Release Blitz: The Five Year Lie: Sarina Bowen
The Five Year Lie
Sarina Bowen
Bestselling romance author Sarina Bowen’s debut thriller, about one woman’s search for the truth after receiving a text from her deceased ex.
She thought it was love. Then he vanished.
On an ordinary Monday morning, Ariel Cafferty's phone buzzes with a disturbing text message. Something’s happened. I need to see you. Meet me under the candelabra tree ASAP. The words would be jarring from anyone, but the sender is the only man she ever loved. And it's been several years since she learned he died.
Seeing Drew’s name pop up is heart-stopping. Ariel’s gut says it can’t be real. But she goes to the tree anyway. She has to.
Nobody shows. But the text upends everything she thought she knew about the day he left her. The more questions she asks, the more sinister the answers get. Only two things are clear: everything she was told five years ago is wrong, and someone is still lying to her.
The truth has to be out there somewhere. To safeguard herself—and her son—she’ll have to find it before it finds her. And with it, the answer to what became of Drew.
For fans of Laura Dave and Julie Clark, but with a heart-stopping romance that only Sarina Bowen can execute, The Five Year Lie is a page-turning, spine-tingling thriller that will have you guessing until the very end.
I’m going to keep this vague and un-spoilery. This is a who-and-why-did-they-do-it story between past and present full of twists. It takes you on this rollercoaster of emotions, causes tension and anxiety, and sets off this search for answers to so many questions, suspicions, and mysteries bringing suspense, intrigue, and danger. I needed to know so badly that I almost cheated and looked at the end, but made myself take it all in, let it build, put the pieces all together, to find out how we ended up where we were in the prologue and what was going to happen after that.
This book pulls you into this situation with different points of view and time jumps and trickles of information coming out at a time as Ariel receives a text from her ex-boyfriend from five years ago who not only left her but was also reported dead.
It set off this whole personal investigation into what really happened to Drew. Along the way, she gets help from another coworker as they start trying to dig deeper and figure out more about Drew’s past and what he was doing while working for the company that they both worked for.
The time jumps in different points of view add to the complexity and the way that information is provided to us. And then mystery and discovery build to suspense and danger. I read half of the book the first day and I hated to have to put it down to go to bed, but I honestly had to talk myself out of not skipping to the end because I really wanted to know if one of my theories would pan out.
So this story pulled me in from the tension-filled prologue and it kept me invested trying to unravel how she got there. Even when I started getting some answers, I was just anticipating more and more of what was still coming and I was jonesing for the conclusion.
I really liked seeing Ariel grow and mature as she becomes more focused and confident throughout the story. I loved little Buzz. And I also got attached to her partner in her investigation, Zain. He is just one of those honest, straightforward, inquisitive, and helpful people who often are left in the background, but is right in the middle of this with her. And I was obsessed with Drew and figuring out his motivations and the truth about his situation. And determining if he was really good, bad, or somewhere in between. He was charismatic and complicated, and I really wanted Ariel to find out a truth she could live with. There are multiple possible antagonists and many different moving parts to the story giving it more depth.
By the time the book ended, I was glad I took this five-year journey with these characters. Some things made me sad or angry but others made me happy. And I could finally let out a breath after being so tense while reading it. So even though this is a genre change for Sarina Bowen, I think that she did a fantastic job creating a multi-layered, suspenseful, mysterious, intriguing story about lost love, secrets, lies, revenge, manipulation, and corruption.
It set off this whole personal investigation into what really happened to Drew. Along the way, she gets help from another coworker as they start trying to dig deeper and figure out more about Drew’s past and what he was doing while working for the company that they both worked for.
The time jumps in different points of view add to the complexity and the way that information is provided to us. And then mystery and discovery build to suspense and danger. I read half of the book the first day and I hated to have to put it down to go to bed, but I honestly had to talk myself out of not skipping to the end because I really wanted to know if one of my theories would pan out.
So this story pulled me in from the tension-filled prologue and it kept me invested trying to unravel how she got there. Even when I started getting some answers, I was just anticipating more and more of what was still coming and I was jonesing for the conclusion.
I really liked seeing Ariel grow and mature as she becomes more focused and confident throughout the story. I loved little Buzz. And I also got attached to her partner in her investigation, Zain. He is just one of those honest, straightforward, inquisitive, and helpful people who often are left in the background, but is right in the middle of this with her. And I was obsessed with Drew and figuring out his motivations and the truth about his situation. And determining if he was really good, bad, or somewhere in between. He was charismatic and complicated, and I really wanted Ariel to find out a truth she could live with. There are multiple possible antagonists and many different moving parts to the story giving it more depth.
By the time the book ended, I was glad I took this five-year journey with these characters. Some things made me sad or angry but others made me happy. And I could finally let out a breath after being so tense while reading it. So even though this is a genre change for Sarina Bowen, I think that she did a fantastic job creating a multi-layered, suspenseful, mysterious, intriguing story about lost love, secrets, lies, revenge, manipulation, and corruption.
When Ariel gets a text from her boyfriend, it sets off a series of events that has her questioning everything. Because Drew shouldn’t be texting her -- he’s been dead for 5 years.
Ariel is a single mom and though she lost the love of her life before her son was born, this unexpected text has her giving new thought to what happened 5 years prior to rip Drew from her life. As she digs into new details with the help of a coworker, she learns there was a lot going on at work she had no idea about, and knowing puts her in danger in a way she could never imagine.
I loved getting to know the younger Ariel as she was falling in love with Drew. He was easy to love, though knowing some of his thoughts through his POV chapters, readers know a little bit about what caused him to work for Ariel’s father’s company. But the details that come out during the course of Ariel’s digging were heartbreaking in their intensity.
From the beginning I was hooked on this story and characters. The pacing was perfect to build suspense and also move the plot towards resolution. I had some of the suspense parts of the plot figured out but even being confident I was correct didn’t lessen my engagement with the story. The way the story flipped between the present and the past drove Ariel’s search for the truth while also building the relationship that changed her life. I loved the entire journey of discovery and the ways Ariel’s outlook changed throughout the book.
I loved this shift to suspense by Bowen. While the romance was still a major part of the story, the suspense elements drove the main plot and kept me guessing.
Sarina Bowen is a 24-time USA bestselling author, and a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of contemporary romance novels. Formerly a derivatives trader on Wall Street, Sarina holds a BA in economics from Yale University.
A New Englander whose Vermont ancestors cut timber and farmed the north country in the 1760s, Sarina is grateful for the invention of indoor plumbing and wi-fi during the intervening 250 years. She lives with her family on a few wooded acres in New Hampshire.
Sarina's books are published in over a dozen languages with fifteen international publishers.
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