Blackmail, forgery, secret video cameras, rape, poisoning, arson, and failing to put on a seat belt all play a role.

Feeney has loaded her maiden effort with possibilities for twists and reveals-possibly more than strictly necessary-and they hit like a hailstorm in the last third of the book. Interwoven with these sections are portions of a diary, recounting unhappy events that happened 25 years earlier from a 9-year-old child's point of view. He works as a night porter at the hospital, giving him unfortunate access to her paralyzed but not insensate body. Also her sister, with whom she shares a dark secret, and a nasty ex-boyfriend whom she ran into in the street the week before. In the present, she's visited in her hospital room by her husband, a novelist whose affections she has come to doubt. As Amber lies in bed recalling the events of the week that led to her accident, several other narrative threads kick up in parallel. Two: As she confesses immediately, 'Sometimes I lie.' Three: It's a story so complicated that even after the truth is exposed, it will take a while to get it straight in your head.

We won't learn what caused her condition until the end of the book, and the journey to that revelation will be complicated by many factors.

26 (or Boxing Day, because we're in England), and she's lying in a hospital bed seemingly in a coma, fully conscious but unable to speak or move. 'A lot of people would think I have a dream job, but nightmares are dreams too.' Was it only a week ago Amber Reynolds thought her job as an assistant radio presenter was a nightmare? Now it's Dec. A pathological liar, a woman in a coma, a childhood diary, an imaginary friend, an evil sister-this is an unreliable-narrator novel with all the options.

Sometimes i lie by alice feeney