Would I Lie to You? - Aliya Ali-Afzal

Genre: Womens Fiction / Romance

Release Date: 8th July 2021

Trigger Warnings: Racism, Alcohol, Sexual Assault, References to suicide and self-injury.

Faiza has it all - her life is something pulled straight from the pages of a glossy magazine.

She has Tom, her handsome banker husband, three loving children, a busy social life among the elite mums of London and the envy-inducing home. She has curated the perfect life, the one she so desperately desired before.

But it's not all that it seems on the surface. Somewhere behind her perfectly polished exterior, she is struggling to keep her life together, draining her families emergency savings to maintain the life she wants to live until they dried up completely. And she was going to put it back one day ... but when Tom loses his job it's only a matter of time before before the little money they have left runs out and her secret comes out. She could lose everything and everyone she loves unless she can figure out a way to put everything back - quickly.

I was gripped by Faizas world right away, watching as the first ripples on the surface of her world started to appear. I was right there with her, desperately terrified and waiting for something awful to happen.

Delving into the reality of the lives we pretend to have and how far we go to be something we're not, and exploring the struggles of how mixed race families are treated along with societal and traditional pressures - this was not only insightful and poignant but addictively dark.

As Faiza tries borrowing, earning, anything to fix her mistakes - she finds herself in increasingly difficult and disturbing situations as lives and lies get tangled together.

This story was a stunning debut that was undeniably binge-readable and hauntingly real. Aliya Ali-Afzal has definitely put herself firmly on my literary map.

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Aliya Ali-Afzal, NetGalley & Head Of Zeus Publishing for an Advance Readers Copy in return for an honest review.

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