Sliver of Truth

Lisa Unger is a welcome new voice to the psychological thriller genre and has quickly been put at the top of the list with the best of them. I started with her third novel BLACK OUT which I loved, so I went back and read her first - BEAUTIFUL LIES. I found it to be an exceptional debut novel expertly crafted with insight and intrigue and a web of suspense carefully weaved. The novel also introduced us to heroine Ridley Jones. Her simple, happy life was disrupted forever by some simple acts and her family and life became a mystery. I don't want to give away plot but BEAUTIFUL LIES expertly wrapped itself up at the end. It was an exceptional read. Yet Lisa Unger decided to bring back Ridley Jones in SLIVER OF TRUTH and further the drama and intrigue of her life. I always say second novels show if an author really has the talent and having it be a sequel gives them something to live up to. Lisa Unger delivers 100% and this novel proves to be even better than her first. You could read this novel by itself but it will be a much better read if you read BEAUTIFUL LIES first. The story line progresses very realistically and Ridley Jones and the other characters from BEAUTIFUL LIES return in an intensely suspenseful and intricately plotted story. The revelations that appeared in the first book are looked into deeper as the FBI becomes involved. Lisa Unger has a rare gift of going into a character's head and making all her characters three dimensional and very believable. Ridley Jones is a complex, hardened deep soul who gains even more depth here. Ms. Unger also can unravel a plot that at first seems rather simple and have it grow into a major, charged thrill ride. There are red herrings dropped everywhere,. Her plot developments make sense and a reader never has to suspend belief. She knows how far to push the action to keep it real. This novel is a definite page-turner to read with the lights on. It will shock and amaze you. Bottom line - was there a need for the return of Ridley Jones and her saga? The answer is a resounding yes. Lisa Unger is a gifted novelist and it is hard to believe this is only her second novel. She has become one of my favorite authors and I look forward to a long journey exploring a long writing career with Ms. Unger.

This second installment from Lisa Unger about the live of Ridley Jones was great. If you loved Beautiful Lies as much as I did, but were left hungry for what happens to Ridley after she discovers the truth about her parents, this is a MUST read. The twists and turns in this book keep you hungry for more and you find it very hard to put this book down until you know how it is going to end!!!! I don't want to spoil this one for you.....but I would have NEVER of seen this ending coming!!!!!

Ever since I read her debut* novel, Beautiful Lies: A Novel, I have been a big fan of author Lisa Unger. BL was the first book in this trilogy and I hoped this second one, Sliver of Truth: A Novel, would be just as riveting. Unger did not disappoint me! She proceeds with the intriguing story of Ridley Jones's search for her father without a hitch; same ease in writing with a voice so smooth it lulls you into the story with ease. Unger has discovered her true voice and I, for one, am convinced she will go far in the literary field. Like the first book, Sliver of Truth: A Novel has everything: high drama, exciting action, likable, believable protagonists, and villains you love to hate. Not only is Unger great with dialog, she's a master at pacing the action, and her plot is quite original. I held my breath, wondering if Ridley ever finds her father? Was her Uncle Max really her father? And was he dead, as she believed, or very much alive as everyone else believed? What did the FBI have to do with Uncle Max? The Armenian mob? And why did everyone want him? How did they use Ridley for their own purposes? And when everyone who attempted to help her ended up dead, how did our feisty heroine fight back? Doesn't that sound like a winner? A blockbuster of a story? Well, it is! It's a riveting tale of intrigue that I couldn't put down, and I bet you won't be able to, either ... until you learn the answers to those questions for yourself. * Technically, I feel that Beautiful Lies: A Novel should not have been billed as a "debut" novel, since Unger had written several other novels under a different name. In all fairness, though, there could be New York "industry standards" that apply to situations like this, standards of which I'm not aware and that could have a legal bearing on what's permissible and what isn't. However, that has nothing to do with the quality of this author's writing; this is still a "must read" trilogy. "Double feints and triple suspense plays . . . make Sliver of Truth: A Novel compulsive reading.-- New York Daily News Reviewed by: Betty Dravis, 2008 author of 1106 Grand Boulevard

There was a time when Ridley Jones enjoyed her relatively "normal" and comfortably obscure existence as a freelance writer in New York. But, as she puts it looking back at the destiny-changing event of saving the life of a toddler from the path of an oncoming van and having her picture doing it land on the front page of the Post, "I had been laboring under the delusion that I had some control over my life." This is a case of the spotlight of fame, lingering in the public mind, unearthing long buried secrets that are very dangerous to figure out. But, she must do exactly that. She didn't even suspect the surveillance that started up that day she became a heroine. As her life proceeds from this point, normality becomes more and more elusive. Myriad articles and newsmagazine specials featuring the Post photograph makes her a poster child for a controversial organization known as Project Rescue, for unwanted babies. Her boyfriend Jake, from whom she's now growing estranged, was just such a baby and, as she discovered in the preceding novel, so was she. Who, then, are her real parents? The important irony of it all is that the operation was developed by the man she grew up thinking was her uncle, Max Allen Smiley. At the end, she takes count: "I had stepped out of my identity to follow Max. I had led people to their deaths; I had fled from federal custody... I had been abducted and tortured and fled with a man I had no reason to trust..." Unger builds and sustains taut suspense like few other authors, metering layers of intentional misrepresentation until a sliver of truth seems like a form of treasure. This novel isn't exactly a sequel to "Beautiful Lies." It's more a continuation of a two-part story. Meaning, of course, that the first part should be read first. Don't even think about it. Get "Beautiful Lies," then get this one.