Review: Dark and Shallow Lies

Title: Dark and Shallow Lies
Author: Ginny Myers Sain
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Thriller
Publisher: Razorbill
Source: Publisher
Format: Paperback arc
Release Date: September 7, 2021
Rating: ★★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

A teen girl disappears from her small town deep in the bayou, where magic festers beneath the surface of the swamp like water rot, in this chilling debut supernatural thriller for fans of Natasha Preston, Karen McManus, and Rory Power.

La Cachette, Louisiana, is the worst place to be if you have something to hide.

This tiny town, where seventeen-year-old Grey spends her summers, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World–and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey’s best friend, disappeared six months earlier.

Grey can’t believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something – her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave.

When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou – a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town’s bloody history – Grey realizes that La Cachette’s past is far more present and dangerous than she’d ever understood. Suddenly, she doesn’t know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent–and La Cachette’s dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart.

Review:

Grey spends her summers in her hometown of La Cachette, Louisiana, the Psychic Capital of the World. This is the first time Grey has returned since her best friend, Elora, went missing earlier in the year. Grey and Elora were closer than friends. They shared a birthday and always felt like sisters. Grey’s goal for the summer was to find out the truth of what happened to Elora. However, she didn’t think she would discover the truths behind other mysterious disappearances and deaths, including the secrets her mother took to her grave.

This was a spooky, mystical story, perfect for the fall season. The town of La Cachette was full of psychics. All of the kids born in the same year as Grey had some kind of psychic ability. Grey didn’t think she had a gift until she started seeing visions of what happened to Elora in her final moments. The town itself was also spooky. It was quite isolated from the rest of the world. The town was the target of hurricanes, like New Orleans. It added to the spookiness and unpredictability of the town.

The ending was shocking and surprising. There was one character who I found suspicious from the beginning, and I thought they were the one responsible for Elora’s disappearance. This character was involved, but it was a complicated ending. There were some other revelations at the end that were quite disturbing and unexpected.

Dark and Shallow Lies is a creepy YA story.

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What to read next:

Have you read Dark and Shallow Lies? What did you think of it?