Two mysteries, one city, many lies: They Lie Here by N.S. Ford #bookreview #TheyLieHere

Kat Green has made a career out of tracking down reclusive former celebrities. When she moves to the quaint English city of Waelminster, she’s on the trail of enigmatic pop star Roskoe Darke, of the band Scorpio Hearts. He hasn’t been heard of since 1985, but she’s confident she’ll find him. However, as the clues become more bizarre and sinister, Kat has to confront the darkness of her own past. Who can she trust when everyone is hiding the truth?

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Hi and welcome to my review of They Lie Here!

There I was, with too many pending ARCs for comfort and firm intentions to stay away from NetGalley and to turn down any and all review requests, when N.S. Ford waved her new book at me. I thought: I shouldn’t, I mustn’t, but how could I refuse when I’d had such a great time with her debut We Watch You and I was so intrigued by the premise of They Lie Here?!

Short answer: I just couldn’t! I compromised by accepting on the condition that I had no idea when I would get around to reviewing it… So obviously, I loaded it on my Kobo the second it arrived and dove right in, cos that’s the way I roll and that’s how badly I wanted to read They Lie Here.

The present-day storyline in They Lie Here is told from the perspective of Kat while she’s on the hunt for Roskoe Darke, the Scorpio Hearts frontman who dropped off the radar decades ago, and she’s just shrouded in mystery. She lets slip these tiny little facts about herself, but on the whole she keeps her cards close to her chest, which made me wonder whether she’s a reliable or an unreliable narrator, what more I might find out about her and what might have happened to make her such a lone wolf, without family or friends. Hook, line and sinker from the first chapter!

Other chapters show snippets of interviews with Scorpio Hearts band members, comments from Scorpio Hearts fans to articles and videos, and the lives of Cherry ‘n’ Blue, a teen pop sensation in the late nineties.

I found that hopping from Kat’s main narrative to one of the others and back simultaneously slowed down the pace and sped it up, if that makes any sense at all. I mean, the main plot moves along a bit slower because of the other threads, but on the other hand, those threads fueled my curiosity so much that I found myself reading faster and even more eagerly.

While my own theories as I was reading might have been a tad outlandish in comparison to what was actually going on and I did predict a few other things, neither marred my reading enjoyment and I had a great time with They Lie Here. It is sometimes said that anyone can write one book, that it’s the second book that’s the toughest. If that was the case with N.S. Ford, I can happily report that there is no evidence of that at all.

I do feel that there is one aspect I would have liked some more information on, something that remains largely unexplained, which did add to the mystique but for me it was perhaps a little too fleetingly mentioned, I would have liked to have got more to the bottom of things. So that’s a tiny niggle I have. I wouldn’t have minded if They Lie Here had been a bit longer, but that of course also means that I enjoyed it so much I wanted it to last longer.

They Lie Here is an entertaining and rather mysterious thriller that had my mind working overtime with all the theories I kept coming up with. I love the clever title that is actually applicable to a number of things in the story and I thoroughly enjoyed the “Wait. What?!” moments I had. Recommended to fans of the genre.

They Lie Here is available to buy now.

Many thanks to the author for the eARC. All opinions are my own.