The Art of a Lie
A novel of suspense whose artfulness echoes the elegance, imagination, wit and ruthlessness that Georgian craftsmen (and women) excelled in ... The novel is narrated by Hannah and William in turn, each deftly depicted and neither entirely reliable ... A pleasingly sophisticated and twisty novel ... [Hannah] is an intriguing character ... Laura Shepherd-Robinson has taken a moral microscope to her chosen period and shown us the truth about its lies—and our own.
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The speech and customs of The Art of a Lie seem legit—it feels like we’re dipping our toes into the 18th century—but the book wears those details as lightly as a mystery woman in a face-obscuring veil ... Fascinating ...
Shifting narrators can be a tricky matter. Inevitably, we enjoy one of them more than the other and, when they’re not narrating the book, we may like it a bit less. For me, that was the case with the Devereux chapters. Shepherd-Robinson succeeds in making his voice different from Hannah’s...but I just didn’t care about him as much as her.
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Shepherd-Robinson again immerses readers in Georgian England in a delightfully constructed tale of love and deceit that nudges the audience to constantly reassess assumptions about the engaging characters. This well-researched and fast-paced read skillfully blends mystery and historical fiction, adding suspenseful twists and turns to a genuinely emotionally affecting storyline and a fascinating look behind the scenes of an 18th-century confectionary shop.
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