I did feel the 'reveal' was heavily sign-posted very early on. Felt most of the characters all talked in exactly the same way, laboriously explaining themselves. I like psychological thrillers, with unreliable narrators, but found the main character so self-obsessed and such a humourless martyr for her children, that I did rather wish she had fallen over that cliff, and was rather cheering on her tormentors. ( )

Lucy Dawson has a very distinctive writing style and her new novel, Everything You Told Me, sticks to this successful formula. Earlier this year I read, The Letter You Sent, and spent my reading time with my heart beating that little bit faster, my eyes scanning the words and paragraphs and pages quickly as I tried to get to the bottom of the complete and utter muddle the protagonist found herself in - and I did exactly the same with this novel.

The protagonist is this novel is Sally. An exhausted mother of two to Chloe and Theo and wife to Matthew. Sally is happy with her life but with a pre-schooler and a six month old who refuses to sleep, combined with a stressed-out-with-work husband, sometimes she finds it testing. However, Sally refuses to believe she tried to kill herself which is where the novel starts.

We are taken on the journey directly through the eyes of Sally via a first person narrative. Whether she is a reliable narrator or not, is for the reader to decide themselves, but I decided she was, because although everything could been seen as very clear and straight-forward I did believe her version of events and her justifications for certain things. Again, like the previous novel of Dawson's, events happen over a fairly short timescale and so are quite intense and although there is not a lot of action as such - Sally is just trying to make and keep everything 'normal' for the sake of the children - our protagonist is forced to try and investigate matters herself when no one seems to want to listen to a word she says.

Sally is surrounded by 'helpful' family members, all saying they want the best for her. Who does really want this is anybody's guess as they all seem to have their own agenda. Sally finds herself in a complete muddle, as does the reader, and ends up questioning everyone, including herself. Sometimes I wished more information would come to light sooner, I found a few chapters a little repetitive but, having said that, they were quite helpful in reiterating / clarifying what had happened so far.

I did work out part of the ending fairly early on, but by all means not the entirety and depth of it. I liked the character of Sally and Matthew, particularly given their stressful and quite common lifestyle, some of the other characters I found a little unrealistic but not so much to the point that it spoiled the book for me.

If you like a muddling, nail-biter then you will enjoy this latest offering from Lucy Dawson. ( )

Everything You Told Me is narrated by Sally Hilman, a woman with two young children. She thought having the first, Chloe, was hard but when Theo came along, the child that doesn't sleep, she feels exhausted. So when she wakes up 200 miles away and has no recollection of how she got there everybody is very worried about her. But Sally knows there's more to it than that.

Right from page 1 this is a book which packs a punch and it left me guessing all the way to the end (although I had thoughts that weren't far from the mark). Sally is what they call an unreliable narrator. Can you trust what she says? Can even she trust herself? I thought the author portrayed Sally's confusion and bewilderment really well. But what is really clever is how the author plants that confusion and bewilderment into the mind of the reader. There were several key moments where I was left wondering whether Sally really was struggling to cope and trying to convince herself otherwise, or whether she was absolutely fine and it was everyone else who didn't believe her.

All the story takes place within a week or two but there's enough background story given to make sure we have a good sense of Sally's life, both past and present. This all builds up to make us question everything that happens. Like most psychological thrillers, it's a bit fantastical but there was also a hint of plausibility. I quite liked Sally, despite her sometimes erratic behaviour and I did hope things would come good for her.

I raced through this book as I couldn't wait to find out whether Sally really did have suicidal thoughts and if not, then how did she end up in that taxi. The conclusion was a mixture of me thinking "oh, of course" and "gosh, I didn't expect that". I thought this was a really excellent read and a look at how easily family life can implode. ( )