Never Tell a Lie  Finished 7-4-12, rating 3.5/5, 271 pages, pub. 2009

After several miscarriages Ivy and David Rose are finally nine months pregnant.  They hold a yard sale to clean out the house before baby Sprout arrives and a surprising customer shows up, an oft maligned girl from their high school who looks like a new woman and who is nine months pregnant as well.  When the woman disappears and no remembers seeing her leave the yard sale, David and Ivy come under police scrutiny.

Having just been pregnant two years ago I could really feel for Ivy. I completely understood the need for a yard sale and house clean/purge.  I was worried that she had to deal with so much stress and something would happen to the baby or even that the experience she’d waited so long for would be tainted by media attention and David’s lies.  This is the driving storyline that kept me reading.  I wanted to know that Ivy and baby were going to be okay.

The mystery itself, what happened to Melinda White, was solid, but could have used a few more twisty turns.  I suspected what happened from the beginning and I was right, although I had no idea the motive behind it or the extreme, crazy plot that played out in the end.  It was super fast-paced and hard to put down.

This is Hallie’s first novel.  I reviewed Hallie’s 1001 Books for Every Mood a few years ago (here) and I also interviewed her (here).  She is a lovely author and I thought of her after her sister Nora died last week.  So I picked up her book from my shelf and dug in.