The Lie by Karina Halle Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform on February 25th 2016
Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 358
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Apple Books
The Lie - a standalone, second-chance romance - is now a New York Times Bestselling novel! Their love led to a lie Their truth led to the end Brigs McGregor is crawling out from the ashes. After losing his wife and son in a car accident and his job from his subsequent downward spiral, he's finally moving forward, getting a prestigious teaching position at the University of London and a new life in the city. Slowly, but surely, he's pushing past the guilt and putting his tragic past behind him. Until he sees her. Natasha Trudeau once loved a man so much she thought she'd die without him. But their love was wrong, doomed from the start, and when their world crashed around them, Natasha was nearly buried in the rubble. It took years of moving on to forget him, and now that she's in London, she's ready to start again. Until she sees him. Because some loves are too dangerous to ever indulge. And some loves are far too powerful to ignore. Their love just might be the life and the death of them. WARNING: This book contains sexually explicit scenes, harsh language and emotional triggers such as death of a child and infidelity. Reader discretion is strongly advised. The McGregors is a series of STANDALONE books with interlocking characters. They can all be read by themselves without prior knowledge of the other books. However if you do wish to read them all, this is the order: 1. The Pact 2. The Offer 3. The Play 4 Winter Wishes (a sequel to The Play) 5. The Lie
This one hurts me to write. I’ve loved all of Karina Halle’s MacGregor cousins (some more than others), and I was looking forward to Brigs’ story, but it just fell a little flat for me.
I don’t have the same problem with cheating or infidelity that a lot of readers do. I don’t love it, but it’s not an automatic DNF for me. Everyone has their own story, and I try really hard not to prejudge people if I don’t know it. And make no mistake, the relationship between Brigs and Natasha 4 years ago was an affair, even if it didn’t go beyond some heated kissing. If you’re trading “I love you”s with someone who isn’t your spouse or significant other, you’ve definitely crossed that line.
When Brigs tries to leave his wife, coming clean with her about Natasha and his feelings for her, everything goes horribly, tragically wrong, and he and Natasha are torn apart in the aftermath. They both know they can’t be together anymore, and they don’t see each other for four years. The book spends a lot of time jumping back and forth, showing us their relationship four years ago, and the new one they’re trying to build now. Sometimes I thought it spent a little too much time doing that. I was struggling to find a real connection between the two of them, or to find out what it was about Natasha that Brigs found so irresistible. And that’s not really fair to Natasha. Every single couple in the world has had at least one person look at them and say “I don’t get it”. I just didn’t get enough of a sense of her to see what exactly it was that set her apart from every other college student Brigs dealt with every day.
Even in the present day story, I had that same struggle. There wasn’t anything wrong with Brigs or Natasha, they were both just a little bland. I never really felt their connection, and the professor/student aspect of the relationship was a little off-putting, too. I had to keep reminding myself that even though she was a student in the same department where Brigs taught, she wasn’t actually a student of his, and she’s almost thirty in the present day story, so he could hardly be accused of taking advantage of someone much younger than him. I think that was a problem with the story, too. At this stage, there isn’t really a reason for them to be apart. The only conflict they have to deal with is their own feelings about everything that happened in the past. There’s nothing now to separate them. So when a conflict was thrown in their path toward the end of the book, a conflict that had been pretty apparent for quite a while, but also came out of nowhere, it didn’t work. It felt manufactured to give them a black moment, a reason to break up for a little while whether they wanted to or not.
So, overall, I didn’t love this, I didn’t hate it. I have a feeling none of the MacGregor cousins will ever dislodge Lachlan from his solid position as my favorite, though. That man broke my heart over and over again in his book.
All that said, I am really looking forward to the next book. We met Keir briefly here and got the story setup for The Debt, and I’m already fascinated. It’s such an unusual story; I can’t wait to see what Karina Halle does with it.
About Karina Halle
Karina Halle is a former travel writer and music journalist and The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Bestselling author of The Pact, Love, in English, The Artists Trilogy, Dirty Angels and over 20 other wild and romantic reads. She lives on an island off the coast of British Columbia with her husband and her rescue pup, where she drinks a lot of wine, hikes a lot of trails and devours a lot of books.
