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Blog by Mr. Hidden

Period 6

Crooked Little Lies 

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

4 stars ****

I give this book four stars because it never got boring and the ending wasn't easy to predict.  I would have given it 5 stars but one of the two main characters was a little on the whiny side.

  

Setting:

This novel takes place in the small town of Hardy's Walk in Texas.  It is not far from Houston, Texas, which several of the characters travel to for brief periods of the story. It is modern day with characters using cell phones and computers and driving cars that would recognizable by those who know a little bit about cars.  The novel takes place over the course of a couple of weeks with brief flashbacks to years in the past for the main characters.

Main Characters:

There are two main characters, Lauren and Annie,  who live in the same town of Hardy's Walk, Texas, but do not know each other at the beginning of the novel.

Lauren: 

Lauren is the first character we meet.  She is a wife and mother who is a recovering drug addict.  She works with her husband taking down old buildings and selling the reclaimed wood and antique furnishings.  While taking down a bell in an old church steeple she falls and crushes her pelvis and gets a sever concussion.  She almost dies and then during her rehabilitation she begins to abuse the drug Oxycontin. When the novel begins she has been off drugs for almost a year but she has a hard time remember things.  Her family treats her like she is a little kid that can't be trusted.  Lauren wants everyone to trust her, but she isn't even sure she trusts herself.

Annie:

We meet Annie in the second chapter.  She is a young adult who works in a cafe in town as the baker.  She is very independent partly because she is mostly alone.  She has very few friends, mostly just the people she works with in the small cafe, and her mother and father are dead.  Her stepfather became very withdrawn after Annie's mother died so he provides little to no companionship for her.  Her stepbrother, Bo, is schizophrenic and she rarely sees him due to him preferring to roam the town as a homeless person.  Annie doesn't trust easily and is very guarded when it comes to sharing information about herself or her family.

Main Plot Events:

• At the beginning of the novel Lauren is driving along a highway and almost hits a young man walking along the side of the road.  She pulls over and learns that this young man is Bo Laughlin and he is walking to the store to buy his sister, Annie, some candy.  He pulls a large amount of money out of his pocket and shows it to Lauren then turns and continues to the store.  Lauren is shook up and sits on the side of the road for a while to calm her nerves.  Then she drives to the store that Bo was heading to.  As she pulls into the parking lot she sees Bo get into a car with an older woman with white hair and the woman drives away.  
• About a week after Lauren's encounter with Bo, Bo is noticed to be missing.  His sister Annie starts looking for him and finds clues that lead her to believe that something has happened.  The entire town comes together to search for Bo.
• Lauren and Annie meet and become friends while searching for Bo.  Just as Annie starts to trust Lauren, Lauren starts showing signs of having mental issues not remember things and getting frustrated and angry.  This causes Annie to worry and start to suspect Lauren has having something to do with Bo's disappearance, as Lauren was the last person to see Bo.

Conflicts:

• Internal Conflict: 

• Lauren has trouble with her memory and this causes her to be frustrated and angry with herself.

• External Conflict:

•  Lauren argues with her husband and sister because they treat her like a child.

• Internal Conflict: 

• Annie isn't sure if she should call the police about her missing brother, Bo, because he tends to disappear for days at a time.  But because she has always been able to find him she feels like something may have happened and she should report  it.

Recommendation:

I would recommend this book to those who like the mystery genre and books that move beyond the typical young adult content.  This book was written for adults, but it is a fairly easy read.  It reminds me of a modern day Agatha Christie novel.