Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear was an in interesting read. It took a while for me to get into the story, and there was a time I considered giving up on it. There was so much family drama, which I monopolized the story. However, I stuck with it, and I am glad I did, because the story got better and once it did, there was no turning back. I had to know who did it and why.

The author weaved a complex tale where we see the past colliding with the present. It goes to show that actions from our past always intertwine with our present. No matter how long it takes, your past will eventually catch up with you.

I found the mystery element quite intriguing, as the victim had many secrets and she was no saint, hence there were several suspects, with her husband being the main one.  DCI Cat Kinsella, the protagonist, strongly believes her father knows something about the murder based on his association with the victim 18 years ago. The question is does he know more than he lets on or is it sheer coincidence.

The mystery took a turn I never expected. I will not be going into details, but I will say this much it has a connection to an old case. 

Cat proved to be a rather complex character with daddy issues. As a child, she worshiped her father, but the hero worship turned sour, when she caught him in what her eight-year-old mind considered a lie. As an adult, she was estranged from her father and her siblings. However, the current case led to opening of old wounds and she finds herself confronted with the pain from her past.  

She has a good relationship with her colleagues, however with this current case; she is not truthful with them. They have no idea she and her family are connected to the victim.  This added to the intensity of the story as I kept wondering what would happen if the truth came to light.

One can sometime tell the gist of a story based on its title. In Sweet Little Lies, most of the characters are liars.  Lies permeated their lives, making them unreliable characters. One is never sure what to believe until the truth reveals itself.

Conclusion/Recommendation

Despite the slow start, Sweet Little Lies proved to be an interesting and complex mystery featuring characters that kept me on my toes.

In this gripping debut procedural, a young London policewoman must probe dark secrets buried deep in her own family’s past to solve a murder and a long-ago disappearance.

Your father is a liar. But is he a killer?
Even liars tell the truth… sometimes.

Twenty-six-year-old Cat Kinsella overcame a troubled childhood to become a Detective Constable with the Metropolitan Police Force, but she’s never been able to banish these ghosts. When she’s called to the scene of a murder in Islington, not far from the pub her estranged father still runs, she discovers that Alice Lapaine, a young housewife who didn’t get out much, has been found strangled.

Cat and her team immediately suspect Alice’s husband, until she receives a mysterious phone call that links the victim to Maryanne Doyle, a teenage girl who went missing in Ireland eighteen years earlier. The call raises uneasy memories for Cat–her family met Maryanne while on holiday, right before she vanished. Though she was only a child, Cat knew that her charming but dissolute father wasn’t telling the truth when he denied knowing anything about Maryanne or her disappearance. Did her father do something to the teenage girl all those years ago? Could he have harmed Alice now? And how can you trust a liar even if he might be telling the truth?

Determined to close the two cases, Cat rushes headlong into the investigation, crossing ethical lines and trampling professional codes. But in looking into the past, she might not like what she finds…