Lying In Wait by Liz Nugent

Lying In Wait by Liz Nugent

Published: 14th July 2016

Publisher: Penguin Ireland

Pages: 304

Available in Paperback and on Kindle

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Rating: 5/5

Blurb

Andrew and Lydia Fitzsimons , a respectful judge and his reclusive wife, find themselves in a most unfortunate situation - they have had to murder a young woman and bury her in their exquisite garden.

While Lydia does all she can to protect their innocent son Laurence and their social standing, her husband begins to fall apart.

But Laurence is not as naïve as Lydia thinks and his obsession with the dead girls family may be the undoing of his own

Review

With the opening line ‘My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.’ Liz Nugent’s new book was guaranteed to draw the reader in and she did just that with me, I have not been so addicted to a book in such a long time. The fallout from Annie’s murder was an intense read filled with unexpected twists and some of the most devilish characters I’ve ever read about.

The story begins in late 1980 when Annie Doyle has gone missing, her sister Karen is the only person who seems concerned as Annie does not have the most reliable nature. But Karen was close to Annie and knows something is not right and becomes frustrated when the police give up on her sister, vowing to find out the truth about her sisters disappearance.

Told from the perspectives of Lydia, Laurence and Karen we gradually begin to work out Annie’s connection to the Fitzsimons and the lengths that Lydia will go to protect herself and her husband from been convicted of her murder. As Laurence begins to work things out, Lydia feeds him even more lies and he unwittingly becomes an accomplice to murder. Things become even more complex when Laurence and Karen’s lives slowly begin to intertwine. Will Lydia get away with murder? Will Laurence ever tell the truth and will Karen ever find the answers she is looking for?

It’s the characters in this book which make is so completely brilliant, never in all my time reading have I met a character I hated as much as Lydia Fitzsimons, the woman is like the devil, every time I thought she couldn’t get any worse, she did with another fantastic twist in the plot. She has become so immersed in getting what she wants that she seems to have lost all grip on reality and any sense of morality she once had and becomes completely unhinged. She is one of the most manipulative and disturbed characters which I’ve ever come across, but one I enjoyed reading about immensely.

Poor Laurence, I wanted to like him I really did but I just felt he was too much under his mother’s spell to ever really be the man I was longing him to be. He was just too weak for me, he had glimpses of what a happy life could be like but just didn’t grab hold of them enough, preferring to keep pacifying his mother’s outbursts.

Karen was the only character I actually liked, her devotion to Annie and believing the best in her was very endearing. I also loved that she was able to turn her dreams into a reality and grab the career she wanted.

I thought Lying In Wait was a brilliant novel and one which I can’t stop thinking about, it’s a book I’ve recommend to many friends, if only for them to experience Lydia for themselves. It’s full of twists and turns and an ending which actually left me shaking! Utterly brilliant and definitely not to be missed, Lying In Wait is one of the top thrillers of 2016.