Happy publication day to ‘The Good Liars’ – 17th August, 2023.
I loved the sound of this one – a 1920s tale of guilt and ghosts, mystery and murder. Thank you to the lovely people at HQ Stories for my review copy of this book.
This book centres on the Stilwell family of Darkacre Hall – Maurice, his wife Ida, his brother Leonard and long-time family friend Victor. When a policeman arrives at the house following up new information about the disappearance of a boy in 1914, the family (along with new servant, Sarah Hove) find themselves under scrutiny. Events conspire to make the meeting even more prolonged and intense, leading the family to re-evaluate the past and their relationships.
The story opens with a heartbreaking scene in which a woman tries to get her son’s name included on the village war memorial with no success. This begins the thread that runs throughout the book focused on the effects of war – those who were lost, and those who survived with lasting trauma. Each of the characters in the book is living in the shadow of war, suffering from physical effects, PTSD or intense grief and loss. This is a theme that Frank explores in depth and with real poignancy. This added an emotional depth to the novel that I really wasn’t expecting. It was so beautifully done and my heart absolutely went out to the poor, innocent boys who found themselves in the trenches of World War I – those who died and those who never recovered either physically or mentally.
When I first started reading, I’ll admit that I found the characters mostly quite unlikeable – exactly as Frank intended, I think. As the past started to come to light, I found that my sympathies began to shift and I became engrossed in the complex back-stories that brought each of them to this moment in 1920. The writer cleverly uses an omniscient narrator to give subtle insights into each of the characters, although the focus is often Sarah who is navigating the complex dynamics at Darkacre Hall along with the reader.
With the focus on war, secrets, lies, loss and grief, you’d expect that the mystery element would take a back seat but I actually didn’t find this the case. I found myself wanting to read on to find out what happened to the missing boy – and the denouement of the novel was a total surprise, even though I’d picked up little clues along the way and had pieces of the puzzle.
There’s also a ghostly strand to the story – something that both appealed to me in principle but that I sometimes find challenging or unrealistic in practice. Again, this was well handled by Frank and genuinely chilling in places. It reminded me slightly of the kind of supernatural tension that Sarah Waters writes so well – creepy, plausible and unnerving!
This was an easy five star read for me – it wasn’t at all what I expected, but was all the better for the psychological insight, subtle exploration of the effects of war and the surprising twists along the way. I couldn’t put this down and – now that I have had it prised out of my hands – it will stay with me for a long time to come.
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