| Title: | Lie Lay Lain | |
|---|---|---|
| Author: | Bryn Greenwood | |
| Publisher | Stairway Press | |
| Publication Date: | April 3, 2014 | |
| Publisher's Description | Jennifer has a great job and a go-getter fiancé. She’s on track for success, until she witnesses a fatal hit-and-run. Mistaking Jennifer for someone else, the dying victim extracts an impossible promise. Jennifer’s fiancé wants her to forget the whole incident, but when she closes her eyes, she can still see the bloody face of the woman who asked for her help. Olivia is in a rut. Burdened with caring for her brain-damaged brother and already feeling like a spinster at 27, she’s desperate to escape. In a moment of weakness, she tells a lie that draws an unsuspecting paramedic into her life. As she struggles to expiate the lie, a horrible act of violence will test her resolve to be honest. Where Jennifer’s promise and Olivia’s lie intersect, their lives begin to unravel. |
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| My rating: | **** | |
Lie Lay Lain is the story of Jennifer and Olivia, and of the people in their separate and shared orbits. The two know each other at the outset of the book, as they attend the same church, but their lives are completely different. Jennifer is engaged, part of an extended social circle, and has a good job. Olivia is single and lives at home with her parent and older brother, who suffered a brain injury in a motorcycle accident and cannot live independently. She works in the church that her family has always attended and has no life outside of home and church.
I think that people generally expect to be prepared in life for the big decisions that change everything (choosing a career path, who to date, where to live, etc), but neither Jennifer nor Olivia could have imagined the changes that they would experience as a result of the lies that they tell. In doing a kindness for a dying woman, Jennifer feels a sense of responsibility to see that promise through, although only Olivia seems to understand why Jennifer wants to check up on Shani, daughter of the dead woman. Jennifer becomes invested in Shani’s welfare, at times paying less attention to her job and her relationship with her fiancé. Olivia’s sense of guilt over lying makes her turn a small untruth, that she is dating a paramedic, into reality. Asking Rindell out on a date is her first step toward becoming an Olivia she never suspects could even exist. Her new romantic relationship confuses and excites her, but helps her find the courage to be less passive with others in her life.
This book is engaging and gripping, and I skipped working on an this awesome hat that I’m knitting to keep reading it. Respect. Even if the story had been only so-so, I would say that this book is worth reading just for the perspective on truth, lies, and honesty. Who could fault Jennifer for helping to ease a dying woman’s mind, or Olivia for trying to keep people out of her business? While there are some pretty blatant bad lies in this book, most instances of dishonesty are less clear-cut in their right or wrongness. Amazingly, as if encouraging heavy rumination on the nature of truth isn’t enough of an accomplishment, Ms. Greenwood also manages to squeeze in a nuanced perspective on race and identity in the midst of all of the other things happening in this book. Although this book is relegated on Netgalley to the Women’s Fiction ghetto, I would recommend this book to any lover of well-written fiction.
I found this book totally heartbreaking and ultimately satisfying. I feel that I connected to it in a way that I think a lot of New Adult titles try and fail to reach me, the reader. Robin’s sense of bewilderment at what her life has become and subsequent heartbreak is so palpable that it’s hard to witness, and I kept wishing that she didn’t spend so much of the book feeling alone. Likewise, Phoenix’s criminal record and jail time isolate him from the people that one would expect him to be able to lean on; I’m glad that he and Robin find each other. I like their dynamic, and the cautious but hopeful way that they get to know each other. I love that they are both artists, and are able to connect with and understand each other on that level. I really believed this relationship, and that these characters don’t just need somebody, but that they specifically each fulfill some need in the other person.