This Is How I Lied: A Novel

All the men/boys in this town suck sooooooo much. gah
They all need to be dealt with.

I thought the plot was really good and loved the Audible book! It kept my interest from chapter one until the very end. Halfway though I felt the suspect might be the one but I was still excited to hear what really happened. Gudenkauf is beginning to be one of my favorites.

In This is How I Lied. Heather Gudenkauf returns to themes she has explored in prior novels, including teen friendship and the power of secrets to shape and destroy lives.

Grotto is home to around ten thousand Iowans, many of whom, like Maggie and her husband, Shaun, operate farms and orchards. Nestled along a river, it boasts a circuitous cave system known as Grotto Caves State Park, and is a popular destination for hikers and spelunkers. Grotto is the backdrop for Gudenkauf's dark, stylishly atmospheric story. It was in one of those caves that Eve's body was found by Maggie and Eve's creepy, frightening, and decidedly unpopular younger sister, Nola, on the cold evening of December 22, 1995. Eve had been brutally beaten, strangled, and left on an icy cave floor. Maggie's father was never able to keep his promise to Eve's mother that he would find and bring the killer to justice. Now her father can remember events from years ago, but has lost his short-term memory and is cared for in the family home by Maggie's brother, Colin, a fledgling artist.

As the story opens, Maggie is summoned to the current police chief's office and informed that new evidence has been discovered -- one of Eve's boots, caked with mud, was found in a cave by two teenage boys who turned it over to the department. Maggie recognizes it immediately, and in her first-person narrative explains that the news is "a punch to my gut. I haven't heard my best friend's name said out loud in a long time." The chief agrees to led Maggie take the lead on the reopened investigation.

Maggie's account alternatives with the exposition of Nola's perspective, presented in the third person. Now a veterinarian, Nola also resides in the family home adjacent to Eve's. Her mother, still grieving Eve, is in a skilled nursing facility after sustaining a fall. Nola is as unpleasant and obsessed with the anatomy of animals as she was as a girl. Gudenkauf vividly describes how a once tidy home is now filthy and trash-strewn as a result of her mother's hoarding. However, her mother's habits enable Nola to maintain unsavory secrets. After all, if a home is cluttered, there are many places to hide things.

Gudenkauf skillfully propels the story forward by including yet a third perspective: Eve's. At deftly paced intervals, Gudenkauf takes readers back to December 21 and 22, 1995, the last days that Eve was alive. She reveals what happened between Eve and her boyfriend, Nick, the handsome boy from a wealthy local family. Her mother encouraged the pairing, but Nola knew the true character of their relationship. Step-by-step, Gudenkauf details Eve's final hours, leading up to why and how she ended up in the cave where her life came to a tragic end.

Virtually every character in This is How I Lied is harboring secrets, including Maggie, Nola, and their neighbor, Cam Harper, a handsome married businessman and father. As a teenager, Maggie regularly babysat the Harpers' children. But Maggie reveals that their interactions went beyond babysitting, and she has spent many years visiting her father in the old neighborhood without ever speaking to or acknowledging Cam. Whatever happened between them remains a secret Maggie has not shared with anyone, including her husband. And as the investigation into Eve's murder proceeds, Maggie learns that Shaun has not, over the years, been completely forthcoming about his connection to Eve.

Gudenkauf again demonstrates her prowess at constructing engrossing mysteries set in small-town America. Her vivid descriptions of the setting are crucial to the novel's success -- the picturesque little town of Grotto is filled with colorful characters and has been shrouded in mystery for more than two decades. She brings the streets, homes and, most particularly, the caves to life with evocative, descriptive prose that pulls readers into the action. This is How I Lied is replete with plot twists, revelations, and red herrings, as well as one jaw-dropping disclosure that brings into question readers' every assumption up to that point and sends the balance of the story on a different trajectory. Gudenkauf's timing is spot-on, as are her characters' voices and viewpoints, especially that of Nola both as a teenager and a never-married practicing veterinarian still residing with her mother. Her intelligence and rationalizations of her behavior make her a fascinating, compelling, and haunting character.

At the center of the story, Maggie proves to be a less-than-wholly-reliable narrator, and finding her empathetic is, at times, challenging. As her investigation proceeds, she is forced to confront the memories that have pervaded her decision-making for so many years and, once and for all, wrestle and make peace with the demons that have overshadowed her accomplishments and plagued her as she has pursued a happy family life with Shaun. As the pieces of the troubling puzzle fall into place, Gudenkauf expertly ramps up the tension between the characters both in the flashbacks to 1995 and the present, as the dual story lines accelerate and merge into a stunning conclusion that is no less satisfying because readers will most likely have solved the crime before all is revealed and resolved.

Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.