 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review before we jump into this and he lets you know that this book that I will be reviewing today where the truth lies by Anna Bailey with Sentome for review by Atria Publishing. Now on with the review. First place I'm going to start off with is if you are a fan of Ron Rash, David Joy trying to think of more Asakins, maybe not Asakins, I think he's more thrillery. I'm not sure. I haven't read enough of these guys to know. Definitely David Joy or Megan Lucas. She wrote Songbirds and Stray Dogs or Stray Dogs and Songbirds. It's one of the other. But if you are a fan of any of those authors, you definitely need to check this one out. It's not as much Hicklet as David Joy, but it, okay, let me say this. The author, I believe is British. Yes, Anna Bailey was born in Bristol in 1995 and spent her childhood in Gloucestershire. Is that right? I'm sure my Brit folks will let me know down there in the doobly-doo. Anyways, I'm going to go ahead and set this down. By the way, this is out on August 3, 2020, 15 days before my birthday. Where this book excels more than anything else is with the characters. I look for character, pacing, and dread in everything that I read. I used to say I only look for it in horror, but pretty much everything I read. And as far as dread, if it's not horror, there has to be some kind of conflict that keeps me interested. The pacing has to be on point means it doesn't really have to blow along, but there has to be something happening. And with the characters, characters are usually my number one. If I can't gel with the characters, man, I'm out. And in this one, I loved all of the characters, but I have to say that my favorite character was Rat. He's a young traveling nomad personality. He falls in love with one of the boys in the small town. And that's only a very small subplot of the main overarching plot, which is about a young woman who disappears and the family in the whole town is looking for her. The dynamic and the relationships between these people is absolutely fascinating. This book could have had nothing going on and I would have been interested in what these characters did and said. Another beautiful aspect of this book is the writing. Anna Bailey is obviously talented. I don't want to rush at the cliche that doesn't feel like a debut, but it doesn't. It feels like Bailey is a seasoned author. It felt like she knew what she was doing, but I am most impressed with the fact that she is British and she nailed rural America. And at no point in time did I go, well, that just wouldn't have been said or that wouldn't have happened or these people reacted the wrong way or any of that stuff. I was amazed, especially having read quite a bit of British literature, I was amazed because you don't find those aspects, those rural American aspects in British literature. Not that I found. Last time I was disimpressed with a non-American writing American stories was John Connolly because he's Irish and none of his stuff, well, all of his stuff reads as if he were an American, you know, that he was a native to this country. Anywho, I really cannot say enough about this book, but I believe what makes this one so strong, the writing, the characters, all that stuff. I don't want to talk too much about the plot because it is so twisty, turny that I fear that I will spoil something even without thinking about it. I've done that a couple times where I've been like, I don't want to spoil it. And then I talk about a certain aspect and they're like, I thought you didn't want to talk about spoilers. And they were, of course, right. But so with this one, there's a lot of stuff going on. There's a damn near, the second half of the book, there's like a plot twist on almost every page. One thing I'll say is you guys might, you guys might be split on whether or not you like the ending. I say this because I spoke to another person about this who had read it and they brought up that they wanted a more conclusive ending. I thought the ending was perfectly conclusive. I don't think the ending was open at all. The reason why I say this, and if the person I spoke to, there's a reason I'm not naming them, but the person I spoke to is watching. I feel like the scene at the end was conclusive because it was there. I don't see any other reason for that last chapter to have been there unless a certain conclusion could have been come to you, unless you, you know, arrived. The only reason for it to be there is to make you arrive at a certain conclusion. I think I said that, right? Otherwise, what's the purpose of it? If it's vague, if it is a vague ending, why put that last chapter there? But that's really, unfortunately, all I have to say about this book because when I review books that I absolutely love, I just don't have much to say. I mean, it's always the case and I've always been this way. You can go back and look at all of my videos. Anytime I hate a book, it's like a 15, 20 minute review. Anytime I love a book, you're looking, you're definitely looking at under, under 10, under 10 minutes. I am impressed by the recent output from Atria Publishing. There was the other black girl. In fact, I've been impressed for a while, but the other black girl this year followed by where the truth lies. The other black girl was Zacchia Delilah Harris and Anna Bailey where the truth lies. Both of those books are on my, so far right now, they're fighting for top, for contender for top book of the year. That's how much I'm enjoying Atria's output this year. The new Connolly comes out this year too. I mean, we just got, we got so much good stuff coming from them. I'm just assuming, you know, the Connolly is going to be good because he has a good track record. But I'm impressed with their output, consistently impressed. I am also impressed with the fact that no matter whether or not, whether I review their books positively or negatively, they keep sending me books. So they obviously respect me as a reviewer. I respect them as a company. And I dig it. So if you're looking for something, I know people don't browse publishers too often, but if you're looking for something to try a new, maybe a new publisher, give Atria, they're not new by any shape or form, but give them a try. I mean, I've loved almost everything I've read from them. There's been, there's been a few misses. But it seems like with Atria, all I do is one stars or five stars and it's mostly the five stars. But every company's going to miss every now and again, but they have been on it here lately. The last thing I want to leave with is a trigger warning. I'm laughing, there's a reason why I'm laughing at that use of it. So I'm going to give a trigger warning to the conservative minded folks, the folks that don't like social justice in their, in their books or don't like, we already mentioned there, the rat and his boyfriend. So if any of those things, for some odd reason, you know, get your goat and you don't want to deal with it, whatever, don't read this book. But then everybody else, if you are more along the lines of love is love, people are people, you're probably going to dig this book. There's a lot of back and forth. You never, never really knew what was going on until the end. And I really, really enjoyed that. But as far as this review, this review been over. So have you read where the truth lies by Anna Bailey? If you have, let me know whether or not you liked it, loved it, hated it, all that stuff down in the doobly-doo, but tell me why you loved it, liked it, hated it or any of those things so that we can have a discussion. Until next time, I have an E, you have an U, this has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.