Truth Games Review

"Truth Games" follows Ellie Wilson as her perfect life starts to unravel when a university friend of her husband's moves to their town.

General Impressions

Welcome to one of the most unsettling reads I ever had. Every page was hell and I would read a thousand more.

I understand now why Caroline England is considered the queen of the marriage thriller because damn, this was a psychological thriller at its very best.

Ellie tries very hard to be perfect: the perfect mother, wife, daughter, and with what is left she tries to be whatever she can be for everyone else in her life. Like many stay-at-home mums, she ends up isolated and devoid of a sense of self that is defined by the people around her, so when she starts catching her husband's lies, she starts doubting herself instead.

Very quickly, what seemed like the perfect loving middle-class equal partnership reveals itself to be nothing more than unknowing servitude: the father is the only one that works so he holds all the power and when Ellie doesn't brush his mistakes under the rug quickly enough or stops being a pretty blow-up doll that cooks, cleans and makes pretty well-behaved children, he reveals himself for what he truly is: a middle-aged nothing who never was brave enough to be truthful and punished others when they reveal his life for the fantasy it is.

This ended up being a book about unhealthy marriages and the weight society puts on people to be part of a couple but also about domestic violence without any kind of direct physical aggression, with all kinds of aggressors, victims, and types of violence which we rarely get to read about.

Conclusions

This is a story of a woman being gaslighted to hell and back by everyone around her and honestly, I still don't know what to make of it because up until five pages to the ending I really thought I was getting all I wanted and that woman would be free but then we get thrown a curb ball from hell and the book ends without any answers and a dozen more questions.

All I can hope was the spine she grew throughout the book didn't disappear and she stopped letting other people tell her what she should feel and do but I guess we will never know which only made this read more unforgettable.

Thank you to Piatkus and Little Brown Books for this copy.

Rating: 4/5