The Five Year Lie Book Review
Sarina Bowen - The Five Year Lie
A Domestic Thriller
Free on Kindle Unlimited with Audio Book companion
I love to read and have always loved to read. I attribute that to my Mom who always had a book in her hands (and still does!) while I was young and always encouraged me to read. I have always loved mystery books - always. Since the 1980’s mystery books are broken out into very specific categories: Psychological Thrillers, Domestic Thrillers, Mystery Thrillers and more! In preparing to write this book review, it was very interesting to see the categories and how the books that I’ve read fall into those categories.
I think my first mystery book was The Dollhouse Murders and from there it escalated to Steven King, V.C. Andrews and Mary Higgins Clark…and I just haven’t stopped since then. Every once in a while, I will mix in a non-thriller book, but thriller are my true joy. My true escape. In retrospect a lot of the books were probably totally age inappropriate, but my Mom was okay with it since I was reading and that was all that mattered to her.
Julia has her first Scholastic Book Fair coming up and I volunteered to work at it. I am so excited for it - it’s like a dream come true to be able to spend time with all those books! We are going to do a book advent calendar this year and I hope Julia enjoys it as much as I have enjoyed planning it out.
Back to having a kindle…! Having the kindle has reignited my love for reading. I love that I can take it anywhere and have something to read. I love that I can just toss it in my bag and read a few pages if I get to an appointment early.
Over the summer while we were going back and forth to the Cape, I always planned out my reading for the week, so that I’d be ready to start a new book on Friday afternoons. I loved being able to listen to the book for 3+ hours while we were driving and then read my kindle when we got to the camper.
One of my key selling points for a kindle is that you can read in bed at night and it doesn’t disturb anyone. No silly gooseneck lamp around your neck creating shadows across the room. Just a tidy little book with a darkly lit screen. I was a steadfast physical book reader and didn’t think I’d be able to move away from it, but I did and I have no regrets! Do I still buy physical books? Yes, absolutely. It just takes me a bit longer to read them since they aren’t as convenient as a kindle.
If you are still with me…I hope you are…here is my review of “The Five Year Lie”.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Have you ever just had love…disappear? Poof. Gone. Where all that is left is an empty heart and a LOT of questions. That’s how the main character, Ariel feels when her summer love, Drew disappears.
After Drew disappears, Ariel realizes that she is pregnant. The healthy baby is born and named Buzz, as an homage to his father. On a personal note, I love that the characters names in the book were Ariel and Buzz - two of Reagan’s all time favorite movie characters. I can still hear Rea’s squeal when Buzz tried to see if he could fly in Toy Story. Spoiler alert - Buzz cannot fly.
No other spoiler alerts in this book review, I promise. The story follows Ariel (and Buzz) after Ariel receives a cryptic message from Drew, 5 years after his disappearance. Her wound is opened up again and she’s forced to go back into the past to see if there are any clues that she may have missed. Enter in a colleague who is a cyber genius who helps Ariel unwind what she thought she knew.
The Five Year Lie, kept me on my toes and needing to know what happened next. The author, in her debut novel (WOW!) does a great job of character development, where you become invested in wanting to know what happened to Drew? Will Ariel have more heart ache? Will she get the answers she wants? Will she be able to tell Buzz that his father was a hero or is he a villain? Sprinkle in some complicated family relationships, a trust fund, a massive company and some people with bad intentions, you have a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ book!
If you read The Five Year Lie, please reach out and let me know what you thought of it.
Keep Dreaming!
Dianne