What I’m Reading: Big Lies in a Small Town

I’ve been flying through books much faster than I’ve been flying through fabric so instead of a stash report today, I’m giving you an extra book review. When I say I’ve been flying through books, it’s totally true. With Rosie here, I don’t cross stitch much and watch television, she doesn’t sit still long enough. HA! So…sewing and listening to audiobooks has been my thing.

I was excited to see that Diane Chamberlain had a new book out, Big Lies in a Small Town. She’s one of my favorite authors. If you’re in need of a book quick, I can say you’re typically pretty safe grabbing one of her books.

I have long liked her books as often they take me back to another time period in the US and I learn a little more of what it was like back then. For this book, there is racial tension. There is also all the social norms of women not being able to “stay out so late” and it wasn’t proper for “white women to be with black men even as friends” and even how rape was viewed. It makes me thankful that I live in this time period.

I like how the author always interweaves a couple stories into one story. It keeps the book interesting.

Here’s what Amazon had to say:“North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher’s life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, she finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women’s Correctional Center. Her dream of a career in art is put on hold―until a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will see her released immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. Morgan knows nothing about art restoration, but desperate to leave prison, she accepts. What she finds under the layers of grime is a painting that tells the story of madness, violence, and a conspiracy of small town secrets.

North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and desperate for work, she accepts. But what she doesn’t expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.

What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?”

Amazon readers gave the book 4.7 stars. I’ll say 4.5. I really liked the book but I always save the really high ratings over 4.5 for epic books that live within me for forever. Although this was a really good book and I highly recommend it, years from now, it will likely be a book I “clump with the author” more than I singly remember the title. I hope that makes sense.