*Spoiler Alert*

After reading “The Housemaid” series, I needed to read another book by Freida McFadden to fully flesh out my opinion on the author. I bought this book during spring break to read on the plane back from my trip, and I got about a third of the way through on the plane alone. It took me two sittings to finish this book – that is how latched onto the pages I was.

“Never Lie” is about a young married couple who get snowed in and must stay in the house that they are considering buying. When they arrive at the house initially, the main character, Tricia, has a bad feeling of what is inside. They discover the original house owner belonged to the famous Dr. Adrienne Hale, who was a psychologist that disappeared. Tricia discovers a series of cassette tapes of her session recordings and discovers what really happened to her.

I was so suspicious the entire time reading because Tricia is listening to a cassette tape from a psychotic patient with the initials E.J. Her husband’s name is Ethan, and his behavior was aligning with the patient, even having the same interests. His last name was never revealed, so I was led on to believe that was going to be the “plot twist.” McFadden would not make the plot to any of her stories this obvious, but I was still fooled. 

The book switches perspectives from before Adrienne went missing to present day Tricia listening to the tapes and creepy things happening in the house. Tricia listens to tapes from other patients, one being of a girl with the initials P.L., who experienced a traumatic event of her boyfriend and friends being slaughtered in a cabin. 

I was intrigued by P.L.’s story because she was on the road to recovery, and it showed how much Adrienne had helped her. Adrienne’s character from the surface seems strictly professional and not very friendly, but her sessions give more depth into her character, and even her boyfriend, Luke, brings out another side of her. 

Tricia is paranoid that a stranger is occupying the house based on strange noises she hears at night. Ethan annoys me consistently because what normally should freak someone out, he just writes it off as her being pregnant. I just wanted to punch him in the face.

The truth is, there was someone lurking in the house, and it was Luke, who went into hiding after the whole world was convinced that he was responsible for Adrienne’s disappearance/death. Tricia finds a body underneath the floorboards in Adrienne’s office, and I gasped. 

But wait, there’s more. 

Tricia is revealed to be P.L. (a.k.a. Patricia) and lied about being traumatized, as she was the one who murdered her boyfriend and two friends. Knowing how psychotic she is, Adrienne hired her to help her kill E.J. So, the body under the floorboards is E.J. 

Just when I thought things could not get any crazier, they did.

One thing I was very confused on was why the police did not investigate or search Adrienne’s house. She went missing, and I think the first place they would look is the residence of that person. The first people to be suspects would be the patients and, of course, her boyfriend. It just was not adding up to me.

McFadden’s writing consistently inspires me to write and that is the level of writing I want to achieve, to be able to speak to the reader and motivate them to create.

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