Never Lie by Freida McFadden
🕵️ Never Lie by Freida McFadden — Spoiler-Packed Review & Detailed Plot
⭐ 2.5 out of 5 stars | The unreliable narrator twist that fell flat | Fast read, but don’t look too hard or it unravels
🚨 SPOILER WARNING — I’m spilling everything 🚨
💭 My Honest Thoughts
Okay. Let’s just get this out there: this is the worst Freida McFadden book I’ve read. I’m a loyal Freida reader, but Never Lie tested me.
👉 Fast-paced? Yes.
👉 Twisty? Sure.
👉 A twist that makes sense on re-read? Nope.
The unreliable narrator thing felt cheap here. And the big reveal? Silly. If you re-read the early chapters, you’ll see how much this book cheats to preserve the twist.
❗ Example: Tricia pretends — even in her inner thoughts — to have never been in the mansion before… except she’s the killer who’s BEEN THERE MANY TIMES.
If your twist relies on your narrator lying to themselves in their own head, I’m out.
📝 The Full Plot
Tricia and Ethan, newlyweds house-hunting in upstate New York, get stranded during a storm at a creepy old mansion — formerly owned by famous psychiatrist Dr. Adrienne Hale, who disappeared mysteriously three years earlier.
👉 Inside, Tricia discovers Adrienne’s therapy tapes and starts listening in on confessions from patients — including one named Patricia Lawton (spoiler: that’s Tricia herself).
👉 Things get creepy:
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Tricia hears strange noises
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Ethan acts shady
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The house has secrets
⚡ The Big Unreliable Narrator Reveal
➡ Tricia has been to the house before. She isn’t some clueless innocent.
➡ Tricia is a murderer. Years ago, she killed her fiancé and friends after catching them cheating. She faked surviving an “intruder attack.”
➡ Adrienne knew Tricia’s secret because she was her therapist. But instead of going to the police, Adrienne blackmailed Tricia into helping her kill a man (Edward Jamison) who was blackmailing Adrienne.
➡ Adrienne murdered Edward and hid the body under the floorboards. When Tricia realized she’d been manipulated, she killed Adrienne.
➡ Ethan’s dark secret? He killed his mother, Gail (another of Adrienne’s patients), because she became paranoid he was trying to murder her.
🔥 The Final Act
👉 The real reason Tricia dragged Ethan out to that mansion: she wanted to dig up Edward’s body and get Ethan to admit his crime too, so they’d be “even.”
👉 Oh, and surprise! Luke (Adrienne’s boyfriend) has been secretly living in the house all along.
👉 Together, Tricia and Ethan decide their only path forward is to kill Luke, burn the tapes, bury the evidence, and go on with their happily ever after.
✨ The Epilogue
Now they live in the mansion (the one packed with their dark secrets), raising their daughter with another baby on the way. Tricia thinks to herself:
“My mother always says the only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead.”
👉 And she’s ready to do whatever it takes if Ethan cracks. How romantic.
🌟 Final Thoughts
✅ Easy to fly through? Yep.
✅ Atmosphere? Creepy enough.
✅ A twist that holds up? Not even a little.
👉 Want better McFadden? Try these instead:
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