Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent #BlogTour @lizzienugent @PenguinUKBooks

I’m over the moon to be on the blog tour today for Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent to celebrate publication of the paperback on Boxing Day 2016. It’s also a chance to congratulate Liz on her book being chosen as a title for The Richard and Judy Book Club Spring 2017 list!

Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent

About this book…

‘My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.’

Lydia Fitzsimons lives in the perfect house with her adoring husband and beloved son. There is just one thing Lydia yearns for to make her perfect life complete, though the last thing she expects is that pursuing it will lead to murder. However, needs must – because nothing can stop this mother from getting what she wants …

This is a dark, twisty and utterly gripping domestic noir that you won’t be able to put down from the author hailed as Ireland’s answer to Gillian Flynn.

My review…

I was really looking forward to reading this as I just loved Unravelling Oliver (so much so that I bid on a signed copy in a charity auction recently!) So I settled down in bed after waking early (noisy birds don’t seem to realise the difference between weekdays and weekends!) and I lay and read…..and didn’t stop until I had finished! I was so caught up in this horrifically dysfunctional family that the pages practically turned themselves in apprehension!

This isn’t a crime whodunit, although we are party to an awful murder right at the start of this book, we are aware of who has been murdered, the identity of the killer and why. This book ripples out with the after effects of the murder and how relationships between characters are changed, none for the better, as well as how they mentally deal with the knowledge they have. Two family’s are affected and neither escape the fallout.

Liz Nugent seems to have a knack for creating characters that we just love to hate and she has excelled herself here with the mother we should all be glad we didn’t get, Lydia. Honestly, this woman’s obsession with her son was so darkly disturbing that I felt physically sick that a woman could feel she “owned” her son just because she gave birth to him! Poor Lawrence never stood a chance in life with a mother like her! Lawrence was the character that extracted the most emotions from me. I felt so sorry for him but I felt at times I was watching a car crash about to happen, helplessly unable to prevent the devastation that his parents are about to wreck on his life. But Lydia just doesn’t know when to stop and when further information came to light about her past not only did it become obvious that her OWN parents also had much to answer for but that she has not received the help that she so desperately needed. And a slight nod to a very interesting twin relationship also gives us much more of an understanding of the grotesque matriarch she has become. In fact this book brought to mind a poem I read years ago with the line “They f**k you up, your mum and dad” and I think this book definitely makes us question the nature v nurture theory that I find so fascinating.

This is dark, disturbing and brilliant, I just loved it. And that ending!! It probably won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but if you enjoyed Unravelling Oliver and books like The Liars Chair by Rebecca Whitney then you will enjoy this.

I received a copy of this book via netgalley in return for an unbiased review.

Lying in Wait was published in ebook on 14th July 2016 and paperback on 26th December 2016 and is available to buy here at Amazon UK.

Meet the author…

Before becoming a full-time writer Liz Nugentworked in Irish film, theatre and television. In 2014 her first novel, Unravelling Oliver, was a No.1 bestseller and won the Crime Fiction prize in the 2014 Irish Book Awards. Her second novel, Lying in Wait, went straight to No 1 in the Irish bestseller charts, remained there for nearly two months and won her a second IBA. She lives in Dublin with her husband.

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