SO I LIED

Three young California women go on a bachelorette trip only to find themselves forced to confront the lies and secrets at the core of their friendship.

Cadence and Rowan are outwardly delighted to accept their friend Jocelyn’s invitation to join her on an all-expenses paid trip to the northwest coast of Wales. But in a story where the point-of-view shifts from woman to woman, the reader quickly learns that nothing is quite what it seems. Though she’s about to be married to the love of her life, beautiful, wealthy Jocelyn has been struggling for almost a decade to get her event-planning business off the ground. What Jocelyn doesn’t know is that her brilliant but plain friend Cadence, a middle school teacher, has been quietly having an on-again, off-again affair with her husband to be. Rowan, meanwhile, has felt like the perpetual third wheel ever since they all met in college. An aspiring artist forced to drop out and begin working due to an unplanned pregnancy, she regards her friends’ freedom with longing and envy, yet can’t break with them because of the long history they share, and the fact that Jocelyn’s dead twin, Jake, was the father of her child. When the women encounter a handsome but manipulative traveler and his attractive female companion at their bed and breakfast, the tension among them escalates and their friendship begins to unravel. One by one, secrets emerge about jealousies so intense they drove each woman to cruel and selfish acts of destruction, including murder. Tightly plotted, suspenseful, and ruthless in its exploration of the dark side of love and friendship, Ichaso’s novel is a richly satisfying thriller.

A twisty, unrelenting gem.