3. We Lie Here by Rachel Howzell Hall

listened on Audible

2022

416 pgs.
Adult Mystery/Thriller
Finished 1/8/2023
Goodreads rating:  3.84
My rating: 3.5
Setting: Contemporary Palmdale, CA

My comments:

Figured this out pretty early on, no surprises at all at the end.  

Pros:  I liked the setting of the dusty California high desert.  After the beginning, told quite well.

Cons:  Difficult to get into, and I figured most of it out pretty early.  Characters were similar and not really fleshed out too well.  Shifts in who the storyteller was (there were two, the protagonist and a then "bad guy" once in awhile.)

Goodreads synopsis:  A woman’s trip home reveals frightening truths in a twisty novel of murder and family secrets by the New York Times bestselling author of And Now She’s Gone and These Toxic Things.

TV writer Yara Gibson’s hometown of Palmdale, California, isn’t her first choice for a vacation. But she’s back to host her parents’ twentieth-anniversary party and find the perfect family mementos for the celebration. Everything is going to plan until Yara receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life.

The message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother. But they’ve been estranged for years—drama best ignored and forgotten. But Yara can’t forget Felicia, who keeps texting, insisting that Yara talk to her “before it’s too late.”

But the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true?

The deeper Yara digs for answers, the more she fears that Felicia was right. Uncovering the truth about what happened at the cabin all those years ago will change Yara’s life—or end it.