Sheila Norton Would I Lie to You

Would I Lie to You

Sheila Norton

Strapless, Dec 2005, $12.95

ISBN: 0758209500

Wannabe writer single mom Beth Marsten raises her four years old daughter Ellie while making Weetabix or Shreddies food money by cleaning houses. Currently she thinks her life is in the toilets that she scrubs as her boyfriend Daniel, her and her job literally stinks especially since there is no hazardous duty pay. Making the already acrimonious Beth even more cantankerous is her parents who blithely, out of good intentions, tell her to obtain a better job; like anyone volunteers to clean latrines.

Beth's favorite client is Alex Chapman, whose mother pays her to clean the single young executive's apartment though there is nothing to do as it is pristine. At his place with little cleaning to do, Beth uses his computer to write a television script, but saves her work to a disk rather than the hard drive. When she meets Alex, she confesses what she does in his apartment. He admits the place is not lived in; he uses it as a sham to keep his mom off his back. He also shows her script to his estranged wife Sarah, a literary agent, who likes what she reads and offers to represent Beth. As Beth and Alex fall in love, she has difficult choices to make.

Sheila Norton's well written character driven chick lit tale will please fans because of Beth, a fine protagonist whose choices are not simple with potential falls on whatever she does. She matures during the fine written story line as she understands what a web we weave when we spin even a tiny white lie to deceive. Though the "epilogue" contains a sudden out of nowhere after a six month gap climax, readers will take great pleasure in this wonderful tale; now WOULD I LIE TO YOU otherwise?

Harriet Klausner