Stella Gordon is forced to live a brand new life when she is the witness to a murder and has to go into witness protection. She winds up in a dusty town in Nebraska, determined to get away as soon as she can but when she meets her neighbour, Chet, her plans begin to shift. She can’t tell anyone who she is, there are people looking to silence her from testifying but can she trust Chet or the other people in her new life?
This is such an exciting book; I was thoroughly gripped throughout the whole thing. It’s both a story of teenage love and a crime thriller, full of suspense and mystery.
Stella is certainly a character who grows on you and Fitzpatrick uses that to increase the drama, the book wouldn’t have as much power to keep you interested if you didn’t care what happened to the central character.
There are an awful lot of layers to this book, Stella’s boyfriend Reed, Chet, her mother in rehab, the people who live in her new town and her guardian, Carmina. This makes the story rich with detail and there isn’t a weak angle to any of the layers. It also opens so many questions that you can’t help but keep reading to unravel it all.
There weren’t that many twists and turns to this novel but the ones that were included were really well spun out and crafted. With a story this dramatic, it would be really easy to overcomplicate it or fall into another trap as other YA books often do, however Dangerous Lies swiftly avoids these, making it even more compelling to the reader.
It’s clear that Becca Fitzpatrick is a capable writer who understands how to captivate a teenage audience with fast paced chapters, while still developing the characters fully. This book was really enjoyable to read and it captured my imagination from start to finish, I would highly recommend it!
- Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
