Review by Summer_Moon -- Lily White Lie by Connie Chappell

[Summer_Moon]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Lily White Lie" by Connie Chappell.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Lily White Lie by Connie Chappell, is a mystery novel about Wrenn Grayson. Wrenn is a politician for the city of Havens, OH and is also a part-time historian. Chappell writes this mystery in first-person so that we see the world through Wrenn’s eyes. Wrenn has a large collection of thoughts always swirling around in her head, and we get to tune in to these thoughts. I liked the first-person narrative as it works well with this genre.

Right away, the reader is dropped into a scene with Wrenn arriving home to find a garbled message on an old-style tape answering machine that is on the fritz. The message is confusing with the missing words and Wrenn does not learn what the whole message is until the end of the book. Eventually, Wrenn tells the reader that she is by herself during Thanksgiving. Wrenn’s husband, Gideon, is out in the mountains of West Virginia where there is no cell service. And that is precisely when Wrenn finds herself with a few interesting things happening. First, a friend of Gideon’s, Bret Kilmore, shows up. Then a pocket watch, lost over 100 years ago, is entrusted to her to find who the next of kin is for the person that it originally belonged to. And finally, there are intimidating notes left on Wrenn’s car that are perplexing. Wrenn must figure out where the notes are coming from and who they are intended for. And all the while, she is trying to keep track of Bret and trying to track down who the pocket watch belongs to.

Chappell does a good job keeping a quick pace and flow to her story. There is a lot happening all at once with plenty of action to keep the reader engaged and entertained throughout the book. However, there are confusing aspects to Chappell’s writing right from the beginning of the book. I honestly could not tell if I was reading part of the Bible during the first several pages. What caused the confusion is that Gideon’s dad has the same name as Gideon does. So, the dad is referred to as “God the father”, while the son is referred to as “God the son”. I believe Chappell thought the nicknames would get some laughs out of those who read it, but it just causes confusion. It was not until mid-book that I fully understood who the nicknames were referring to. Also, the nicknames do not have any role in the story. It was a weird and odd choice to have these nicknames included. I would have followed the story better with naming them Gideon Senior and Gideon Junior.

The good news is that the story itself is intriguing and worth a read. The bad news is that Chappell constantly gets in her own way with her writing. There are so many odd phrases, poor word choices, or just outright outlandish ways of using words that hinder the reader and slows them down. One example that stood out to me was a very odd sentence that included the words “emitting a thready laugh”. First, I have no idea what she was trying to say here. Even from the context, there is no way to glean what she was trying to express. Second, “thready” is not a word. I suppose it could be that the word she wanted is throaty, a throaty laugh, but that is quite the typo if that is the case. This is not the only example, but one that captures the oddities in the writing.

The book was not professionally edited. I found too many mistakes that should have been caught. While there were nowhere near as many mistakes as I have found in some books, there were enough to interrupt the flow of reading. However, the mistakes are not the real problem here. That would be the weird word usage that Chappell chose. It felt like Chappell decided to pull out a thesaurus and look up a word in every sentence and choose something from the thesaurus to replace it with. This leads to a couple problems. One, I had to constantly stop to look up words to figure out what they meant. Two, even after understanding the meaning of the word, they were used incorrectly and did not belong in the sentence.

There is one other complaint that I have with Chappell’s story. The complaint does not have any bearing on the story itself, but that is exactly why I feel it is important to express it here. Somewhere, sometime, Chappell must have had somebody call her cellar a basement. And the incorrect usage of the word basement for the correct term, cellar, must have riled her up. Enough so, to put this in the book. If Chappell had mentioned it a single time offhandedly, that would be one thing. Instead, she makes it sound like she is ridiculing the reader for any confusion between the two words and says several times that a cellar is not a basement. By the third mention, I stopped and wrote in my notes “I think I get it, a cellar is not a basement and vice versa. I will make sure never to mistake the two words so that I do not cause someone such great consternation with using the wrong word”. Authors should not be trying to make readers feel like they are being ridiculed while reading a book that is meant to entertain.

I did not enjoy Chappell’s writing oddities and weirdness, but overall, the story is a fun read with plenty of twists, turns, and humor. The conversations that occur are great as well. Chappell artfully balances seriousness with playfulness. Wrenn and Bret are a great team and I want to read more about the interactions between these two characters. I would rate this book a 2 out of 4 stars because of the weird word choices and the mistakes that I found throughout. If I could, I would rate the book a 2.5 and with a little work of cleaning up the mistakes and throwing away the thesaurus, it could easily reach a 3 or higher. Anyone who likes a good mystery with fast-paced storytelling would enjoy this book. I plan on finding more of Chappell’s Wrenn Grayson mysteries to read.

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Lily White Lie
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