Would I Lie to You throws you into the lives of Faiza, Tom, and their three children. They pride themselves in having a lavish lifestyle but when Tom loses his job, he remains calm at the thought that they can live off their savings while he searches for the next thing. What he doesn’t know, however, is that Faiza has already spent the £75,000 - their entire life savings. She now has 6 weeks to replace the money before her family is bankrupt.
The plot of this book explores a kind of domino effect where one lie leads to another, so that the situation escalates into something much bigger than what it started as. While reading, I enjoyed the moments of suspense and even though at times I felt the plot was crazy dramatic, I was hooked on finding out how Faiza would unravel the mess she created.
Faiza is an extremely chaotic protagonist and I can’t say I liked her, but she was very well developed and ultimately I did want things to work out for her family. Her desperation was at times anxiety-inducing: with each chapter it felt like she had dug an even deeper hole for herself. However, this, in addition to pressures she’s under to fit in with the Wimbledon ‘yummy mummys’ who already see her as different, made her easier to sympathise with.
This is not the type of book I’d usually gravitate towards, but I liked that the main character was Pakistani and raised in a Muslim family and I especially liked that her identity wasn’t ever used as a plot device. Because this isn’t my usual genre, I don’t know how this compares to other titles of a similar type, but if you’re interested in women’s fiction and you’re bored of there not being any Asian people in commercial fiction then I would give this a read.
Thank you to Avi and Head of Zeus for my review copy!