Two Truths and a Lie

If you love mysteries, you will love this. I usually don't like mysteries, but I liked this one because of the psychological components and the modern fiction aspects.

"Dair was a habitual liar. Not pathological or anything, just...recreational." Thus begins this story about lies, deception, and what happens when the truth is sometimes less believable than the lies we tell. Let's face it we've all been guilty of telling "little white lies". Stories we enhance, niceties we introduce to spare someone's feelings, the occasional all out fib. Whether we like it or not, lying is part of human nature. And it is with this introspective into someone who has spent her entire life telling little (and sometimes not so little) lies that begins our story. We meet Dair, on the way to pick up her husband Peyton from the airport, plotting the lie she'll tell him to explain why she is late. It is the accident, or apparent suicide she witnesses on the way, which truly does make her late, and turns out to be stranger than any fiction she could have concocted. From here a web of lies, not only Dair's, but also everyone else's, begins to spin out of control. We meet Peyton, her husband, who has his own demons to contend with, we learn more about the reasons behind Dair's "habit" of stretching the truth. We meet Dair's mother, with her unusual talent of communicating with animals. We learn the identity of the alleged "suicide" victim, and his relation to all the players in this book. And we open up a whole lot of questions in the process. I really enjoyed this book. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, not even having a clue what the story was about (it was sent to me by a friend), and so was glad to discover that it was full of twists and turns and surprises. The characters were very real, and easy to identify with. The author creates a world not unlike the world her reader's live in, and therefore, these characters could be our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers. Their secrets and their lies, possibly making them people we don't truly know. The relationships between the characters were realistic, deep, captivating, and I could identify with Dair, I felt for Peyton, I adored the cranky upstairs neighbor, Mr. Lively. But it was the "secondary characters" in this story, the animals, which really tied it all together for me. Katrina Kittle did a wonderful job of making the pets as much a "cast of characters" in this novel as the humans. Shoddan and Blizzard, Peyton and Dair's dogs, with their huge personalities, Captain Hook, Mr. Lively's parrot, with his extended vocabulary, Dair's Chickadee, they were vital to this story, and added a nice twist to the mystery and the drama. For me, this book had it all, great character development, wonderful storytelling, mystery, humor, a bit of sadness, fantasy and realism. A+

Kittle's previous work, Traveling Light, was beautiful because, while the bare plot is sad, the story feels hopeful. In Two Truths and a Lie, her skill with mood shows through again, but is now complemented by innumerable convolutions of plot. Two Truths is fascinating and wonderfully complicated. Her work reminds me of Ann Tyler's because the characters are the best part of each novel. They're beautifully developed, and seem to drive the story rather than the other way around.

I read Ms. Kittle's first book and thought that she could not be topped. But, in her second book, Ms. Kittle has almost done just thought. In her suspensful novel, each page turn brings a change of emotion and reality flies off the page. Readers will begin to think that the characters are real, their probloems real, and the story actually happened. Ms. Kittle's novel has left me speechless and in awe of her writing. The novel is a must read for any reader and an excellent follow-up to TRAVELING LIGHT, the first masterpiece by Ms. Kittle.

Wow! What a unique book. I couldn't put it down. Murder, mystery, addiction, reincarnation, acting and animal communication are just some of the many elements involved in this intricate and fascinating story. In simplest terms, it can be described as a mystery, but it's also so much more. Set in Cincinnati, Ohio, the book explores our relationships with and how we communicate with other people as well as with animals. In fact, animals play a huge role in helping to solve the primary mystery of the story: the murder of one of the best friends of the protagonist, Dair Canard. If Dair could just overcome her addiction to alcohol, all the answers would be clear for her to see. And then there's her addiction to lying, which is getting her into deeper and deeper trouble. As Dair fights to overcome her addictions, she reconnects with her family and with an ability she had long buried. And she finds out that one of her biggest lies actually contained a truth that even she was unaware of. Also, I must mention that this book contains one of the most memorable fictional characters I've ever encountered: Captain Hook, an African Grey parrot who provides one of the keys to solving the mystery and who helps to bring a small community of neighbors closer together.