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    Sweet Little Lies: A Novel
    Sweet Little Lies: A Novel
    Sweet Little Lies: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Sweet Little Lies: A Novel

    Written by Caz Frear

    Narrated by Jane Collingwood

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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. . . .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 14, 2018
    ISBN9780062850676
    Sweet Little Lies: A Novel
    Author

    Caz Frear

    Caz Frear has a degree in History & Politics, and when she’s not agonizing over snappy dialogue or incisive prose, she can be found shouting at Arsenal football matches. Her first Cat Kinsella mystery was Sweet Little Lies. She grew up in Coventry, England, where she now lives. 

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    Reviews for Sweet Little Lies

    4/5

    193 ratings17 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 2/5
      The book was very dry, and I wasnt a fan!!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The way it was written makes you feel as though you have been sucked into her world. I was hooked from the start! Great and fast read. I finished it in a day!!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great story, engaging characters. Well written and well plotted too.
    • 4/5
      Wow. Where this story begins and where it ends are very different places. A body has been found. Cat Kinsella is one of the detectives on the case, and she immediately recognizes the victim. She and her father have had a riff for years between them. This victim is a big part of that. She is assigned to the case a throught the process of solving this case she fears her father is involved. The twists and turns this case takes are going to show her a much more sinister world. Will she be dragging her family and her fathers indiscretion into the case. Why does everyone seem to be hiding something. And no one seems to be telling the truth. Great read with an unexpected resolution.
    • 5/5
      Great police drama. Excellent narration with a lovely accent.
    • 5/5
      Cat comes from a dysfunctional family, with her father skating on the edge of the law, and often crossing that line. While still a child, she catches him in a bold-faced lie concerning a missing teen, one who might be a runaway or a murder victim, but is never seen again. This colors the way she sees and acts with her father, even as an adult. Now, a murdered woman leads back to this missing teen. And Cat is forced to decide between revealing the truth or concealing it with lies, lies that will save both her father and her job as a constable. This tightly written story doesn’t waste words, but so much happens, much of it illegal, that you may be amazed at how well it all fits together. Cat is a complex character, flawed but still intent on doing the right thing. It’s just that sometimes, a sweet little lie is the only way out.
    • 4/5
      An unexpected great read!
    • 4/5
      I was excited to see that this was the first of a series. I really enjoyed the characters and can see a lot of potential for them.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. In fact, I was only 50 pages into it when I went online and ordered Frear's next two titles. I liked the characters and found them, especially Cat, to be well developed, and I liked the dialogue. The angst about her father was a little overdone but the plot was good and not obvious. Excellent book.
    • 3/5
      I did struggle at first with 'Sweet Little Lies' as the writing style wasn't my usual cup of tea, it contained a fair amount of dialogue and the writing was quite messy, I like to devour beautifully constructed sentences and lovely words, sadly this book wasn't a pretty read. BUT what the author did cleverly do was to pop in plot twists that kept me guessing up until the very end and write characters that were so brilliant I grew attached to them (I'll miss Cat and Parnell) which kept me hooked. A very good read, you'll just need to stick it out through the first few chapters
    • 4/5
      Sweet Little Lies by Caz Frear is an engrossing murder mystery that becomes a tangled web of personal and professional for Detective Constable Cat Kinsella.

      DC Kinsella is assigned to Murder Investigation Team 4 but due to her reaction at crime scene, her boss, DCI Kate Steele, keeps her on the periphery of their newest investigation. Cat and her partner Detective Sergeant Luigi Parnell are investigating the death of Alice Lapaine. Cat is uneasy due to the fact that Alice's body was found close to the pub where she lived until she was eight years old.  

      Cat at one time adored her father, Mike McBride, but ever since the family vacation in Ireland eighteen years earlier, she finds it impossible to trust him.  During their time in Mulderrin, seventeen year old Maryanne Doyle went missing and Cat knows for certain her father lied to the police during their search for missing teenager. When the current investigation into Alice's death converges with Maryanne's unsolved disappearance, Cat faces an ethical dilemma as she wrestles with whether or not she should divulge her family's connection to the two cases.

      Cat's tangled family history continues to define her and sometimes leaves her lacking the ability to distance herself from her cases. She is overly empathetic but her quest for justice for victims is admirable.  She struggles to remain on the sidelines of the investigation into Alice's murder but her suspicions about her father make it difficult for her obey DCI Steele's orders. Cat has the utmost respect for her partner but she occasionally takes advantage of their close relationship to insert herself deeper into the ongoing inquiry.

      The investigation into Alice's murder moves in fits and starts throughout the novel.  Alice's husband is of course closely looked at but an unexpected revelation takes the investigation in an entirely different direction. Discovering her whereabouts in the days leading up to her murder provides frustratingly few leads about who could have her or why. Cat remains on edge as she worries about her father's possible involvement in Alice's death and her relationship with her family deteriorates at an alarming rate.

      Despite being a little slow-paced, Sweet Little Lies is nonetheless an intriguing mystery with a clever storyline and a fantastic cast of characters.  Cat is a multi-layered protagonist who is genuinely conflicted about whether or not to reveal her family's possible ties to the current investigation. With stunning twists and unexpected turns, Caz Frear brings the novel to a truly shocking conclusion as Cat unearths the truth about who murdered Alice and why. An outstanding police procedural that will leave readers eagerly awaiting the next installment in the Cat Kinsella series.
    • 5/5
      This debut novel by Caz Frear is the whole ball of wax. It's a gripping police procedural with an engaging new heroine. DC Cat Kinsella is a 26-year-old London police woman who is trying to make her mark in the murder squad where she's posted. Cat (or Catrina) has a whole lot of secrets she mightily tries to keep. She is a scared but determined young woman who knows her father is a liar, but is he more than that? Is he a killer? Michael O'Brien always has played fast and loose, and his daughter Cat does not trust him. When a woman is found on a public road near a park in London, and near Cat's father's bar. Cat recognizes the victim and wonders if her dad has anything to do with her death. Pursuing the illusive killer has Cat looking over her shoulder all the while, and looking back on the history of her own family and back to when she was 8 and she had seen Maryanne Doyle with her father during a visit to Ireland. Shortly after that sighting Maryanne disappeared and was never heard from again. Now, here she is lying dead on a London street twenty years later. Cat must find out where Maryanne has been for the last twenty years, and figure out why she has been murdered now. We meet a whole bunch of unsavoury people and everyone is telling lies, including Cat's dad. I was hooked from the first page, and stayed up late and got up early in order to finish this cracker of a novel. The first sentence in the book should reel anyone in, the same as it did me."I recall the day we heard about Maryanne with high-definition clairty, although I know nothing about what happened to her, nor the manner in which she left." Cat Frear - Sweet Little LiesI cannot wait to read the next book in this series. Hopefully Ms. Frear gets it out pronto.
    • 2/5
      A very uneven novel which can't decide if it is a police procedural or a family drama. It weves between the two, but never seems cohesive. The first part is downright tedious. Not impressed.
    • 4/5
      A big sigh of relief!! I am having much better luck with the police procedurals I am reading. Enjoying my break, really who knows if or when I'll go back, from psychological thrillers. Love this debut novel from Frear. Cat Kinsella, is such a great character, flawed but so very genuine, real. A London based DC, when the novel opens, she is trying to recover from a horrifying murder, seeing the department's psychiatrist. When a woman is murdered, it brings Cat back into action. This murder will take her back into her past, and she fears she knows who is involved.Trails go back and forth from Ireland to London, and their crime connections. What I most enjoyed in this novel, was watching how Kat changes, grows. The scenes are vivid, the atmosphere rather dark and bleak, and the characterizations are wonderfully constructed. The case is intriguing and the look into Kat's past, interesting. The ending was also unexpected, how it all ties together very fitting, and the conclusion both different and satisfying.I'm hoping this is the start of a new series, as I am very interested to see where the author takes Kat next.Also, this was my first successful audio of a fiction book. The narrator was Jane Collingwood and I thought she was awesome. ARC from Edelweiss.
    • 4/5
      Maryanne Doyle disappeared from her small Irish town in 1998. Her dead body was discovered 18 years later in a park in England. By that time she was going under the name of Alice Lapaine, seemingly happily married to Thomas Lapaine. Sp, who would want to harm her?Cat Kinsella is part of the team investigating the murder and when it becomes known that Alice was really Maryanne, Cat is in a quandry. While she really wants to work the case, she grew up in the same town as Maryanne and knew her personally. She also harbored fears that her father was somehow involved in Maryanne's disappearance. However, if she lets this be known, she's off the case.Cat skirts the issue as best she can, hoping to prove herself wrong.This is an interesting book with some twists and turns, good characters and good pacing. Well worth the read.
    • 4/5
      This novel is touted as being for fans of Tana French, and indeed, it has something of that author’s same style.The story begins in December, 2016, right before Christmas. A body is found of a woman who reminds 26-year-old Met Detective Constable Catrina (“Cat”) Kinsella of a girl who went missing 18 years before when her family was vacationing for the summer in Ireland. No one ever found then 17-year-old Maryanne Doyle. But Cat always suspected her father had something to do with it, because when the police came, her dad - always a ladies man, lied about knowing Maryanne, leading Cat to suspect the worse. The question of why Maryanne disappeared, Cat mused, was “the most significant question of my life.” Not even her dad knows why Cat turned on him after that summer. Before then, Cat was always a "daddy’s girl." Afterwards, it all changed. She knew, unlike the rest of her family, that her problem with her dad was “not about Mum or forgiveness or sleazy affairs. . . . It’s about murder. It’s about the lie - the litany of lies - he told about Maryanne Doyle eighteen years ago . . . .”She has been punishing him for it for all these years. She even changed her last name from McBride to her mother’s maiden name, Kinsella. To make things worse, the body that was just found was only steps away from her dad’s pub. Moreover, the dead woman turns out to have been connected to Maryanne Doyle. Cat knows she should recuse herself from the case, but she can’t; she has to know the truth. And what would be more devastating, she wonders? Having spent the past eighteen years tormenting her dad and herself for a series of little white lies? Or having her worst suspicions finally confirmed?Evaluation: This book combines an absorbing and well-crafted police procedural with an even more interesting drama about family secrets and detective force interactions. The depictions of the dysfunctional dynamics of Cat’s family and the pain it causes everyone are skillfully woven in and out of the murder plot. They are juxtaposed with the supportive relationships in Cat’s Murder Investigation Team, as all of them deal with the horrors of what they encounter on the job, in addition to whatever goes on in their home lives.The range and depth of the character portrayals are impressive. Frear also adeptly creates an atmosphere and mood as palpably as a movie might do, so that you feel as if you are experiencing all that Cat does right along with her. I was impressed with this author and look forward to more books from her.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! I was drawn in by the predicament the main character was in, from an early age, in that she knew things weren’t as they seemed, and she had to battle with what to do with that knowledge. It was really interesting to get to know all of the characters, from those involved in the investigation, like Kinsella and Parnell, to the suspects. The author really gave us a lot, in all of the characters to make us guess and second guess what may have taken place. I really liked that the author kept the thriller real. Yes, there were twists and turns, as well as highly unexpected pieces of evidence, but overall it felt like something that could really happen. That feeling, that the author created, really kept me entirely hooked on this book. Plus, we were given more twists than you can imagine, and that ending - Boom - mind blown! Loved it.I really enjoyed this read and cannot wait to see a lot more from this author. I highly recommend it, especially if you like detailed thrillers to really dig into. *I received an arc of this book and chose to provide my honest review.