We watch Marisa, Jake and Kate make choices that strain credibility or at least consistency of character. These novels - much like their cinematic equivalent, Brian De Palma’s giddy, baroque and self-referential thrillers - place their characters in increasingly extreme situations, requiring them to make hairpin turns or Jekyll-Hyde transformations that risk straining credibility. And the twist marks the novel - at least for its first two-thirds - as one of the Grand Guignol school of thrillers of which Gillian Flynn remains the current master and, as much as countless book jackets in recent years have asserted otherwise, few have approached her virtuoso, go-big-or-go-home approach. And it’s the kind of twist that makes you re-evaluate everything you’ve read before. And, in fact, things go awry with remarkable velocity.Įarly in “Magpie,” a twist comes that made me gasp out loud. “But nothing stayed perfect forever, did it?” Marisa thinks to herself. As the novel begins, she’s just moved in with Jake, a handsome consultant, after a whirlwind romance and the only possible obstacle appears to be the sudden intrusion of Kate, a lodger who moves in to help the couple economize as they plan for the future - foremost, having a child. What fun would that be?įrom the very beginning, we worry for Marisa, the kind of doomed heroine who doth-insist-too-much that she’s found the perfect man and the perfect house to begin what she believes will be the perfect life. “In a cheap film - the kind that she watches on cable channels in the afternoons lying on the sofa when she should be working - the wronged woman would pack her bags and leave the house in a fit of righteous indignation.”īut, of course, Marisa does no such thing. So Sonny comes up with an elaborate scheme to help Ryder realize that she's the girl he's really wanted all along.“What is she going to do?” wonders Marisa, the nervous, eager-to-conceive woman in “Magpie,” Elizabeth Day’s fourth novel.

Only there's one small catch: he thinks he's been talking to Amy. And to her horror, she realizes that she might actually like him. But without meaning to, Sonny ends up talking to Ryder all night online.

So when Ryder emails Amy asking her out, the friends see it as a prank opportunity not to be missed. Ryder's the new kid at Hamilton High and everything Sonny and Amy can't stand - a prep-school snob. Amy Rush might be the only person Sonny shares everything with - secrets, clothes, even a nemesis named Ryder Cross. And she lies about sneaking into her best friend's house every night because she has nowhere else to go.

Lying out loud book