My Rating ~ Four stars

4-gold-stars copy

RELEASED: 5 March 2019

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Format: Paperback

Pages: 336

RRP: AU$29.99

Blurb

Three girls, loyal to each other – that never happens. All the groups of three implode eventually. Two in, one out. Change. Betrayal. Again. And again.

But not us. I make sure of it. I make Ash and Ruby see that our power is in our three-ness. We can do what no other trio can.

Together, we’re strong.

Thick, thin, boys, mothers, divorce, other girls, secrets, lies, all of it.

I’ll keep us together.

Watch me.

Review

Thankyou to Penguin Random House Australia for providing me with a copy of Love Lie Repeat in exchange for an honest review.

Annie, Ash and Ruby are the very best of friends. Three sirens who do everything together and will be ‘friends forever’. Annie is determined to make it that way, no matter what she has to do and how many secrets she needs to keep.

Ok, so first of all, I know that everyone is always screaming for pure hearted, strong friendships in books, and it’s a wonderful thing, but I often find them a bit unrelatable myself to be honest. 🙈 I was never big on friendship groups or the idea of ‘friends for life’ when I was younger. Does that sound awful? It probably does. The issues faced in the friendships in Love Lie Repeat seemed more ‘real’ to me. As an adult looking back, I know I basically cared very little about anyone but myself when I was a teenager. Manipulation, backstabbing and secrets were common amongst groups of friends, as were the types of issues the girls faced in their families, and love lives – such as abandonment, grief, jealousy, mental health, fractured families, pressure to be perfect etc. Are they the type of friendships I hope my daughter will have? No. Are they everyone’s experience? No. But are they often part of a teenage reality? Yes.

This was a fantastic dark, suspenseful thriller and I loved the way it gave us snippets of information on certain plot points through the story, and then tied them all together at the end.

Annie is a troubled girl who can’t forgive her father for leaving their family and nor can she forgive her mother for ‘letting it happen’. She struggles so much with her feelings of abandonment that it clearly affects the way she desires an ‘unbreakable’ bond with her friends. Her fathers actions WERE despicable and the mothers’ of all the girls needed a stern talking to when it came to body image talk with their daughters, but I also find I struggle to keep seeing everything from the point of view of the teenager in a lot of YA contemporary books now – especially when it comes to them showing no consideration for their parents and what they’re going through. I have to try and remember that IS how 16 year olds often feel and it’s only because I am an adult (and a parent) myself now that I truly understand we struggle through life just as much as our kids sometimes (I really did think once I was in my 30’s that I’d have it all together. Rude shock for me 😂 )

I really enjoyed this book, the characters and story were so intriguing and I couldn’t put it down!