Publication Date: June 11, 2024
In a web of lies, one mother fights for the truth…
For popular true crime author Margo Box, the past six months have been a waking nightmare. Ever since her five-year-old daughter, Poppy, vanished—abducted by her own father—Margo has tortured herself the way only a mother could: with unrelenting blame. How could she have let this happen? Had she been working too hard to see the signs?
Despite the guilt and unanswered questions, Margo holds on to the hope that Poppy is somehow still alive. Yet after years of solving other people’s cold cases, her own case proves impenetrable.
That is, until she finds a cryptic letter hidden in a secondhand book in her neighborhood library box. In this letter are clues that someone in the community knows something about the disappearance of Margo’s school friend Sarah nearly two decades ago—the disappearance that drove Margo into true crime and haunts her still. To distract from the pain in her life, Margo throws herself into Sarah’s case, desperate for closure of some kind. But as she digs deeper into her friend’s history, she unearths a disturbing connection to her daughter she never expected to find…
True crime novelist Margo Box knows the taste of success after helping to solve a decades-old mystery. That was before her life imploded.
Now, Margo is left wondering how her perfect life—with her perfect family living in the ideal house—suddenly broke apart. Her story unfolds in Lies Make Perfect by Ellie Banks.
Initially, readers might think that Margo suffers from some sort of delusion where she imagines a child crying. As the story unfolds, the horrible truth surfaces—her child has been taken.
In an effort to move on, Margo turns to another unsolved mystery in her neighborhood. Her best friend’s father, a respected teacher, disappeared years ago with a 16-year-old student. Margo sifts through her memories for clues about her 10th-grade teacher and what exactly happened. When she finds a letter hidden in a book, Margo focuses her attention on the case, only to find some startling connections.
Margo’s brokenness as a character is palpable, shaping every aspect of her being. However, it’s her determination that resonates as she discovers this world hosts all sorts of monsters, even ones living in perfect neighborhoods.
Lies Make Perfect delivers a psychological thriller packed with unexpected twists and turns.
Ellie Banks is the pseudonym for New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates, who has written over one hundred novels. Whether she’s writing domestic suspense, romantic westerns or multigenerational family sagas, she loves getting lost in fictional worlds. She likes to spend a rainy day knitting and watching true crime documentaries. She lives with her husband and three kids in the Pacific Northwest.
