Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies

Beautiful Lies

Lisa Unger

Shaye Areheart (Crown), Apr 2006, $24.00

ISBN: 0307336689

Thirtyish Ridley Jones tries to grab a taxi when she notices the toddler heading into the street with a vehicle coming towards the boy. Without a thought for her own safety, Ridley rushes to the rescue of the infant. Her courageous act saves the lad's life and makes her a heroine with her picture on the front page of the New York papers.

Not long afterward, Ridley receives an envelop in the mail with no return address. Inside is an old fading photograph of a man who she does not recognize, a woman who looks vaguely familiar, and a little girl. The only note hauntingly asks "Are you my daughter?" Her parents vehemently insist she has been their child since birth, but her new neighbor Jake has some doubts about their veracity. She needs to know the truth, but everyone she thought she knew from her parents, to her addicted brother; to her pediatrician, and finally, those defending her uncle's heritage of safe houses for abused women and children want her to stop her quest. Her only apparent ally Jake has an agenda too, but that changes when they begin to find a nightmarish undercurrent to Uncle Max's legacy.

BEAUTIFUL LIES is a powerful look at what on the surface seems like kindhearted gestures to help the downtrodden, but instead hides a dark undercurrent. The storyline is action-packed yet character driven as Ridley quests to learn the truth, but each step of the way finds her increasingly distrusting those she cherished and entrusted her life with. Lisa Unger writes a dark tale of a woman finding her "heritage" is not quite what everyone she loved has painted.