LIES MAKE PERFECT – Ellie Banks
Canary Street Press
ISBN: 13:978-1-335-00937-1
June 11, 2024
Contemporary Fiction
Conifer, Oregon – Present Day
True Crime Author Margo Banks has been barely alive the last six months. Since the day her husband, Zach, took her daughter, Poppy, and disappeared. She has been unable to work and rarely interacts with others. She is alive, but not living. The void left by the disappearance of Poppy and Zach haunts her day and night. She struggles to understand how the man she loved could do such a horrific thing as to take her child away. She had no warning, not a hint that he would ever do such a horrible thing. She blames herself for not being enough, for not paying more attention, for letting her writing absorb her.
Margo first got interested in true crime after reading The Devil in the Dark by Jacob Spinner. Margo is focused, intense and driven to find the truth in unsolved crimes. After the disappearance of a high school friend, Sarah Hartly, and Brian Archer, their English teacher, and her best friend Claire’s father when she was sixteen, her interest in true crime became an obsession that followed her into adulthood. Margo wanted answers to why these things happen, and why no one had any idea of what was going on in Sarah’s life. Her obsession with trying to find answers led her to her career as a writer of true crimes, first on a blog and eventually a bestselling novelist. Through her research she was able to solve a years old killing spree by a serial killer, and through her tenacity and drive the bodies of the six young women killed were eventually found. But eighteen years after Briand and Sarah disappeared, where they went and what happened is still a mystery
A walk after dark, because the house is too empty, takes her to the Little Free Library in her community. She finds a book that started her on her quest to find answers to the unsolvable and began her obsession with cold cases. Once home she begins to page through the book, hoping to re- ignite her need to find the answers she needs. A typed letter falls out of the book, and the contents send her down the path to unravel what really happened to Sarah and Brian Archer who she supposedly ran off with. With the decision to dig and find whatever might have been missed and overlooked she asks her best friend, Claire, Brian Archer’s daughter, if she would object. Claire is a good friend and has stood by Margo throughout the last six months, just as Margo stood with her when her father ran away with Sarah. There is one other person Margo needs the okay from, Dane Hartley, Sarah’s older brother. In high school Margo had a major crush on Dane but after Sarah’s disappearance a lot of things changed.
With the approval of her friend Claire and Dane’s insistence on helping, she begins to dig. Margo feels the need to solve the 18-year-old mystery of Sarah and Brian, as she is unable to figure out why Zach took Poppy and disappeared. What she finds is more questions, and something not expected.
LIES MAKE PERFECT, is the perfect title for this novel. It’s not an easy book to read, it hurts deep inside, and you wonder how anyone can live with the unknown whereabouts of a loved one. But that’s what Margo does. She reads between the lines of the lies people tell themselves, even if they don’t mean to lie. People tell their stories in a way that makes their life what they want or expect it to be. A lot of little lies or ignoring rifts in relationships you don’t know how to fix, You tell yourself little lies, and eventually they become your reality, so that you can have the life you want, be the person you want to be even if it’s not true. At first, I didn’t think I would like the book, Margo presents herself in the first person as not a very likable person. But most of it is her guilt for not seeing the lies in her own life. She wanted the family she made to be perfect, but nothing is ever perfect, and the lies we live often are the catalyst of what we lose. Margo is perhaps one of the strongest female protagonists I’ve read about in a long time. While many would crumble under the circumstances, Margo, while she flounders initially, refuses to give up on her child. She pushes through when sometimes she isn’t sure what to do, but she’s strong and brave and will never stop looking for answers.
LIES MAKE PERFECT is a well written, gritty book about family, love, and the dark secrets that can be found in even the nicest neighborhood. I highly recommend LIES MAKE PERFECT. It’s not an easy ready but it’s compelling and I was unable to put it down except to sleep.
Terrie Figueroa
