A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

sholio read a completely insane domestic thriller (that's the genre of Colleen Hoover's completely insane novel Verity), so I decided to check out a different book by the same author and see if it was equally bonkers.

For the first half, it was disappointingly tame. And then the WTF began!

This is the blurb:

My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me:
1. I’m in a coma.
2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie.

Given that, I went in assuming that everything was a lie and it would be something like Justine Larbalestier's Liar, in which by the end of the book I had no idea whether or not the protagonist was a werewolf, a murderer, pregnant, had some kind of genetic disease, had had sex with someone who was murderered, was in jail, or was in a mental hospital. I was also not sure whether any of the major events in the book actually happened. That was a very frustrating experience.

Sometimes I Lie is not like that. The narrator is wildly unreliable, but by the end of the book you do know what happened in the book.

It had three time tracks. In the present, the narrator, Amber Reynolds is in a coma in a hospital after a car crash. She can hear but not see or communicate. In the weeks leading up to the accident, we get a look at her life. The third track is a childhood diary from age ten.

This book is nuts. The first half is setup for the second half, which is a cascade of increasingly WTF twists. It's nonsensical but I can't say it's not entertaining, though I really could have done without the graphic rape.

A lot of the book consists of something happening, then for the narrator to reveal that it didn't really happen. Almost all of the twists were things that the narrator knew upfront, but didn't tell the reader or lied to the reader about. There's a handwavey suggestion that the narrator lies to herself, but basically it's the author being misleading rather than anything justified by the plot.

I have copied below my emailed liveblogging of the book. Contains spoilers for the entire book, all the way down to the completely insane final page.



- The problem with knowing the title upfront is that I automatically disbelieve literally everything the heroine says. Right now I don't believe that she's a Jane Doe in a coma in a hospital, her name is Amber Reynolds, and she's a radio presenter.

- In the present, Amber has been identified, she was in a single-car crash not wearing a seatbelt, it's Christmas Day, and she knows her writer husband Paul had something to do with the accident! She can hear but not see, which is fun and means she's functionally face-blind!

Paul appears and calls her a bitch, then throws out her sister Claire, saying Amber told him not to trust her.

In the past, she's going to be fired if she can't get along better with Madeline, her radio co-host, who's been there longer. Paul is a complete dick and seems to be having an affair with Claire.

- Excerpt from her childhood diary: Her parents don't love her and her dad's an alcoholic.

Present: Cops found old injuries on her body and suspect her husband of inflicting them.

I'm calling it now: she injured herself and deliberately crashed the car to frame her husband in revenge for cheating with her sister.

- More child Amber diary: mom is abusive, dad is abusive, they throw plates.

Adult Amber: Paul and Claire are mysteriously gone at the same time. At work, she sees her rival co-worker Madeline with a red envelope and thinks "This is the plan!" No idea what that refers to.

Coma Amber: still comatose.

New theory: she's not in a coma, she's in a mental hospital after murdering everyone.

- Child Amber has befriended a girl named Taylor who looks like her and has the same birthday as her, but a much nicer family. They are definitely twins separated at birth. Probably current Amber is actually Taylor.

Adult Amber is secretly writing notes that she puts in red envelopes.

Coma Amber has been visited by an unknown man who pokes her and says "It was no accident, you did this to yourself."

- NOW this is getting going!

Child Amber: Sleeps over at her probable-twin Taylor's house and is extremely jealous of her perfect life and steals her gold bracelet. She is 100% going to replace Taylor because Taylor's parents are face-blind.

Adult Amber: Is writing vaguely threatening messages to Madeline and putting laxatives in her coffee!

Coma Amber: Someone walked into her coma room and deleted the messages on her phone.

- Earlier Coma Amber's parents visited her, but she's now revealed that they've been dead for a year so she says she must have hallucinated them.

- Amber has now discovered where Madeline lives and is shocked that she recognizes it, though she doesn't know why. I think Madeline is Taylor. Or else Madeline is Amber and Amber is Taylor.

- Claire and Paul have a conversation over Coma Amber strongly implying she was pregnant and lost the baby.

EWWWW Coma Amber just got molested by a man who says he tried to kill her with a drug overdose but it didn't work and he'll do it right next time.

I feel like the coma ward should be better supervised.

- OMG OMG child Amber got caught with the stolen bracelet and pushed her mom down the stairs causing her to be rushed to the hospital and have a miscarriage!

I think the coma victim molester is Amber's ex-boyfriend Edward, who is a doctor at that hospital. When he was molesting her he said some things that implied that he worked there.

- Amber tricked Madeline into thinking a mike was off when it was live, then manipulated her into ranting about the disadvantaged children she raises awareness of are little shits and their mothers are dumb sluts!

That was a legit funny scene.

- Amber has previously referred a lot to a work friend of hers, a woman named Jo. Her husband called her work and NO JO HAS EVER WORKED THERE!

Meanwhile, Taylor and her mom have forgiven Amber for stealing the bracelet. They like Amber because Taylor gets bullied and Amber protects her, but then gets in trouble for fighting. Maybe Taylor doesn't exist and Amber is just picking fights and shoplifted the bracelet?

Edward is not a doctor like he claimed. He is the night porter at the hospital and molesting/threatening Amber on the regular.

- Jo is Amber's imaginary friend!

Amber wasn't a radio co-host with Madeline, she was Madeline's abused assistant!

Paul wasn't having an affair, he sold a book in a huge deal and all the suspicious stuff like hidden fancy lingerie in Claire's size was actually meant for Madeline only the shop packed the wrong size! (That is SO DUMB.)

- The batshit is just cascading now.

Claire made Edward break up with Amber when they first dated by writing letters of complaint about him to his medical school, then telling Edward Amber wrote them!

In the just-before-coma timeline, Edward roofied Amber and took her home and raped her and she found his psycho shrine to her and fled, then told no one.

- Claire forced Amber to make Madeline quit!

- What we thought were Amber's diaries are actually Claire's diaries!

- I knew it! Amber is actually Taylor! And the child we thought was Amber is actually Claire!

- Claire filled her parents' house with gas and blew it up with them in it when she was ten! Taylor/Amber watched her do it!

- Claire got adopted by Amber/Taylor's parents after she blew up her own parents. (I assume no one but Amber/Taylor knew about that.)

Madeline is Claire's godmother who lives in the house that was rebuilt after it blew up. Claire is mad at her because she thinks the rebuilt exploded house should have been given to her.

- The story of the coma crash!

Paul found Claire's diaries, which Taylor/Amber kept because her bio-parents disinherited her and left everything to Claire, so Taylor/Amber wanted to keep something/anything. Paul didn't read them but he did mention them to Claire, who assumed he read them. He told Amber this, and she realized that Claire would murder him so she rushed to Claire's house to tell her Paul didn't read them. Claire didn't believe her and deliberately crashed the car with Taylor/Amber in it.

- Taylor/Amber wakes up from her coma and recovers. While she and Paul are babysitting Claire's twin babies for the night, she sneaks into Claire's house in the middle of the night. She poisoned their food! Claire's husband is dead! Claire is still alive but paralyzed!

Amber/Taylor sloshes petrol all over the room. To the sound of the babies screaming in the next room and Claire's horror, she sets the house on fire.

Amber/Taylor reveals that the babies are fine. she just recorded their screams. Then she burns Claire's diaries, including the fatal final line at the end of the entry about burning her parents to death, TAYLOR TOLD ME TO DO IT.

Amber/Taylor reveals that she also somehow murdered Edward and made his body disappear, and framed Madeline for Claire's death.

At the very end, everything is perfect... until the bracelet Claire stole when they were kids is delivered to her room! CLAIRE IS ALIVE! DUM DUM DUM!

The end.




Content notes: Multiple rapes including an explicit on-page rape of a comatose woman. Stalking. Bullying. Abusive parents. Murder. Miscarriage. Fakeout implying that babies burn to death (they're fine actually.) Dead goldfish. (But the dog doesn't die.)