On the English Channel island of Guernsey, a teenage girl’s Mean Girls-like experience pushes her to murder her best friend in a scandal, she will discover, that mirrors her uncle’s previously unknown story from the days of the island’s Nazi occupation during WWII. Told through the voices of fifteen-year-old Cat Rozier and her long-dead Uncle Charlie—known to Cat only by the audio recordings he left behind—The Book of Lies lucidly illuminates the interior lives of a scorned modern girl with attitude and a defiant, faded man. With echoes of Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love and Jennifer McMahon’s Promise Not to Tell, Mary Horlock’s stunning debut novel is an unforgettable exploration of aspiration, anguish, and rebellion.
