about this the less I can find that I can say I actually ‘liked.’

What I didn’t like:

1. The book is mis-marketed. When I picked this book up I was expecting a thriller. And there is a mystery aspect to it, but like I said, it was totally predictable. However, this book ended up being part thriller, part Native-American mythology inspired fantasy.

2. Now, I don’t know much about the tribes indigenous to the Southwestern United States or their mythology, but even so, I didn’t feel like the author was actually knowledgeable with what he was writing. He mentions the Navajo, Apache, and Yavapai tribes and then says that they live at the Yavapai reservation. First of all, why would the Navajo and Apache peoples live on a Yavapai reservation? They have their own reservations. Plus, there is more than one reservation. There is also more than one Apache tribe. Perhaps if this book had been written by a person who is a member of one of those tribes...but it’s not. In any case, the fact that a large percentage of this book takes place in a mythological plane of existence was not something I signed up for when I dove into this story.

And to be honest, the story would’ve been stronger without it, in my opinion. I wasn’t interested in whether or not she would complete her quest because it was obvious from the beginning that her ‘quest’ was symbolic of what she was actually going through in real life. None of the twists that were revealing in the Dreaming were surprised at all for me because the foreshadowing had no nuance whatsoever. It was like being hit over the head with a sledgehammer. Tedious would be an accurate statement.

The only thing the parts in the Dreaming accomplished was to stretch what could’ve been a 250 page YA thriller into a 450 page mess.

2. I didn’t appreciate how the fact that Shelby was Deaf is treated as a big twist. First of all, if you were paying attention, it was obvious. Like I said, the foreshadowing in this book lacks any sense of subtlety. But using it as this big reveal just annoyed me. So there. I spoiled a twist for you. Sorry, not sorry.

3. Technical issues with the writing/structure. This was the first thing that I had a problem with in this book, because it was obvious right away. This book takes place in Arizona, from Shelby’s POV. She is an American, born and bred. So to read words like kerb (curb), programme (program), annexe (annex), storey (story), centre (center), and tyre (tire) took me right out of the story. The author is British, which explains the spelling of these words, but his story takes place in the U.S. and his main character is American. Using the British spellings of words makes no sense whatsoever. In another part of the book, the word ‘COPS’ (with capitalization) is used by Shelby and her mother makes fun of her for saying COPS instead of police. As if Americans don’t use the word cops all the time.

Another judge problem I had was that there is no punctuation denoting dialogue in this book. Now, I’ve read books that are written without quotation marks. But this was confusing because sometimes dialogue would be italicized, and sometimes it wasn’t. Then all of the words that would normally be italicized to denote emphasis were written in ALL CAPS instead.

There were some different things done with structure in this book that I just didn’t care about. There would be entire pages with one or two words, there would be page breaks if Shelby was trying to describe something as spacious, and a lot of attempts at illustration using various punctuation marks. None of this really worked for me. It felt like the author was trying too hard to be quirky instead of focusing on creating an engaging and interesting story.

4. Characters purposely withhold information for no reason. This is so aggravating. There is a character with Shelby who has all the answers, and tells her he has all the answers, but when she asks him questions he says that he won’t tell her because she has to figure it out on her own. No real reason given, and all it does is prolong the book even more. Especially when the answers are so glaringly obvious to anyone paying attention.

5. The author of this book is an adult man. He is writing from the perspective of a teenage girl. It is obvious that this is the case. Shelby sounds like any number of stereotypical teenage girls...that is, not authentic.

6. Body-shaming. Shelby focuses a lot on her mom and the fact that she’s overweight. It is incessant through the first part of the book, and present throughout. I didn’t like it, especially because she kept comparing her mom to herself.

7. I feel like there is a really dangerous message in this book about domestic abuse. When Shelby is reunited with her bio parents, she learns that they are incredibly competitive, to the point that her father actually throws a baseball at her in order to intentionally hit her because he got annoyed that she kept hitting everything he pitched to her.

Then, even knowing what she knows about Shaylene, Shelby calls her to come pick her up. Immediatey before relaying that moment, she speak directly to the reader, and basically equates her situation to that of a battered wife in order to excuse her behavior, all with a very flippant attitude.

Then after everything is finally resolved and Shaylene is in jail, Shelby basically excuses everyone’s awful behavior. She excuses Shaylene for kidnapping her. She excuses her father for hitting her with the baseball. On page 445, she says “I mean, he’s competitive. So what? His wife and kids still love him. He doesn’t lock children up in prisons of ice. He doesn’t steal toddlers. Everyone has faults — get over it.” She is saying this to the reader —to me. And you know what? No. No I won’t ‘get over it’, and that is a terrible message to embrace. The fact that it is a man writing this book as a teenage girl makes me even more upset about her whole attitude.

There is another point in the book where Shelby says something like, “So negligent parents deserve to have their kids taken away?” As if this is a wholly unreasonable consequence. Now, I’m not saying that every parent whose child gets hurt is negligent. Kids get hurt, no matter how closely you try to watch their every move. But if a parent is truly negligent, then yes. They shouldn’t have custody of their child without some sort of supervision.

Other odds and ends:

1. What the heck happened to Shaylene’s husband? Did she kill him? Did he divorce her in absentia??

2. Shelby is supposed to be uber smart (like, genius status), but calls a stethoscope ‘one of those things for listening to your chest. (pg 231)

3. She says she lived in ‘South Alaska’ until she was four. No one who has lived in AK would say that. I say that as someone who was raised in Alaska. For anyone who doesn’t know, Alaska is freaking huge. To say ‘South Alaska’ could mean anything from Attu Island , which is only 250 miles from the Siberian coastline; to Ketchikan, which is about 120 miles from Prince Rupert, British Columbia..They are 1,685 miles away from each other, and are in different time zones. That would be like driving from Phoenix, Arizona to Mobile, Alabama. Anyone who was from Alaska would be more specific. For example, someone from Ketchikan would say they were from Southeast Alaska. I know that she was only four when she left, but it is just one more inaccuracy from the author that I didn’t like. Again, this girl is supposed to be a genius.

So, needless to say I won’t be holding on to this book or recommending it to anyone. I also don’t see myself reaching for another one of his books in the future.