Sometimes I Lie

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Waking inside a body that will not answer
2. The week before the crash
3. Diaries from age eleven
4. Visitors, flowers, and lies in the ward
5. The affair, the fire, and the night of the crash
6. When twists crowd out people
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I started Sometimes I Lie on a Sunday afternoon because I wanted a fast thriller after two long literary novels in a row. Alice Feeney published it in 2017 with Flatiron Books, 272 pages in the US hardcover, and it was her debut after years working in broadcast news. I knew from Rock Paper Scissors that Feeney likes narrators who withhold, so I expected games. I did not expect how queasy the hospital chapters would make me. I read the first hundred pages standing in my kitchen, then sat down and finished it the same night.

Amber Reynolds hosts a breakfast radio show, or she did until the accident. Now she lies in a hospital bed in a coma. She can hear. She cannot move or speak or open her eyes. Her husband Paul visits and sounds tired. Her sister Claire visits and sounds frightened. Amber is sure of one thing, though her memory is full of holes. She thinks her husband does not love her anymore, and she thinks the crash was no accident.

Feeney tells the story in three threads. Now chapters follow Amber in the coma bed in December, listening and trying to piece together who comes and goes. Then chapters follow the week before the accident, as her marriage frays and small lies stack. Before chapters are diary entries from when Amber was eleven, living with her parents and Claire and a neighbor girl named Taylor, writing in a plain voice about jealousy and fear. The three threads tighten until they meet in a final set of reveals about the fire, the affair, and the night of the crash.

Waking inside a body that will not answer

The coma chapters are the strongest writing in the book. Amber learns the ward by sound. Beeps. Curtains. Shoes on tile. A kind nurse who talks to her like a person. A tired doctor who speaks in careful phrases. A cleaner who hums. Visitors who assume she hears nothing and say too much.

Feeney gets the helplessness right. Amber tries to blink. She tries to squeeze a hand. Nothing moves. She hears Paul tell a nurse that she would hate being like this. She hears Claire crying and then stopping fast when someone enters. She starts to keep a mental log, who arrived at what hour, who held her hand too hard.

One early ward scene shows what Feeney does well. A nurse washes Amber's hair and talks about her own kids, gentle and normal, and Amber wants to thank her and cannot. Then Paul arrives and the mood shifts. He sits close and speaks softly, and Amber cannot tell if his grief is real or performed. She replays his sentences later, turning them over, catching a wrong note. Is he warning her. Is he apologizing. Is he checking if she can hear.

I found these chapters hard to put down because the threat feels close. Amber hears talk of machines being switched off. She hears a discussion of brain activity and consent. She senses someone near her bed at night who does not sign the visitor sheet. A pillow presses down at one point. A line gets tugged. She cannot call out. If you are uneasy in hospitals, this book will find that nerve.

The coma device works because Feeney limits what Amber knows. She mishears. She sleeps through key visits. She admits her memory of Paul has curdled, so her reading of him may be unfair. That doubt keeps the ward chapters from feeling like a trick. We are inside a witness who knows she is damaged.

The week before the crash

The Then chapters rewind to the seven days before Amber is hit by a car on a wet night near Christmas. The marriage looks strained from the first scene. Amber and Paul bicker about small things, shopping and schedules and who forgot to lock up, the way tired couples do when the real subject feels too big to name. Amber works early shifts at the radio station, comes home wired and flat at once, drinks more wine than she means to, checks Paul's phone when he leaves the room.

Paul sells something, or manages accounts, the kind of steady job that pays for a nice house and leaves him restless. He stays late. He guards his mobile. He says he loves her and sounds like he is trying to convince himself. Amber suspects an affair and hates herself for snooping, then snoops again. She finds receipts that do not match his story. She smells perfume she does not own. She asks direct questions and gets smooth answers.

Claire, her younger sister, drifts through these chapters like smoke. Claire is pretty and fragile and often in trouble, short on cash, quick with tears, good at getting rescued. She stays over. She borrows clothes. She cries on Paul's shoulder when Amber is at work. Amber loves her and resents her in the same breath, a sister pattern set in childhood that neither has outgrown. Their parents favor Claire, or so Amber believes, and old scores color every phone call.

Work adds pressure. Amber's radio slot depends on charm, and her producer warns her that warmth is slipping. She comes home to find Paul and Claire laughing together in the kitchen, and the laugh stops too fast when she walks in.

Feeney plants the crash with care. Amber leaves for a late errand after a fight. Rain slicks the road. Headlights swing wide. Pain, then nothing, then the beep of the ward. The book does not show the driver's face. It shows Amber's last thought, which is of Claire calling her name as a child, and that link pulls the diary thread forward.

Diaries from age eleven

The Before chapters are diary entries from the early nineties, when Amber is eleven and Claire is younger. They live in a house with rules and sharp edges. Mum works hard and worries about money. Dad drinks and sulks. The girls share a room and a rivalry that turns on a new friend, Taylor, a bright girl next door whose parents seem glamorous by comparison.

Eleven year old Amber writes plainly about wanting what Claire has. Claire gets noticed. Claire gets forgiven. Taylor prefers Claire, or Amber fears so, and Amber tries too hard to join their games. The entries track small cruelties, copied homework, broken toys, whispered secrets on sleepovers, a stolen bracelet, a dare that goes wrong. Then the entries turn darker around a fire at Taylor's house during a sleepover. Taylor dies. The official story calls it an accident. Amber's diary suggests guilt that never settles into a clear confession.

These sections give the adult story its weight. Amber grew up feeling second and angry, and she learned early to shape stories so adults would comfort her. Claire grew up feeling adored and fragile, and she learned to cry first. Their parents never spoke of the fire straight, and the silence taught the sisters to lie as care.

I liked the diary voice. It sounds like a bright eleven year old, short sentences, sudden jokes, gaps where feeling outruns words. One entry about hiding under a blanket while Mum and Dad fight, counting breaths to stay quiet, felt painfully real. Another about trying on Mum's lipstick with Taylor, laughing until Claire cries to be included, shows how fast play curdles at that age.

Under the blanket I counted to one hundred twice and pretended the shouting was a radio play.

The diaries also seed the adult twists without flashing signs. Pay attention to who was where on the night of the fire, who told the police what, which sister changed her account, and why the parents moved soon after. Feeney does not cheat here. The clues are present, small and steady, even if the pace of the present story tempts you to skim the past.

Visitors, flowers, and lies in the ward

Back in the Now chapters, the visitor pattern turns strange. Paul comes daily at first, then less, then at odd hours. He talks about work and bills and the radio station asking when she might return. He brings flowers he knows she dislikes. He asks the nurses questions about recovery odds that sound like planning rather than hope. Amber wants to believe stress explains it. She also remembers the perfume and the receipts.

Claire visits with food Amber cannot eat and gossip Amber cannot answer. She paints Amber's nails. She reads magazines aloud. She tells Amber she is praying, then tells a nurse she cannot sleep for guilt.

The parents bring the past into the ward. Mum fusses with blankets and talks about Claire as if Claire were the patient. Old friends from the station visit with balloons and leave fast, spooked by the machines. A police officer comes to take a statement if she wakes, which tells Amber the crash report has gaps.

Two scenes chilled me. In one, Amber hears breathing close to her ear and feels fingers press her wrist as if checking for a pulse that should stop. In another, her drip stand clinks in the dark and her arm burns, and she cannot cry out while footsteps walk away.

The affair, the fire, and the night of the crash

This is the part to read carefully, because Feeney stacks reveals fast in the last hundred pages and they reframe all three threads. I will lay them out in order as the book presents them, since half the force comes from sequence.

First, Paul is having an affair with Claire. The Then chapters hint at it through late nights and shared jokes, and the Now chapters confirm it through corridor talk Amber overhears. Paul tells Claire he will leave Amber. Claire tells Paul she is scared of what Amber knows. The sisters who competed over Taylor as girls now compete over Paul, and the old jealousy fits the new facts like a hand in a glove.

Second, the childhood fire was not a clean accident in the way the adults claimed. The diaries hide the full truth until late, when Amber remembers, or admits, more about who dared whom and who held the matches and who ran. Taylor's death was born of jealousy and panic, and both sisters carry blame. Their parents chose a story that let the family move, and that story taught Amber that truth is flexible when love is at stake.

Third, the crash was deliberate. On the night Amber was hit, Paul was driving, with Claire in the car or close behind depending on which account you trust. Amber had learned of the affair and threatened to expose more than infidelity, including what she knew about money Paul had taken and about the past they had buried. Paul says it was panic and rain. Claire says Paul meant to scare her, not kill her. Amber, listening in the ward, decides both versions serve the speakers.

Fourth, someone tries to finish the job in the hospital. Amber's monitor spikes. Her line is tampered with. A night visitor leans in and speaks words only Amber hears. The staff catch enough to move her bed and limit visits, but not enough to name the hand. Amber learns to fake deeper sleep, slowing her breath when Paul or Claire enter, so they speak freely. The woman who seemed helpless starts gathering facts with the only tool she has left, her ears.

Fifth, Amber wakes on her own terms and lies about what she remembers. She tells police she recalls little, then feeds them pieces that point at Paul and Claire while keeping her own hands clean. Paul, who thought a silent wife was safe, finds a waking wife far more dangerous.

I will not quote the final pages, but their shape is fair to describe. Amber regains speech in stages, tests who tells the truth about the night visits, and confronts Paul with what she heard while she could not answer. The last line lands because the title earns it.

When twists crowd out people

Feeney writes pace and voice well, and the three thread structure holds for most of the book. The radio station details feel lived in, early alarms and cold studios and callers who overshare. The ward routines feel researched without reading like notes. The diary chapters are the most alive, and they make the adult Amber sadder by contrast, a bright girl who learned to perform and never stopped.

The criticism I share with many readers is that the late reveals pile faster than belief can absorb. An affair plus a childhood death plus a staged crash plus hospital attacks is a lot for 272 pages. Each turn is clued, but together they ask Amber to be at once victim, witness, and avenger while lying flat. I bought her fear. I did not fully buy that Paul and Claire could be both ruthless enough to plan murder and careless enough to confess beside a coma bed.

Believability strains in smaller ways too. The police accept thin accounts for too long. The hospital lets too many unlogged visits slide. Paul, written as smooth, makes loud mistakes when the plot needs him caught. Claire swings from helpless to steely and back within pages. If you read thrillers for clean procedure, these gaps will itch. I read for dread and family poison, so I forgave more than a skeptic might.

Still, the core portraits stick. Amber as a woman who learned young that stories protect, Paul as a man who mistakes charm for character, Claire as a sister who confuses being loved with being good. A scene where adult Amber remembers braiding Claire's hair while Taylor waited outside says more about envy than any twist.

Who should pick it up. If you enjoy unreliable narrators and hospital dread, or if you liked Feeney's later books and want to see where her games began, this moves fast and hits hard. If you dislike stacked twists or stories where almost everyone deceives, you may find the last act tiring. For me, the line that lingers is not the final lie. It is Amber as a girl, counting breaths under a blanket, learning that quiet keeps you safe, and carrying that lesson all the way to a ward where quiet is the only choice she has left.

FAQ

When was Sometimes I Lie published?

Flatiron Books published the US first edition in 2017. It runs 272 pages with ISBN 9781250144843.

How is the story told?

Three threads braid coma Now chapters, the week before the crash, and Amber's diaries from age eleven with Claire and Taylor.