Review of ONLY LIES REMAIN by Val Collins (New Release)

1 Star

I finished this book only because I received a copy of the book on the understanding that I would review it.  There are so many issues with it that I don’t know where to begin.

Aoife Walsh learns that her father-in-law’s body has been discovered; Danny had disappeared 15 years earlier but his wife Maura assumed he was alive because she has been receiving monthly envelopes of cash ever since.  Since Danny went missing just after a robbery at the bank at which he worked, the police suspect he was involved; they also think that Maura may have information about Danny which she has kept hidden.  Aoife decides to help her mother-in-law by doing her own investigation, but she soon learns that Maura has indeed been keeping secrets.  Aoife ends up taking a job with Cian Mannion, the son of Danny’s former boss, thinking he may have useful information as well.  While all of this is going on, Aoife and her husband Jason are experiencing marital difficulties.  After an absence, Jason has moved back in, but things do not go well.

A major problem is that Aoife is so stupid.  At one point, a character says, “’Poor Aoife!  You’re not very bright, are you?’”  That is an understatement.  She takes a job with a man who will pay her only in cash.  That man is supposedly an art critic but he thinks that someone who does copies of great paintings will be famous one day?!  Jason is totally selfish and gives her such flimsy excuses for wanting to live with her, yet Aoife lets him stay?  As part of an investigation, she checks a phone record and at the end says, “’Contacted everyone on list . . . No information.’”  Then, almost immediately, someone else discovers that Cian’s number is on the list.  So Aoife missed it?!

No one behaves in a normal manner.  Maura doesn’t know the date of her best friend’s birthday?!  A woman who admits she has known someone “for a short time” spends three days writing that person’s eulogy which takes “twenty-four minutes to read”?  Aoife hasn’t seen a young man in a month; when she sees him, she notices that “He’d outgrown the awkward teenage stage.”  Decorations, balloons, and candles on a cake are used for adult birthday parties to ensure “the whole kids’ birthday party experience”?!  Someone wanting to hide a “mound of paintings” for one night would go through the trouble of hanging them in his bedroom for that night?  And because there is insufficient room for all of the paintings on “the wall,” he puts two paintings in some frames to keep the paintings from being damaged?  A man wanting to stop a woman from making a phone call would approach her with “both arms held at shoulder height in front of him, palms facing her”?  At a Mass devoted to prayers for her son’s return, a mother would take photos?  The parents of a groom would take photos at their son’s wedding?  Aoife is served tea in her own home “from a large teapot Aoife had never seen before”?

There are bizarre conversations throughout the book.  Aoife and her best friend Orla have prolonged conversations in which they speculate as to what could have happened; it’s obvious the writer is trying to create suspense by suggesting any number of suspects, but the speculations lack any sense of logic.  Sometimes conversations make no sense whatsoever.  For example, Jason tells Aoife, “’I became the person you needed, Aoife. . . . you needed someone to do everything for you, so that’s the person I became. . . . Now you need me to be somebody else, I can become that person too. . . . all I’m saying is I don’t adapt to change easily.  I stupidly tried to keep our relationship the way it used to be because I thought that was the only way it would work.  Now I see that it can’t work that way, I’ll change.’”  Someone would say about a woman in a photo, “’I certainly didn’t know her well, and I don’t remember the face.  Did she live locally?” and “’I don’t know her.  I don’t ever remember seeing her before.’” 

Portraying police as inept is such a cheap way of suggesting that others (Aoife) are better able to conduct an investigation.  The reader is supposed to believe that a police officer would actually have no idea that a murder victim’s phone calls might help identify his killer?  Another police officer cannot but give a woman confidential information about a case because that woman is beautiful and charming?  He goes so far as to decide, without any proof, that he will consider her the next of kin of a victim!  A police officer would deliver good news to a panicking person by beginning with, “’Are you sitting down’”?!  The police wouldn’t take a victim’s laptop as part of their investigation? 

Sometimes, there is a total lack of logic.  For instance, there is this nonsensical description of a job:  “It was a four-day-a-week role, but for the first six months, Maura would work three days and Aoife would work one.  At first they would work together while Aoife taught her how to run an office.  After a few weeks, Maura would work alone and Aoife would come in on one of her days off to pick up the slack until Maura was fully up to speed”?  How can they work together if Aoife is only working one day and already has another job for 3 days a week?  If Maura can work alone only after a few weeks, how can she work three days for the first six months?

The above paragraph is just one indication of how much editing the book needs.    Wrong characters are named so there are strange sentences like “Maura left the room and returned with a photo album more than twice the size of Maura’s.”  There are redundancies like “they had all Tadhg’s worldly possessions piled into two boxes.  Maura wiped her eyes.   ‘So little.  That’s all his possessions in the entire world.’”  There’s the grammar:  “Tadhg’s personal belongings will be divided between the lads” even though there are several lads among whom to divide.  Verb tense is problematic because the same event will be described once in the past tense and then in the past perfect tense.   In the Acknowledgments there is reference to an editor and proofreader but I must disagree that they did a “marvellous job”!

I hate false advertising!  The book is described as the work of an “award-winning” author or as the work of the author who wrote the “award-winning” book entitled Girl Targeted.  A bit of research led me to discover that Girl Targeted was self-published and given a B.R.A.G. medallion; authors submit a book and pay a fee of $75 and if the book meets supposedly high standards, it will be given that medallion.  Apparently, “On average, only 20-25% of the books we consider are awarded our B.R.A.G. Medallion” (https://www.bragmedallion.com/about/).  This is hardly what I consider a literary award!

I cannot recommend a book with such a lack of logic. 

Note:  I received a digital galley via BookSirens.